I updated Melbourne's climate stats on Wikipedia..... (averages, day, places)

[Ttad]

Personally, I prefer all years of data, rather than recent years.

However, for the present, what you can expect if you lived in Melbourne for the next year, the recent years are a better guide.

[george960]

Originally Posted by Flight Simmer

Actually, I got a theory. There is this weather forum, called the "Australian Weather Forum" that is full of cold lovers and rain foamers, and as soon as it gets cold and cloudy, they bust their nuts in excitement. They seem to have a never-ending anger at Melbourne's official weather recording station because it supposidly "overestimates" due to heat island effect. What crap, it is simply representative of the temp in the inner city, and is only 1 of hundreds of stations like that in the world. I'm sure one of them noticed it and therefore reversed my work

It might be representative of the inner city, but it's not representative of the suburbs where the people live. That would be the reason why they don't like it being the official station for Melbourne.

Originally Posted by Ttad

Personally, I prefer all years of data, rather than recent years.

However, for the present, what you can expect if you lived in Melbourne for the next year, the recent years are a better guide.

It's pretty useless to average out all the years of data for a station like Melbourne Regional Office because the climate has been modified so much from when the station first opened. These days vehicles constantly drive by just metres away from the weather station so the station is artificially warmed by the hot exhaust from the vehicles. And of course all the artificial surfaces such as concrete paths and roads contribute to this as well.

[Patricius Maximus]

That's the spirit. When there's a deficiency in the Wikipedia articles, edit it. Post on the talk pages if there is an edit war brewing. I do it myself all the time. As a matter of fact I've probably edited or added stats for at least a few dozen places so far this year. Of course my edits are usually for remote outposts that no one has ever heard of . So I usually do not conflict with other morons.

If I can find the data I prefer to use and go by all the data available rather than restricting myself to one 30-year period. 60 and 90 years or even more data provides a better picture of the true long-term climate of a place. As long as the period of record goes across the same climate era (like Little Ice Age, Modern Warming, Younger Dryas), there's no problem. Also, if a station is contaminated by artificial heating like what you outlined, it's prudent to use a different station to get a purer sample of data of the real weather of the place. If it's just the urban heat island that data can be useful as well, and I'd prefer to smooth all the data available.

But really, if I could I would like to have the averages of all the data available (let's say 1870-2011), plus an additional dataset for the past 30 years (1981-2010) and another dataset for the past 10 years (2002-2011). That way the long-term, recent, and very recent averages and events of a place can all be monitored and analyzed. Multiple datasets offer the maximum amount of utility, not to mention enabling comparisons. I'd also like to have a 5-year moving average to sniff out trends, placed on a chart of all the monthly or yearly statistics; that way one can tell if the short-term climate is warming or cooling, and the character of the weather. In addition to the ordinary datasets I'd also like to see moving averages of the 10 and 30 year normals placed on charts.

So, for my ideal statistics on climate I would:

1) Use all years available as the primary set of statistics
2) Also include the 30 year normals
3) Also include the 10 year averages
4) Include charts of moving averages throughout time of 5, 10, and 30 years.
5) Include separate statistics and charts of temperature, annual maxima and minima, precipitation, rainfall, snowfall, sunshine, and dew point.

[Bottletree]

Not as bad as the one for sydney, someone removed the total sunshine hours and put in averages... if you want to do that why would they just not have two figures, the total hours, then the average hours below it...

Sydney - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[ADGreen]

Originally Posted by Superduy

Not as bad as the one for sydney, someone removed the total sunshine hours and put in averages... if you want to do that why would they just not have two figures, the total hours, then the average hours below it...

Sydney - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ah the joys of Wikipedia - no standardisation and spurious data from untrusted sources.

Re: Australian data I always refer to BOM (I think whoever did adjust this table was using the BOm table at least as far as mean daily sunshine hours was concerned. But the removal of the totals is irritating as that is more meaningful to me than daily averages (at least for quick comparisons)).

[Patricius Maximus]

Want monthly totals? Done .

[dhdh]

Originally Posted by Patricius Maximus

Want monthly totals? Done .

Thanks - much better Actually it's not bad at all to have both monthly and daily sun hours. Monthly are the numbers I'm used to (100, 200, 300) but having daily values makes it easier to picture it accurately (e.g. on a given average day on that particular month, most likely I'll see around 5 hours of sunshine)

[Weatherfan2]

Hummm the monthly totals have gone again.

[Bottletree]

That is why I hate Wikipedia they will revert everything back; even if it doesn't make sense. Why would they have daily averages for sydney if every other climate on wiki has monthly averages.

[Patricius Maximus]

I believe that that was a first test of a new feature in the Weatherbox template that allows one to input percentages or daily hours, instead of having to convert it to monthly totals.