In September, the Bureau of Meteorology added two extra tabs to its ACORN-SAT webpage, in response to media and public pressure. The first tab (“Adjustments”) included a link to a list of temperature adjustments for each of its 112 Acorn stations. (This had been promised two and a half years earlier.)
Soon after, and probably in response to continued interest in adjustments at Amberley, Rutherglen, and Deniliquin (amongst others), six links to PDF files were added at the bottom of the adjustment page, which gave further explanations and summaries of adjustments at six individual sites- Amberley, Deniliquin, Mackay, Orbost, Rutherglen, and Thargomindah. (Click to enlarge.)
Two days ago I posted about the bizarre case of Mackay 33119, listing differing adjustments from the two sources, extra neighbours found, and finding that the set of adjustments in the individual summary did not match the end result (the Acorn record for Mackay).
I thought this must be just a freak problem with Mackay. Surely the other examples couldn’t all be wrong.
Not so.
Here is a table summarising the adjustments listed by the Bureau in the 28 page Station adjustment summary list, compared with the individual station summaries (click to enlarge).
Only one station (Deniliquin) has matching pairs of adjustments- but none are the same.
Out of 25 pairs of matching adjustments, only one pair has the same adjustment.
Most of the adjustments differ by only a few hundredths of a degree, but some are hugely different (over 1 degree in the case of Mackay).
There are a total of 60 adjustments, but 10 of these do not have a matching adjustment. Seven of the extras are in the individual station summaries, three are from those in the original 28 page list.
Note that these station summaries are “indicative of the sorts of adjustments made across the 112 ACORN-SAT sites”. As a result, we can have no confidence in the accuracy of the Bureau’s adjustments, and we are left wondering what the Bureau would have us believe are the real temperatures at any site.
An old school teacher’s response to such sloppy work?
Fail. Check your work and repeat. Stay in at lunch time until you get it right.
Tags: Acorn, adjustments, Bureau of Meteorology
kenskingdom 
November 5, 2014 at 2:26 pm
Regretfully, George Orwell apparently knew in 1946 – when he started writing “Nineteen Eighty-Four” – that frightened world leaders conspired in 1945 to “save the world” from nuclear annihilation by forbidding public knowledge of the nuclear force that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki – neutron repulsion.
Here’s the rest of the story about that source of energy:
Click to access Solar_Energy.pdf
November 6, 2014 at 7:06 pm
Keep up the good work, Ken. You’re making a difference and pursuing a noble cause.
November 11, 2014 at 5:39 am
A Canadian scientist who describes himself as a climate sceptic has backed a call for an inquiry into the weather bureau ‘fudging the figures’.
Patrick Moore, who has a PhD in ecology, was recently in Australia on a lecture tour.
He was one of the founders of Greenpeace, but now describes himself now as a climate warming sceptic.
Dr Moore backs the call from Federal Nationals MP George Christensen for an inquiry into reports the Bureau Of Meteorology has wiped off early temperature records to justify its claims the weather is getting hotter.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-10/nrn-canadian-climate-sceptic-10-11-14/5879674
February 9, 2015 at 5:04 pm
[…] (For further information and full explanation see https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/more-bizarre-adjustments/) […]