This is Part 4, of the ‘Australian Temperature Records’ series.
March 8, 2022 By jennifer
In brief
Recent torrential downpours in southeastern Queensland are not unprecedented. Australia’s record for 24-hour rainfall is 907 mm still Crohamhurst in the Brisbane basin was recorded on 3rdrd February 1893. We do not know how much rain fell in Crohamhurst in February 2022 because that weather station (#04062)) was closed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in March 2003.
The simulation models currently used by the Bureau do not have the skills to forecast seasonal rainfall. Models based on sample analysis of historical data are more accurate. Reliable forecasting of particularly wet summers may require monitoring of stratospheric volcanic aerosols, as well as accurate historical temperature and precipitation records.
More detail
Following devastating flooding along Australia’s east coast, the Climate Council issued a media release calling for action on climate change: that the Australian government mandate renewable energy and build a economy without fossil fuels. This is not the solution. And it is worth remembering that their Chief Councilor, Tim Flannery, advised not long ago that it should never flood again – that Australia has suffered from a permanent drought. It is clear that now armchair environmentalists have no clue when it comes to the weather.
For these true believers, it is too terrible to even suggest that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) may be exaggerating global warming by shifting all historical temperature measurements up to when the cooling to 1960 was converted to warming. Over the past twenty years, the Bureau’s overhaul of historical temperature data has eliminated cycles, so that even today’s cool years make it official for warming. In denying the nature of Australia’s climate, which is governed by a cycle of dry and wet, experts cannot foresee extremely wet weather because they have lost all sense of history.
February 2022 is extremely wet in southeastern Queensland, where I live. Brisbane is flooded again. Tens of thousands of houses were flooded. It was a tragedy. This is the second time in eleven years.
The 2011 flood was caused by an emergency release of water from the Wivenhoe Dam, a dam built to reduce flooding following the devastating 1974 floods. The 2011 floods were the subject of a class action lawsuit with the Queensland government, SunWater and SEQ Water (the operators dam) were recently found to be negligent.
During the worst flooding this year, the dam operator continued to release water as the city flooded. Although the torrential rains have stopped, the water continues to be released as the Bureau forecasts that heavier rains – even the worst – are imminent. Rain never happened.
As usual, the Bureau’s forecasting skills proved poor with dire consequences.
I evaluated the Bureau’s simulation modeling skills to forecast seasonal precipitation in a series of articles with John Abbot published in international peer-reviewed journals, conference papers and as book chapters from 2012 to 2017. Our conclusion is that the Bureau’s POAMA simulation model, developed over a 20-year period in collaboration with other scientists affiliated with the IPCC, has very limited precipitation forecasting skills although run on an expensive supercomputer – The Bureau currently has the largest supercomputer in the Southern Hemisphere, but their precipitation forecasting skills haven’t improved.
The Bureau’s simulation models simply cannot forecast heavy rain events at a reasonable time.
Management at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology continues to deny that fact at the cost and heartache of the Australian community.
There is growing evidence that the most skillful medium and long-term precipitation forecasts are made using statistical models combined with artificial intelligence. These are the models John Abbot and I have been developing since February 2011 – after the January 2011 floods that I foresaw were avoidable when the Bureau warned dam operators about wet summers going to happen.
At that time, towards the end of 2010, it was clear from the very high Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) that we were likely to experience a very wet summer. But there was no preparation – Wivenhoe Dam was kept full until it was too late.
Last summer it was Not it was obvious that we would experience torrential downpours. It is possible that this year’s relatively mild La Nina conditions across the South Pacific have been made worse by a particularly high atmosphere with volcanic aerosols from outbreak of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai a month before.
The very high total rainfall in Hong Kong in 1982 correlates with the emergence of stratospheric aerosol plumes from the El Chichon eruption, which ejected 20 million tons of aerosols.
There are technical documents explaining how an atmosphere rich in aerosols can contribute to particularly heavy rainfallbut this material is ignored by mainstream climate scientists, who continue to run simulations that mistakenly emphasize the role of carbon dioxide in climate change.
To create a correlation between temperature and carbon dioxide, the temperature is homogenized, as detailed in previous posts in this series.
