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2.1.2 Sources of data
To describe and monitor variations and changes in climate requires
long, high-quality, homogeneous observations of weather elements. What we can
say about weather, climate, climate variability and change is highly dependent
on the quality of these observational data sets. There is a range of data available
to describe weather and climate of Cleveland Bay, each with their respective
strengths and weaknesses. Factors to consider when selecting data for a particular
application include: length of record, spatial and temporal resolution, spatial
and temporal representativeness, instrument or site changes, etc. Some useful
sources of information are:
2.1.2.1 Current weather
2.1.2.2 Climate averages
2.1.2.3 Sea water temperatures
- Daily, weekly and monthly from data loggers deployed
by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority at Middle Reef, Nelly, Geoffrey
and Florence Bays of Magnetic Island http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/seatemp/index.html.
These data are downloaded every 3-6 months. See also AIMS AWS.
-
Weekly and monthly sea-surface temperatures and anomalies from
blended satellite data for 1o latitude by longitude squares, 1981
to date IGOSS Data Products Bulletin of the IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library http://ingrid.ldgo.columbia.edu/
2.1.2.4 Climate outlooks and El Niño-Southern Oscillation
- Queensland Department of Primary Industries provide
a range of information about current conditions and seasonal outlooks (see especially
their Long Paddock pages) http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/climate/Welcome.html
- A similar range of information with the Bureau
of Meteorology’s seasonal outlooks is provided on the SILO pages http://www.bom.gov.au
2.1.2.5 Past and possible future climate change in
Australia
-
The Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre have been developing
high-quality rainfall and temperature data sets necessary to describe climate
variation and change http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc, see especially the pages from the Climate Group.
- Climate scenarios for Australia projected due
to the enhanced Greenhouse effect are developed by the Atmospheric Research
division of the CSIRO http://www.dar.csiro.au
2.1.2.6 Summaries of recent weather and climate
- A review of monthly weather in Queensland (including
rainfall and temperature data for selected stations, evaporation and sunshine,
water storage capacities, daily weather charts and a description of synoptic
situation and weather events) can be found in the Monthly Weather Review
Queensland published monthly by the Bureau of Meteorology.
- A review of monthly climate for the Australian
region and globally (including up-to-date indices such as the Southern Oscillation
Index) can be found in the Climate Monitoring Bulletin Australia, published
monthly by the Bureau of Meteorology.
- A weekly summary of global climate highlights
is provided by the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/GLOB_CLIM/
- Another useful summary of weather events around
the world is the World Weather pages of US Today http://www.usatoday.com/weather/
2.1.2.7 Climate data
- For applications requiring long records of climate
elements (eg temperature, rainfall, wind speed, sea-level pressure), data (from
3-hourly up to monthly averages and totals) can be obtained for Bureau of Meteorology
weather stations http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/how/sitedat.shtml
on application to the Bureau. Care should be used with these data as there may
be missing observations or inhomogeneities eg due to site or instrument changes.
Townsville AMO records, in addition to standard weather elements: evaporation,
incoming solar radiation, sunshine duration, cloud amount, upper air temperature
and wind, rainfall intensity and maximum wind gusts. Townsville AMO is the most
useful station for Cleveland Bay and is one of the Bureau’s Reference Climate
Stations. A station was also operated at Cleveland Bay Lighthouse from 1927
through 1987 for which historical data can be obtained from the Bureau.
- Daily and monthly river flows for rivers in the
vicinity of Cleveland Bay, eg Burdekin (back to 1922) and Haughton (back to
1970) can be obtained on application to regional hydrographers of the Queensland
Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The DNR office for the region is located
in Ayr.
- Systematic recording of weather at sea by “ships
of opportunity” dates back to the mid-19th century. Long-term records
of sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) can be extracted from compilations of global
SSTs. These monthly data are averages of all observations for a particular month
and box made by “ships of opportunity”, supplemented in recent years by Automatic
Weather Stations and buoys (see Bottomley et al., 1990). Monthly SST
data are available for the vicinity of Cleveland Bay from:
a) the GOSTAPlus GISST2.2 dataset produced by the
United Kingdom Meteorological Office in collaboration with the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive
Center (see Rayner et al., 1996; data freely available on CD-ROM on application
to the UKMO). SSTs are presently available for the period 1903-1994. This is
an interpolated data set and there are no missing values.
b)the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data
Set (COADS Release 1a/1b/1c 1999; http://www.scd.ucar.edu/dss/pub/COADS_intro.html; Woodruff
et al., 1993) provides monthly data at 2o latitude by longitude
resolution for SSTs and additional climate elements eg sea-level pressure, wind
speeds, cloud amount. This data set is not interpolated so there may be many
missing months of data for a particular box.
2.1.2.8 Tropical cyclones
- Tracks and details of tropical cyclones for the
Australian region for the period 1909 to 1980 are provided by Lourensz (1981).
It has, however, only been since the advent of satellite observations that we
can be sure that all tropical cyclones have been recorded and correctly tracked.
The best available information about tropical cyclones on the Great Barrier
Reef and in the vicinity of Cleveland Bay for the period 1969-1997 is provided
by Puotinen et al. (1997). For more recent summer seasons, tracks and
details of tropical cyclones affecting the Australian region can be obtained
from the seasonal climate summaries published regularly in the Australian
Meteorological Magazine, a quarterly publication of the Australian Bureau
of Meteorology.
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