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Australia, better to know...?, climate-debate

Hottest Day recorded and deleted in Australia was 51.7 C in Bourke in 1909

by J. Nova, Nov 2026 in JoNova

The hottest day ever recorded in Australia with modern official equipment was Jan 3rd, 1909 in Bourke where the temperature blistered at 51.7C (125F).

Yesterday the Honorable Craig Kelly MP trawled through historic archives looking for temperature records from a century ago to see if he could confirm that it really was 125F in Bourke that day, and whether it was almost that hot in Brewarrina too.  Craig Kelly wants the record restored.

The site at Bourke is one of the oldest in Australia, starting in 1871. It’s also very influential because it was used to estimate the temperatures of vast remote areas around it. By 1909 there was already nearly 40 years of data at Bourke, and the Stevenson Screen had just been replaced so it was almost brand new. There was no airport tarmac either, so in 1909 the site was probably better than most modern sites are today. But the 1909 “hottest ever record” was deleted after an investigation in 1997 by Blair Trewin.  It was written off as an error partly because it was recorded on a Sunday and the observer wasn’t normally at work. Supposedly a dedicated weather nerd wouldn’t pop in on a day off just because it was the hottest day of his lifetime. (Not when there were so many other exciting things to do in Bourke in 1909.)

Trewin argued that other surrrounding towns of Thargominda, Walgett and Coonamble were nearly 7 degrees C cooler than Bourke. But Brewarrina is closer and newspaper reports had the temperature there on that Sunday as 123F.  But the BOM didn’t have official records for Brewarrina til 1911. So Craig Kelly took it up on himself to do the research the million-dollar-a-day BOM couldn’t do, and today he found the official records for Brewarrina, and lo, confirmed that the temperature there was 123F. So two different guys over 100 km apart recorded almost the same temperatures on the same day.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Madame Otto and Her Computer Crystal Balls

by C. Morrison, Not 3, 2026

Fresh from a summer season in Mystic Meg’s fairground tent, the weather attribution queen Friederike Otto has returned to Imperial College to bring news that 50,391 heat-related deaths occurred in 854 European cities in June, July and August, while 32,619 fatalities were attributed to human-caused climate change.

Such precision! A feature of all good clairvoyants, and a skill we might conclude is honed in the company of more commercially-minded soothsayers. Who needs doctors to tell us if we are dead and provide a certificated cause when Madame Otto is consulting in front of her computer crystal ball. Of course, the precise figures are not based on actual fatality data but are modelled estimates using population numbers and previous historical stats on temperature and summer mortality. In fact, data on historical mortality and temperature were only sought from 232 cities but, details, details! when a computer model can fill in any gaps.

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Weather attribution computer models were first designed to create useful press headlines and to stick it to oil and gas companies in the law courts. Whatever use they have in the political arena, they cannot make plausible estimates to the nearest one person about how many people died in a hot summer due to a claimed anthropogenic weather change. Even Mystic Meg would struggle with that one.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X. His new best-selling book is IMPLAUSIBLE: How scientists, activist politicians and journalists invented a climate crisis, weaponised junk computer model findings and claimed a fake consensus to promote the collectivist Net Zero fantasy– out now and available on Amazon where it has a five-star rating and is currently No. 1 in Amazon paperbacks Global Warming and Ecology and Amazon downloads Environmental Issues. Only £3.99 for the download and £8.99 for the paperback.