HAVE you ever seen Coffs Harbour’s maximum temperature on the television weather segments and thought “It didn’t seem that hot”?

You could be right.

Local resident Graham Meale often thinks so, prompting him to delve deeply into the Bureau of Meteorology’s (BoM) recent records where he found that there have been erroneous readings on a dozen or more days in the last six weeks, due to a malfunctioning sensor at the automatic weather station at the airport.

Graham said that, “The sensor has sporadically caused the reported maximum temperature to be two or three degrees too high each time.”

Graham contacted the BoM early in June, and after about a week they worked through their records, deleting seven of Coffs Harbour’s recorded maximum temperatures and altering several others.

But as of at least June 27, it appeared that the faulty sensor had still not been replaced, as the problem recurred on that day.

Graham said, “I am surprised that these errors have not been picked up by software, so that at the very least the temperatures on the television would be blanked out.”

He believes that if the climate change deniers in our midst are ever to be convinced, public faith in the BoM needs to be as high as possible.

Decades ago, the BoM operated a staffed office in Coffs, and perhaps faults were noticed and rectified more quickly, but apparently these days it is all remotely controlled from Melbourne.

“That’s progress for you,” said Graham.

 

By David TUNE