CLIMATIC MATTERS

AIR TEMPERATURE HOME PAGE

Brian Gunter, Narooma, NSW, Australia http://members.westnet.com.au/brigun/air_temps.html

"The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially about the future." - Mark Twain

Analyses have been made of long-term air temperature records at locations throughout Australia and also in other regions of the world. My analyses have concentrated at individual stations and no attempt has been made to derive average trends for a region or the world. The computation of such "averages" will mask regional variations and can therefore result in misleading conclusions.

The temperature parameter generally used (mainly, I suspect, for convenience) is the mean annual temperature, which masks the considerable variations that occur on a diurnal (night/day) and seasonal (winter/summer) basis. I have therefore often included parameters in my analyses to reflect the diurnal and seasonal variation in temperature.

In all cases I have endeavoured to use only "raw" data as recorded by the observer. I have avoided using data that has been adjusted by various authorities. My two primary sources of basic temperature data are the monthly records published on the websites of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI): http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/ http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectstation.cgi?id=someone@somewhere

A basic principle of my analyses is to analyse and present the data at individual stations. Generally no attempt was made to fill in missing data or to combine the records of nearby stations, although it is realised that most published records have had a change in location over their period of records. Using this approach I believe that any faulty record would become obvious and its influence would not be obscured in an "average" value.

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This article was written by Brian Gunter of Narooma (NSW, Australia). In his previous life Brian was an

engineering hydrologist involved over many years in the analysis of rainfall and river flow data for the planning of water resources projects in Australia, Asia and Africa. In recent years he has been one of the Marine Rescue NSW (formerly the Royal Volunteer Coastal Patrol) volunteer weather observers who operate the Narooma station for the Bureau of Meteorology.