The next weather station is Murray Bridge (24521). Murray Bridge is a town on the Murray River about 80km southeast of Adelaide in South Australia.
The station has temperature data from 1966, but the site does not meet BOM specifications as outlined in my first post of this series.
The screen is the white dot in the red ellipse.
The screen is in a houseyard near concrete paths, vegetable gardens and shrubs, close to a picket fence, within 5 metres of sheds, sheltered from the south by a 1.6 metre high fence, with buildings to the east, north, and west, and less than 10 metres from the bitumen road.
As I said in the first post, don’t blame the people who live there, it’s not their fault, and please don’t search out the location. That’s why I have blotted out any street names and house numbers.
This is another site that is grossly non-compliant, so temperatures recorded here are not reliable. Again, Murray Bridge’s temperatures are published at the BOM Latest Weather Observations page, and also used by the BOM in weather reports, potentially including extremes of heat or cold. As well, Murray Brudge is one of the sites used to adjust temperatures at ACORN-SAT sites at Adelaide and Mt. Gambier. Acorn sites are used for climate analysis- whether winters are getting warmer and summers hotter for example. So the lack of quality at any site DOES MATTER!
Another FAIL.
Tags: Australia, bom, temperature
kenskingdom 
July 29, 2019 at 1:36 pm
Thanks Ken for your valuable information. You have presented it in a simple and lucid manner. We still need a Royal Commission to inquire into record keeping and reporting of the temperature data.
July 29, 2019 at 2:06 pm
Thank you, plenty more to come.
July 30, 2019 at 9:07 am
Thank you for showing this Ken. Why oh why are the numbers from these things taken seriously?
July 30, 2019 at 11:24 am
Ken I knew that this BOM station was wacky back last December. So I went & found the BOM’s weather station at the Airport 8 Ks North of Murray Bridge. This was started in 2005 I think.
And is shows much less increase in annual average minimum or maximum temperatures than Murray Bridge itself.
By the way, if you need someone to check BOM stations here in the Adelaide Hills & take photos, let me know.
July 30, 2019 at 3:56 pm
Thanks Bill, airport sites are mostly pretty good and show much less UHI. Thanks for your help. I’m trying to do the whole country, I will probably need to get photos for the ones I can’t get street views for, might put out a call later on.
August 3, 2019 at 8:30 am
Thanks for the info. What temperature trend does each site show?
August 3, 2019 at 2:21 pm
At the moment I’m not looking at the temperatures, just compliance or not. I may check later but readings from these sites must be unreliable.
August 3, 2019 at 2:42 pm
Robber here is a link to the BOM’s web site for maximum daily temperatures at the Murray Bridge airport.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=122&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=024584
You can also find out the daily minimum temperatures, the monthly maximum & minimum temperatures, and daily rainfall as well, by going back a step on the BOM’s website and selecting for each
As Ken has shown the Murray Bridge BOM station in the middle of Murray Bridge is not compliant with the BOM’s own guidelines. Murray Bridge also has UHIE as it a population of around 17,000 people.
The airport site is more accurate as flights are not very frequent and by small aircraft.
August 3, 2019 at 2:52 pm
PS : I’ve been looking just now at the BOM pdf for this weather station site. It is out in the country 8 ks away from any town and is located in a corner of the aerodrome next to grazing paddocks. It looks to be compliant with BOM’s guidelines. ( I am a bit pleasantly surprised !)
Here is a link to the BOM’s own pdf for this weather station site. http://www.bom.gov.au/clim_data/cdio/metadata/pdf/siteinfo/IDCJMD0040.024584.SiteInfo.pdf
Unfortunately no photo of it. And a photo might show up things not listed in the BOM’s pdf.
August 3, 2019 at 3:06 pm
PPS : Just got an aerial view of this via Google Earth. It is well away from any buildings and about 150 meters from the gravel airstrip. You can see it here :https://earth.google.com/web/@-35.06500021,139.22729889,44.06398694a,214.04964972d,35y,-102.99321298h,44.99598196t,0.00000001r
August 4, 2019 at 10:53 pm
Hi Ken, just passing by after seeing your work at Jo Nova. The devil, as they say, is in the detail, especially when people are debating about fractions of a degree difference in seasonal temperatures and people are getting emotionally attached to their “scientific” positions.
One thing, though, that puzzles me. Why is it that every time the BOM “homogenises” the temperature record, the older temperature history is corrected downwards, and the more recent stuff always goes up? Especially, in the light of your work, which indicates the UHI etc is likely to work in exactly the opposite direction.