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BAMOS February 2026
Article
Mac Benoy: 2026 SA Senior Australian of the Year
Mac Benoy has made a significant contribution to climate change research in his role as a volunteer citizen scientist, helping to preserve valuable records and data relating to South Australia’ s meteorological history.
Over the past two decades, Mac has volunteered with the Bureau of Meteorology in South Australia, where he set up a citizen science team to record and preserve valuable handwritten meteorological records from the 19th century. Under Mac’ s astute guidance, the group has imaged 110,000 pages of synoptic charts, observations and related documents. From these images, close to a million data points have been digitised, providing an invaluable research tool for modern-day climatologists.
International climate change and meteorological researchers have used the group’ s records to reconstruct historical weather patterns in the southern hemisphere, helping to better understand how the global climate is changing.
Hosted by the Bureau of Meteorology, a total of 45 volunteers served on the team, with the results of their work being lodged in international reanalysis datasets at Copernicus and the International Surface Pressure Databank.
Mac commented that digitising the hand-written part of our climate history required a lot of labour and that, without institutional budgets, this project proved that a wide range of volunteers were willing to do the job.
The 110,000 images can be viewed on the Australian Meteorological Association- Citizen Science Unit webpage.
Probably the first continental synoptic map to go on public display in Australia. Credit: Adelaide General Post Office, March 1882
Mac Benoy. Credit: Salty Dingo
Beyond this core work, the team’ s achievements over the past 20 years include:
• The digitisation of the Adelaide Observatory daily temperature data from 1859 to 1947, which allowed a full assessment of the world ' s longest set of parallel temperature observations— the 60-year comparison between the Glaisher stand and Stevenson screen— and thus a reconstruction of Adelaide ' s temperature record back to 1859, one of the longest continuous data sets in the southern hemisphere.
• Researching and publishing on the work of foundation meteorologist Sir Charles Todd and on telegraphy, the key technology that enabled a continental view of Australia ' s weather systems
• Imaging 700 tidal records that enabled the correction of previously unidentifiable errors in long-term sea level datasets
• Tracing and publishing the development of 19th-century meteorology in South Australia
• Organising community research, conferences and symposia on Todd
• Organising community research and events to mark the 150th anniversary of the Overland telegraph, publications( 1000 + pages)
• Creating the British Met Office website for the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth( ACRE) global data rescue project
• 3 Bureau of Meteorology awards
• Co-authoring research papers, presenting at international conferences and delivering public lectures
This article was adapted from“ Malcolm Benoy, Meteorological researcher, 2026 SA SENIOR AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR”, National Australia Day Council, 2026. Read the original article here.