This is tantamount to accusing BoM of fraud. Perhaps some parliamentarians should call for an enquiry with published findings. Something I've noticed in Tasmania is that while it's a couple of years since I recorded 40.7C in the meantime there have been far fewer frosty nights. That seems likely to move the average temperature upwards. A possible explanation is greater or more frequent cloud cover that clips extremes.

I don't think we should choose arbitrary time segments to find trends. We should use a moving average trend that starts after the introduction of reliable measurements.

The staff at the BoM are human, they have families and it is quite understandable that they don't want any "accidents" happening to them.

Expect the author to disappear or die of cancer from polonium poisoning, leaving behind letters of "penitence" that were extracted under torture; or expect her being declared as "reformed" with her name listed as a co-author on "scientific" warming-papers while she is aware that her children are to be executed or maimed if she denies being an author.

As Yuyutsu notes, the ABM simply has to conform and produce analysis which conforms with the theory. For the staff to do anything else would be professional suicide. Other researchers would simply refuse to have anything to do with them, speak to them at conferences or co-operate on research papers. That said, most probably believe the global warming story and so would support the analysis - the few dissenters would simply shut up and get on with other jobs..

Cherry peaking? My oven was 220 degrees at 12.30pm Sunday, water about 12degrees this morning. BoM notes cooling at some locations and the full screen view.
"November 2016. Both days and nights warmer than average across much of eastern Australia
Cooler than average days across the northwest and the Northern Territory, away from the Top End
Cooler than average nights across the southwest

Temperatures
The national mean temperature for December was 0.71 °C above average. Mean maximum temperatures were 0.46 °C above average while mean minima were +0.96 °C."

Antarctic Larsen ice shelf and Arctic ice at minimums .

My new year's resolution is to completely ignore climate change nonsense: no opinion, no comments. Ms. Marahosy is on the sensible side of things, and I wish her well. But, people who think that climate change is the fault of human beings: people who think that they can have power over nature, using OUR MONEY, are beyond the pale, not worth listening to. These turnips will eventually be revealed for what they are, but they will not be held responsible for the damage they have done. All I can do is hold them in utter contempt, along with the idiotic politicians they have conned.

That the fascist Australian government under Fuhrer Abbott took matters into its own hands by ordering the destruction, (by burning and shredding machine) of "records" in the BOM & Dept of Veterans Affairs says much. That it has since been swept under the rug and denied by senior staffers in both government departments since then, is even more reason to be suspicious of anything published or broadcast or indeed given any credence what so ever.

Nothing like destroying any contrary evidence to support your own arguments.

Larsen B ice shelf is a NASA fraud due to Russian hacking of BoM and Chinese Army cyber war.
" This ice shelf has existed for at least 10,000 years, and soon it will be gone. What is really surprising about Larsen B is how quickly the changes are taking place," Khazendar said. "Change has been relentless."
Putin fakes the Guardian: "Dec 6, 2016 - Both the Arctic and Antarctic experienced record lows in sea ice extent in November, with scientists astonished to see Arctic ice actually ..."
There's no need to read the stupid stuff here:
" In the past, when the climate warmed, the change was accompanied by an increase in greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. When scientists tried to build climate models, they could not get the models to simulate past climate change unless they also added changes in carbon dioxide levels. Though scientists aren’t sure why carbon dioxide levels changed, almost all believe that the shift contributed to altering the climate. Because ice cores also revealed that carbon dioxide levels are much higher today than at any time recorded in the past 750,000 years,". blah blah

Indeed Jennifer, INTENT and or creative accounting/number crunching is indeed the enemy of TRUTH!

Nick cannot have that finger pointed at him, and well said Sir!

I just don't know what your real problem is Jennifer or rather that of the fossil fuel cartel that, reportedly pays some of your research grants?

Could it possibly be, the penny has dropped and some of the brighter minds in said cartel? Have finally woken to the fact that the TRUTH pertaining to THORIUM can no longer be suppressed, with aforethought, criminal cunning and INTENT!

Given the widespread adoption of CHEAPER THAN COAL, CLEANER THAN COAL, SAFER THAN COAL, THORIUM, is the real ENEMY of every current energy provider!?

And should we ever have the testicular fortitude to tell it like it is, i.e., the unmitigated, unadorned TRUTH, Jenny! Your current funding stream would dry completely up as would all fossil fuel
companies revenues!?

