Global warmers in full retreat as Aussie experts admit growing doubts about their own methods as new study shows one third of temperatures not reliable.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) admits it was wrong about urban heating effects as a professional statistical analysis by Andrew Barnham exposes a BOM claim that “since 1960 the mean temperature in Australia has increased by about 0.7 °C”; the BOM assertion has no empirical scientific basis.
Barnham, who spent 8 years working in emerging South Asian economies building high volume transaction processing systems, applied a high-tech statistical technique very different from an earlier well-publicized probe by fellow Aussie, Ken Stewart on his blog, Ken’s Kingdom.
Stewart grabbed headlines in what became known as the Australiagate controversy after his findings were featured on popular science blog, Watts Up With That. Stewart exposed dubious BOM adjustments to temperature data that bore little or no resemblance to actual or raw past temperatures.
Like Stewart, Barnham paid particular attention to BOM’s methodology in addressing what is known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI), a proven phenomenon whereby thermometers measuring temperatures in towns and cities become unduly influenced by extra ‘background’ heating from buildings, road surfaces, machinery, etc. It’s in the UHI adjustments that the greatest discrepancies appear to lie.
BOM Errors in the Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect
A chastened BOM is now starting to questions its own UHI adjustments. A recent BOM media release referring to a paper presented at the Australia - New Zealand Climate Forum in Hobart (October 14, 2010) admits it formulated its calculations incorrectly.
BOM concedes that daytime temperatures in Aussie cities are warming more rapidly than those of the surrounding countryside and that this is due to the cities themselves. In effect, the admission undermines all prior claims that such warming is principally due to man-made emissions trumpeted in the similarly discredited “greenhouse gas theory.”
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