Originally Posted by
Hydromet
No one person has the wherewithal, but most data from the BoM will be checked by professional users, of which I was one for almost 50 years. Occasionally, errors or apparent anomalies will be found. When this happens, it is reported to the Bureau, and in my experience, a response is always received. The data is always checked. Sometimes it is found to be wrong, sometimes it is found to be correct, and sometimes the assessed quality of the data is altered (not all data is 'best' quality - sometimes you have to take what you can get) but overall the error rate is quite low. If you are so minded, there will be traceability in the data, right back to the calibrations that have been done through the life of the instrument, so I'm sure that a freedom of information request would get it for you.
Can the BoM's data be trusted? Sure, more than you can trust some coal-funded climate sceptic politician or conspiracy theorist.
How would the data produced by the Goulburn AWOS be "found" to be erroneous or anomalous by "professional users"? Who, precisely, using what measuring equipment, precisely, made what measurements to make the finding, when precisely?
I get that if the AWOS temperature measurement reported in minus 104 degrees C, the inference may reasonably be drawn that the measurement is erroneous.
But who in BOM decides that minus 10.4 is erroneous or anomalous? What measuring equipment, precisely, was used to support that decision, and who used that equipment to make the measurements and when?
I'd make a wild guess that no one in BOM decides. I'd make a wild guess that BOM works like every other government department does these days: BOM's purchased some magic bean software that was promised to do the BOM's work for it. And that software has been programmed to pretend to do what used to be done through tedious manual checking by human professionals.
The computer has been programmed to say that any temperature below minus 10 at Goulburn is erroneos. No checking. The computer just says so because the person who wrote the program was told that anything below minus 10 at Goulburn is erroneous. And instead of acknowledging the flaws in the software, BOM has to pretend that there's something wrong with the measurements.