Temperature Change at Rutherglen in South-East Australia
Author: Jennifer Marohasy Received: 21 July 2016 Received in revised form: 30 July 2016 Accepted: 1 August 2016 Online: PENDING DOI: https://doi.org/10.22221/nc.2016.001 Keywords: Temperature time series, Temperature trends, Homogenisation, Hottest years, Temperature minima, Temperature maxima, Climate change, Rutherglen, Fire hazard Data Archived: Yes
Abstract
Since November 1912, air temperatures have been measured at an agricultural research station near Rutherglen in northern Victoria, Australia. The data is of high quality, therefore, there is no scientific reason to apply adjustments in order to calculate temperature trends and extremes. Mean annual temperatures oscillate between 15.8 °C and 13.4 °C. The hottest years are 1914 and 2007; there is no overall warming-trend. The hottest summer was in 1938–1939 when Victoria experienced the Black Friday bushfire disaster. This summer was 3°C hotter than the mean maximum summer temperature at Rutherglen for the entire period: December 1912 to February 2016. Adjustments are made by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to the maximum and minimum temperature series before they are incorporated into the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT), and also the UK Met Office’s HadCRUT dataset, which informs IPCC deliberations. The temperature spike in 1938-1939 is erroneously identified as a statistical error, and all temperatures before 1938 adjusted-down by 0.62 °C. The most significant change is to the temperature minima with all temperatures before 1974, and 1966, adjusted-down by 0.61 °C and 0.72 °C, respectively. For the year 1913, there is a 1.3 °C difference between the annual raw minimum value as measured at Rutherglen and the adjusted value. The net effect of the adjustments is to create statistically significant warming of 0.7 °C in the ACORN-SAT mean temperature series for Rutherglen, in general agreement with anthropogenic global warming theory.
Please cite this article as: Marohasy, J., Temperature change at Rutherglen in south-east Australia, New Climate (2016), https://doi.org/10.22221/nc.2016.001