Third_Density_Resident
Jedi Council Member
3D Resident said:adam7117 said:I have been closely following the Australian climate because there is an abundance of live data from Oz BOM. And things have been rather interesting for a while now. Apart from the wild temperature fluctuations, this country has just gone trough a major drought. But suddenly the water started pouring out of the sky all over the continent - even inland, where water is scarce. Inland lakes are filling up fast and tourists go there to cruise on boats!
You bring up some good observations Adam. The amount of rain that has fallen over inland Australia this year has been remarkable. And MORE rain is expected over interior regions in the coming week! And what about the maximum temperature recorded in Alice Springs earlier this month -- only 6 degrees, which set a new record! The day after it only reached 8 degrees.
adam7117 said:Yeah, it made the news over here, didn't it. A couple of tourists were interviewed by one of the news channels. They were all rugged up and visibly shaking from the cold moist air. And this is supposed to be the hottest part of the country, right?
Alice Springs is one of the hottest places in the country in summer, but in winter it is one of the coldest at night. However the average maximum temperature is still mild, around 20 degrees in July. So the recent maximum of only 6 degrees was 14 degrees below normal.
I think max temperature anomalies are interesting here in Oz - the minimum temperatures have their moments, too at times. At some stage, the temperatures were oscillating wildly and you could see strange patterns - e.g., one part of the country would be super cold and another part super warm. Here are some examples:
Yes you're right. I guess it demonstrates how incredibly variable Australia's climate really is. Look at the following map and you can see that interior regions are particularly variable with respect to rainfall, according to the variability index.
_http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/climate_averages/rainfall-variability/index.jsp
You may be better placed to comment on how normal this is, 3D Resident - but it did make me think what would be coming next. Turns out it was rain, a lot of rain.
This year has been anomalous for Australian rainfall across the interior, thanks to a series of Northwest Cloudbands (that's the official BoM name for them) drawing in moisture from the Indian Ocean and dumping copious amount of rainfall across the desert. It is unusual to have so many NW cloudbands in succession as we have this year. Apparently many of the deserts are the greenest they've been in decades. Look at this map here and you can see that there is a huge area (dark purple) which has received 4 times the normal amount of July rainfall to date this month! In fact, a lot of areas in that purple region have had rain which is in the 100th percentile -- meaning in the top 1% of rainfall for July.
_http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=percent&period=cmonth&area=nat
Do you know any cool real-time data sources? I'd add them to Earthwatch as well - it's a handy little tool for long-term direct observation. Maybe others will find it useful, too.
I assume here you mean such things as earthquake, volcano and sunspot data? I can only think of the real time meteorological data sources I access at work every day (part of my job), and it's not the kind of thing you can really post as a nice graph that automatically updates (and accumulates) over time, unless of course you just want climate data such as the stuff you've already found. Still, if I think of anything I'll let you know.