by JoNova, August 7, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch

In the mid-1990s thermometers changed right across Australia — new electronic sensors were installed nearly everywhere. Known as automatic weather sensors (AWS) these are quite different to the old “liquid in glass” type.

The electronic ones can pick up very short bursts of heat—so they can measure extremes of temperatures that the old mercury or liquid thermometers would not pick up unless the spike of heat lasted for a few minutes.

It is difficult (impossible) to believe that across the whole temperature range that these two different instruments would always behave in the exact same way.