During the recent flooding in Brisbane, I was viewing a rain gauge at Lowood on the Brisbane River (Station #040120) just 10 kilometers downstream of the Wivenhoe Dam. A total of 240 mms fell on Saturday 26order February 2022, that’s the record for Lowood in any single day since August 1887; when they started measuring daily rainfall at Lowood. Except there is no record of Lowood for the wettest period on record in southeastern Queensland, which was February 1893. It is likely that the Lowood gauge of precipitation was washed away in February 1893. !
If we consider the rainfall record for Crohamhurst which is also in the Brisbane basin, but upstream of both the Wivenhoe and Somerset dams, the truly amazing figure of 2,046 mms falls around 31.st January and MayorderFebruary 1893.
24 hour record 907 mms on 3rd February 1893 was the highest total rainfall in a single day for any place in Australia. We will never know if this record will be equaled or beaten in February 2022 as the Bureau has shut down this weather station. It was closed in March 2003.
It is also unfortunate that despite growing budgets and growing concern about extreme temperatures, the Weather Bureau has closed the Charlotte Pass weather station, which holds the record for the lowest daily minimum temperature in the United States. Australia. That weather station was closed in March 2015.
The most accurate weather prediction systems are based on statistical models that use artificial intelligence software to unravel patterns in historical data. So the integrity of Australia’s temperature and precipitation records is paramount.
However, both temperature and precipitation records are continuously deleted by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Key weather stations are being shut down and available temperature data has been remodeled stripping evidence of past warming and cooling cycles corresponding to periods of drought often disrupted by flood rain. How past cycles are removed from the temperature series is detailed in Part 2 of this series.
There’s nothing new under the sun when it comes to these climate cycles, and they continue to be perturbed by volcanic eruptions.
But now we have technocrats, bureaucrats and politicians more interested in perpetuating the illusion of catastrophic global warming than in providing major daily or seasonal weather forecasts. corpse. Despite the phenomenal improvement in computing power, the office is still cornered by simulation models and homogeneous data despite better alternatives.
Back in 2014, an investigation into these matters was proposed by then-Prime Minister Tony Abbot but was thwarted because of the intervention of Environment Secretary Greg Hunt. He argued in the Cabinet that the credibility of the organization/Department was paramount. Greg Hunt argues that it is most important for the Australian public to trust the Bureau’s data and forecasts, so the public pays attention to weather warnings. There is no consideration for the accuracy, or otherwise, of these warnings.
I have written to Senator Simon Birmingham in August 2018, then the Minister responsible for the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, explained that the Bureau’s seasonal forecasts were dire, and I proposed solutions. By then I was the author peer-reviewed publications detailing the skill of alternative techniques for precipitation forecasting.
The senator has never considered my proposed solutions. I continued to forecast seasonal rainfall using an artificial neural network as a form of artificial intelligence until early 2018, when my contract with Queensland University of Technology (QUT) was terminated. This resulted in the Bureau refusing to allow me to meet them in Melbourne, as part of a delegation that included senior Indonesian meteorologists. I no longer forecast seasonal rainfall, but would love to start with proper sourcing and coordination with the Bureau.
I was in Brisbane last Thursday afternoon (March 3, 2022), helping to clean out the newest garage in Sandford Street, St Lucia. The team I’m working with adamantly requested the tool to shoot down at 2pm because the Bureau’s weather warning described our situation as ‘dangerous’ and ‘potentially life threatening’ during iteration. severe thunderstorm warning. The Premier of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk, is broadcast on news radio urges parents not to waste time picking up their children from school.
All the while, the sun continued to shine and I continued to fight the mud. Not a single drop of rain fell from the sky, not a single thunderclap. As I drove out of Brisbane that evening, on my way home, the flash flood forecast for the same afternoon had been cancelled. Next, on the radio there was a discussion about the ‘Rain of Bombs’ of the previous five days. How they were ‘unprecedented’. More than a meter of rain fell in several locations in just a few days. There is no mention of the rain of more than two meters that fell on Crohamhurst in early February 1893.
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This is Part 4, of the ‘Australian Temperature Records’ series.
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