Australia's Air Temperature Trend Reviewed

Abstract

The hypothesis of an artificially exaggerated temperature trend in the Australian continental surface air temperature record is tested via comparison with four other records of temperature measured in the Australian region. The trends extracted from all five records are consistent, so the hypothesis of bias in the Bureau of Meteorology’s Australian surface air temperature record cannot be sustained and is rejected. Using three different methods of trend estimation applied to five temperature anomaly time series, the anthropogenic contribution to warming of the Australian region since 1950 is determined to have occurred at a rate of 0.12 ± 0.02K per decade, which translates to a total anthropogenic warming contribution of 0.78 ± 0.13K over the period 1950 to 2015.