Well we all know the ad hoc adjustments bom do.
But an astute observer has noted the following
Data adjustments that do not CONFORM to the BOMs stated position on the holy grail of Australian Data "ACORN"
Pretty Patterns
Most people like pretty patterns. They are pleasing to the eye. But that’s no reason to create them when homogenising data, as the Bureau of Meteorology does when creating its ACORN-SAT datasets for a number of sites.
I am indebted to Bob Fernley-Jones, who noticed this and has been trying without success to point out to the Bureau that they need to address this issue.
For example, the Bureau found problems with maximum data from Darwin, especially before the Post Office and its thermometer were blown to bits by a Japanese bomb in February 1942. Adjustments were needed as the data source moved from the town to the RAAF base. Before this, apparently the Stevenson screen had become partially shaded by vegetation. The problem is that the only other stations available for comparison for identifying and adjusting for discontinuities in the data were hundreds of kilometres away- Port Keats Police Station is 243 km away, Katherine is 270 km away, and Wyndham Port is 446 km away. Port Keats and Katherine have monthly data from 1938 and 1937 respectively (but with many months of data missing from Katherine), and Wyndham Port has daily data available for the whole 1910-1942 period. So these three distant sites were used to adjust Darwin’s raw data before 02/02/1941, but only Wyndham Port was used to make adjustments for all data before 01/01/1937 and 01/01/1916.
Here is the result.
Figure 1: Adjustments to Darwin’s daily maxima 1910 to 1942
Now isn’t that a very pretty and pleasing pattern? The red line shows the difference between Darwin Acorn Tmax and Darwin raw Tmax, for every day from 01/01/1910 to 31/01/1942, revealing a repeating oscillation in values. Note that from 2 February 1941 there are no adjustments.
The next plots analyse the three distinct periods by month of the year.
Figure 2: Daily adjustments to Darwin’s maxima 01/01/1937 to 31/01/1941
Note that these are not mean values:
every single day in each month was adjusted by
exactly the same amount as every other day in that month. Every day in June 1937 was cooled by -0.5 degrees C, and likewise every day in June 1938, 1939, and 1940. Days in April and December were not adjusted, while the Wet months were warmed and the Dry and Build-up months were cooled. So much for the Bureau’s explanation that only Winter (-0.47) and Spring (-0.57) were adjusted.
Figure 3: Daily adjustments to Darwin’s maxima 01/01/1916 to 31/12/1936
Again, every single day in each month has been adjusted by exactly the same amount as every other day in that month. Days in the Wet were cooled by from -0.2C to -1.2C, while days in the Dry and Build-up months were cooled by -1.2C to -2.2C. That’s some pretty savage adjusting, and does not vary from the first to the last day of each month.
Figure 4: Daily adjustments to Darwin’s maxima 01/01/1910 to 31/12/1915
Note again that while the adjustments are not as large as 1916-1936, only February has no adjustment to raw data, and all other months have daily cooling adjustments which are the same from the start to the finish of the month.
Unbelievable.
Time for a clean out.
https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/pretty-patterns/[/BCOLOR]
