Bureau’s Report Beyond Belief

The release of the Bureau of Meteorology’s internal review only underlines the need for a transparent parliamentary inquiry into the manipulation of temperature data, according to free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs.

The Bureau’s investigations claims that Goulburn and Thredbo were the only sites where temperature records had been affected by the inability of some Bureau Automatic Weather Stations to read low temperatures.

“The Bureau claims to have a network of 695 automatic weather stations across Australia, are they seriously suggesting the only two that have issues are the two that I raised?” said Dr Jennifer Marohasy, Senior Fellow at the IPA.

“This is a vindication of our own investigations. The Bureau has now acknowledged that it had inadvertently set limits on how cold temperatures could be recorded at Goulburn and Thredbo,” said Dr Marohasy.

According to the report published last week, the wrong smart card readers were inserted into the Goulburn weather station in September 2002, and into the Thredbo weather station in May 2007. So, for a period of nearly 15 years there has been a limit on how cold temperatures can be recorded at Goulburn, and for nearly 10 years at Thredbo.

John Roskam, Executive Director at the IPA said, “The Bureau has now acknowledged that for many years temperature readings have been wrong for at least two weather stations. The Bureau’s claim that of its 695 automatic weather stations the only two at which there were problems were by coincidence the two identified by Dr Jennifer Marohasy makes the Bureau a scientific and statistical laughing stock – the chances of this happening are approximately 1 in 120,000.”

“The only way to determine what’s wrong at the Bureau of Meteorology is for the Turnbull government to initiate a full parliamentary review into every aspect of how the Bureau has been recording and publicly reporting temperature data,” said Mr Roskam.

Dr Jennifer Marohasy is editor of the IPA’s new book Climate Change: The Facts 2017, which includes a number of chapters on homogenisation and manipulation of temperature data.

Climate Change: The Facts 2017 has now sold out several times over. We are pleased to announce that we have entered into an arrangement with Connor Court Publishing, which will henceforth produce all print copies, which can be purchased from http://thefacts2017.ipa.org.au

Download the media release here

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(Image: The Australian 2017, Instagram)