And given the INTENT on display in your article? You and your ilk are the real enemy of TRUTH, our nation, our kids, their kids, all humanity and the entire planet!?

Get on U TUBE, google tech talks and Kirk Sorensen; and his evidence based science! Or indeed the other eminent scientists and their irrefutable evidence laden TRUTH!
Minus any manipulation of the maths? Too clever by half, INTENT Moresy!?
Alan B.

Oh Dear I truly wonder how Jenifer could use the term post-truth science with a straight face. From someone so bad a science that she can't get a job as a scientific researcher and has to work as attack dog at the institute of made up stuff.

Jenifer knows quite well the method the BOM uses and that it is consistent with standard excepted practice. to represent it in any other way to demonstrates that you're willfully misleading your readers.

Don't worry Jenifer when the IPA has tired of you, when what remaining credibility is completely gone. You can always get a job with the creationist. They are always looking for "scientist" who are willing to dismiss the work of entire fields of science because it doesn't fit their world view.
You just have to decide if you're going to jump straight into the flat earth 7 days creation stuff or ease your way down to that via intelligent design.

oh by the way for those playing at home, hare is a link to how the BOM do it. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/events/january-heatwave-methods.shtml

If Jenifer had some valid to contribute to the scientific methodologies no doubt we will see a paper from her published in a relevant journal. If her proposed methods are better then her peers then eventually they will be the ones used. That's how science works.

The state of the climate report can be found here http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/

Yes Jen you and Roberts are right the rest of the world is wrong just the usual rubbish from the cherry picking Jen and the hear in the sand claque

hear in the sand claque " people applauding on a beach".

I expect the BOM will tell us at the start of 2018 that 2017 was the hottest year on record and the same the year after that. One need pay little regard to an organization that can't get a weeks weather forecast correct but are smug enough to tell us we can alter the weather by producing less CO2.

Thank you, Jennifer, for giving us the facts again, when we are bombarded with lies by the fraud promoters, like the BOM.
Until we have a Royal Commission into the climate fraud, we will have truthful scientists, like Jennifer, crying in the wilderness.
Thanks for your efforts, Jennifer Marohasy

Well the BOM has been predicting its going to be a dry year in southeast Australia every year for the last 5 years.

Every year of those 5 years has been wetter than average. The BOM concludes that those 5 years are just a statistical anomaly.

But, some future year is bound to be drier than average. Hence the media will report the BOM prediction and assumptions are correct.

Don't worry plantagenet, the BOM are working on a justification to increase the rainfall record for all past years.

They will soon be able to confirm the last 5 years were actually below the "corrected" average.

They have got away with doing it with temperature, so why not rainfall.

Possibly the global weird weather is altering normal wind and heat systems ? BoM doesn't say "wetter" but percent chances of drier / wetter.

Sell your beach front real estate!

@plantagenet please link to said prediction by the BOM.

First of all, I would refer you to Graham's piece in Ambit Gambit.

All you amateur climate scientists need to realise that the presence of polar ice has a stabilising influence on sea temperatures. If you take a glass, add ice to it and then fill it with water and leave it in a warm place, the temperature of the water will remain at zero degrees until all the ice has melted. Graham’s graphs prove nothing except what I have just explained.

Regardless of temperature measurements, it is a fact that sea ice is melting at both poles at an alarming rate and glaciers are also receding world wide. You don't have to be a Rhodes' scholar to come to the conclusion that this is the result of global warming. I will leave it to the real scientists to postulate a cause, but I would put my money on the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.
David

Anyone who wants to be alarmed about something, like VK3AUU, will find some concocted story to suit them.

There were 1000 peer reviewed, papers posted in scientific journals in the last 3 years, refuting the possibility that CO2 can do what the fraudsters have been pushing for a couple of decades.

As the fraudsters have yet to produce any actual evidence to support the scam, all sensible folk have seen the light, & ignore the rubbish.

VK3AU has a pretty tenuous grasp on reality. While it is true that, due to the latent energy involved in moving a substance from one state to another, if you put ice in a glass of water the water will not warm until all the ice has melted, that only works at the scale of a glass of water.

The sea off the Gold Coast will be warm at the moment, off Sydney much more refreshing, and off the coast at Hobart you will risk hypothermia without a wet suit. So, sea temperature varies, independently of ice melting.

