Please refer back to my first post for site specifications.
Station: Warooka 22018
Opened: 1861
Daily Temperature data from: 1965
Data used to adjust Acorn sites at: Port Lincoln
Location:
About 120km west of Adelaide.
The screen is the white dot in the red ellipse.
The screen is in the backyard of the Post Office. The yard is surrounded by a 1.2 metre galvanized iron fence and buildings. The bare (concrete? gravel?) parking and storage area of the next door hardware store is within a few metres.
The BOM Metadata pages showing instrument locations on site maps as above indicate the site has remained in this layout since 1993. However the 1977 plan shows a much more open site but only shows a rain gauge, not a screen.
This might have been a completely different location.
This site is a heat sink. It is grossly non-compliant, so temperatures recorded here are not reliable. Warooka’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, Warooka is one of the sites used to adjust temperatures at ACORN-SAT sites at Port Lincoln. 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.
Number 5 tomorrow!
Tags: Acorn, adjustments, Australia, bom, temperature, weather
kenskingdom 
July 31, 2019 at 5:39 pm
Ken this is excellent work. I am also amazed that BOM has been so derelict in siting it’s weather stations. I notice that you are focussing on South Australia. As this is my home state I am especially pleased.
But I have two requests :
1 : What percentage of BOM weather stations are non compliant ? Do have a list of the ones which do abide by the BOM guidelines re location ?
2 : I assume you are using Google earth to get the overhead images of each weather station. Can you include a link to Google Earth so we can look for ourselves at each site ?
Bill
PS : Also I wonder if the BOM will deny outside access to the site records on the web that you are using at some point. Can the site pdf’s be downloaded for future reference ?
August 1, 2019 at 6:19 am
Gday Bill
1. This is bigger than I thought. In South Australia the non-compliant percentage is 14-15% but I haven’t finished. The ones that are compliant will be the ones left at Latest Observations when I’ve finished.
2.. Yes, good idea. I didn’t do it because for Mt Barker and Murray Bridge there’s a privacy issue. Will from now on though.
3. Haven’t got the time or computer space to download the PDFs.
July 31, 2019 at 5:59 pm
Ken I have just been looking at the Wooroka BOM site on Google Earth. Wooroka is a small town – perhaps 400-500 people. But it has a P12 area school for school kid in the surrounding rural areas on the South Western Yorke Peninsula.
And there is a huge school gym and assembly hall for that P12 school just South of the BOM weather station site.
It looks to be flat roofed. How can this not have a huge impact on the temperatures in the vicinity.
How come BOm have not sought a compliant site and moved it’s weather station there. There is no lack of potential sites there.
January 14, 2020 at 12:21 pm
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