This year, Canberra received 862.2 millimetres of rain, much more than I expected and out of the range for my longer term predictions. I will point out that there was a change over in stations for the last month of the year, which may have contributed to this - for the first 11 months of the year, the original station that I had based my analysis on showed approximately 100 mm less than the replacement station. In December, this station registered 198.4 mm of rainfall - pretty amazing stuff.
The average temperature for Canberra for 2010 was the coolest it has been for a decade, at 20.2 degrees. This continues the correlation of higher rainfall with lower temperatures, but it was still much more rain than my statistical model would have predicted for such a temperature.
The inflow into Canberra's dams will have to be an estimate, with 160,000 megalitres a reasonable one - it was likely slightly less than that, but I will not know until ACTEWAGL publish their figures.
And I have started tracking the rainfall and inflow for 2011.
Where now for my predictions/model? Well, they have been falsified. As such, I am going to require more observations to see if a new model arises or if the trends that I have observed end or continue.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
FTIW, according to the BOM, Queensland had the most rain ever recorded in a calendar year Here are the top five years:
ReplyDelete2010 1110.77
1950 1103.77
1956 1032.29
1974 1025.64
1973 888.60
(You probably know my stance on this already... but to reiterate, comparing individual years tells you something about the "weather" for that year, not so much about prevailing climate.)