What's more, the sea is the engine that drives global temperature, so if the sea is not getting hotter, then neither is the temperature. So, bear that in mind if you look at the graphs on my blog.

You might also be interested to look at sea level rises, which I have covered in a separate post at http://www.ambitgambit.com/2017/01/10/so-how-fast-is-the-sea-really-rising/. There is a gradual rise, but not alarmingly so. This is caused in part by melting of glaciers, but more generally by the increase in volume of water as the temperature of the water heats - another strike against VK3AU's understanding of science.

The article hasn't indicated the purpose of the alleged "intent".

If the "intent" is to somehow falsify data to show the earth is warming, what is the "real intent?"

Reinterpreting data is not done for it's own sake. It's not the equivalent of a global game of Pokemon Go played by scientists to hoodwink humanity.

Scientists believed that temperatures would begin to rise about 40 years ago and we would be seeing the first signs now and that seems to be the case. It didn't happen as a result of Al Gore narrating a documentary.

Where are the usual associated claims of global conspiracies, corrupt scientists, Jewish bankers, One World Governments and so on?

What stake does the author's organisation - the IPA - have in maintaining the energy industry status quo, and perhaps it's own financial sponsorship?

What purpose does this article serve except as a further attempt to muddy the waters? The same strategy was successfully used by the tobacco companies years ago and tried again for DDT and industrial acid rain fallout from industries.

If there is an intent here, what is it and who is it really for?

Rache,

We are clearly motivated by different things. I'm curious - you seem more interested in the status quo and politics.

You ask my intent, and suggest I'm out to 'muddy' the water. I'm a radical empiricist after the truth.

I've spent some years attempting to understand the historical temperature record for Australia; including developing a best method for quality control of raw data - the actual measurements.

I've also been around long enough to know that when it comes to environmental issues getting to the truth can be difficult: because too many people want a politically correct, and simply answer. Yet the natural world is far from simple, and global averages are often meaningless.

To understand the extent to which environmental sciences (including climate science) have become riddled with noble cause corruption consider reading this book by Prof Ansley Kellow (University of Tasmania, Department of Government): https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/science-and-public-policy?___website=uk_warehouse

As regards the IPA, their leader is generally much more cautious than me when it comes to this issue; indeed, on balance, I am a risk to their reputation. They did, however, kindly take me in, after I was recently evicted from Central Queensland. You can read about me here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/about/

My recent publications in the area of climate science are here: http://climatelab.com.au/publications/

Some of us care intensely about the truth - seeking it becomes an overriding motivation that does not wane with age.

Graham, you are half right. I probably simplified it a bit too much, but the tides and currents in the oceans do their bit to mix things around, so the general principal still applies. Your point about sea levels has some merit. I haven't seen any evidence of it hereabouts. I suspect that there could be a geological cause for the Pacific islands' inundation problems. The increase in atmospheric temperature would work the other way, as warm air carries more water vapour than cold air.

I didn't lay any blame for the increase in carbon dioxide. It is still happening though, whatever the cause. Perhaps Jennifer might care to remind us.

David

Sorry David, but I am 100% right. If you were right there would be no global warming anywhere, and climate science would have even larger problems than it does. The graphs I produce show some warming, but they also show some cooling. Again, disproving your thesis which assumes a steady temperature and no change either up or down.

Need more research about the truth. And when you know the truth, stand for it.

Thank you

All that is required from the BOM is to provide the theory and method behind their calculations, and to demand the same from those holding contrary points of view. It's known as Argument and is basic science.

Being a "radical empiricist" is redolent of the motives the Malcolm Roberts brigade who indeed wants to "muddy the waters" for the AGW consensus.

The empirical evidence argument is usually an excuse to ignore and dismiss evidence in favor of another agenda.

For example, the US Surgeon General didn't ban smoking because there was no "empirical evidence" that smoking caused cancer. Simply, the argument was that not everyone who smokes got cancer and not everyone who had cancer ever smoked.

Smoking may cause genetic damage and genetic damage may in turn cause cancer but there was no proven direct link between the two. That's how one empirical argument was successfully made in the US Courts.

As a result, all anti-smoking legislation is behavioural (advertising, various bans) and not based on strictly scientific evidence with no global consensus. Otherwise tobacco would historically have gone the way of asbestos.

