BAMOS
Dec 2017
Figure 3. Bureau of Meteorology weather station locations, measured decadal percentage changes in wind speeds
(Positive percentage change - increasing wind speeds, Negative percentage change - decreasing wind speeds), and
tornado sightings (Data source: Bureau of Meteorology, 2016a; Bureau of Meteorology, 2016b) (Background source:
Esri, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Earthstar Geographics, CNES/Airbus DS, USDA, USGS, AeroGRID, IGN, and the GIS User
Community).
3. Results and discussions
3.1 Wind speeds
Obtaining high quality surface wind speed measurements
can be fraught with numerous challenges and issues (Jakob
2010). Potentially affecting the quality of the data obtained,
issues may include; wind speed monitoring equipment and
standards being modified or upgraded over time, missing
data sets due to equipment malfunction, changes in the
surrounding environment, and altered measurement times
due to inconsistent day light savings procedures. Detailed
information regarding each weather station’s wind speed
monitoring equipment maintenance and replacement history
can be found in corresponding ‘Basic Climatological Station
Metadata’ reports, available from the Bureau of Meteorology
website (Bureau of Meteorology, 2016a). While the Bureau of
Meteorology had addressed some data quality control issues
by utilising a range of quality control measures (Bureau of
Meteorology, 2017), current methods for accurately resolving
issues pertaining to monitoring equipment upgrades are
generally considered unsatisfactory (Jakob 2010). The changes
in wind speed monitoring equipment from one type to another
have mostly occurred around 1995 (Bureau of Meteorology,
2016a; Jakob, 2010), which may have caused some of the most
recent thirty-year mean annual wind speed data-points to have
additionally varied.
While the Larapuna (Eddystone Point), Swansea Post Office, and
Bushy Park (Bushy Park Estate) sites all had similar equipment
upgrades to many of the other stations used in this study, their
long-term (four to five decades of ) thirty-year mean annual
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