Logically and scientifically there is consensus that it does contribute to cancer but there are still several groups who still argue against it based on interpretations of "empirical evidence".

We accepted the science behind the hole in the ozone layer argument, mainly because the (chemical) industry that caused the problem also provided a solution and nobody seems to be investigating the minutae of that debate.

It's not the "truth" aspect but the underlying motives of looking for ways of generating doubt in spite of overwhelming global evidence that interested me.

Graham, what I am trying to get across is that that because of the effect that I have described, the polar ice will have a somewhat moderating effect. I believe that this what your graphs are showing. It will only take place slowly because of the large masses of water involved. However, hopefully not in our lifetime, but some time in the future, pehaps a few hundred or even thousands of years hence, once all the ice has gone the temperature will rise much faster.

David

Rache there was consensus about what caused stomach ulcers, until it was proved wrong, as was the opposition to the theory of evolution. Consensus is merely the camouflage used by the "B" grader who does not understand the subject.

VK3AUU, too simple for sure.

Please explain, using your theory, why the moderating was not complete when the planet was nothing but a ball of ice.

Surely if something "natural" has moved the planet from that ball of ice, to the present day, it is that something, & not CO2, that is continuing the effect.

Hasbeen, I don't think the planet was ever a ball of ice, so you question is moot.

David

David

Please check this.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150112-did-snowball-earth-make-animals

Obviously you don't know much VK3AUU.

Time you did a bit of reading. You might just learn enough to see through the global warming scam.

Hasbeen et al, I am still waiting for an explanation from you and your friends as to why the polar ice caps and glaciers are melting.
David

David, you waste your time, these people have an opinion, provided by others, and they are set in their ways, no amount of proof will convince them they are wrong. Feel good in the knowledge that the whole world knows man made global warming is a fact, and are acting on it, not as fast as I would like, but at least they don't have their collective head in the sand, like some people.

I think that about 70% of the earth's surface is covered by the oceans. Why do we never see any figures showing the rise of ocean temperatures and stop trying to accuse the BOM of providing false temperature figures?

Hi Jennifer,
It is good to see you have moved on from Rutherglen and neural networks.

But, i guess that so much effort on your part with zero results must have produced a downer.

That there was little fact in your writings, and a preference to blame people rather than understand the science, is certainly reflected in your recent paper where you cast nefarious intent around like a stream of soap bubbles full of hot air.

Obviously a tactic picked up from the Marshall Institute and the Heartland Institute. Both of which enjoy trashing scientists reputations rather than addressing the science - because, like you, they have little understanding of scientific method.

Oh, but of course, your home organisation, the IPA, possibly has roots in those organisations. I would guess that you and those organisations laud Trump who also enjoys factless coversations, thankfully each speach only 140 characters in length.

But, i must congratulate you on a major area of CC discussion. Your current paper has attracted very, very few commentators who also inhabit factless worlds. Well done, your followers have reduced to little more than your own shadow.

Cheers, Tony
PS: the one occupant of your world who does understand some of the science, Judith Curry, has just left the battle ground.
PSS: and Michael Mann is in the process if suing those who denigrated him and his science. So, beware

For budding scientists - some information on sea level rise.
1. See
https://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/climate-science/climate-change-future/sea-level
which discusses todays sea level rise of 20cm over the past 50 years or so.

2. See
http://www.ecowatch.com/james-hansen-dangerous-sea-level-rise-will-occur-in-decades-not-centur-1882198301.html
in which James Hansen and 15 or so very authoritative scientists fear that multi meter sea level rise is possible in comimg decades. Look for Information on warmer deep ocean currents that are rapidly melting Antarctic glaciers from below.

3. Look for information on how fresh water from glacial melt, and greenland melt, is disturbing the flow of warm surface currents, potentially stopping the gulf stream and returning very cold winters to northern Europe.

3. Do your own google search to find views of the US miltary's senior echelon that see climate change being of more concern than all current terrorist activities. Many billions of dollars required to reposition infrastructure because of sea level rises. Plus much more.

4. Preferably, do not display your own ignorance without doing some searching for facts.

5. However, if you are wedded to climate change fiction, there is much laughable stuff on tye webb written by Malcolm Roberts.

Cheers
Tony