Tag Archives: January

3-year trends to January 2015

Posted in 3-year climate trends, Manilla NSW by

Parametric plots of smoothed climate variables at Manilla
“January 2015: rainy cool days”

Trends to January 2015

 

January raw anomaly data (orange)

Anomalies for all variables except subsoil temperature moved across the graphs, from “droughts” in November to “flooding rains” in January. Subsoil temperature had been normal from February to December (11 months!), then became cooler than normal in January.
Most raw anomaly values for January were close to the fully-smoothed anomaly values of the La Niña-affected cool summer of 2012. This month’s daily temperature range was even narrower, and the subsoil temperature lower, but the daily minimum temperature was not so low.

Fully smoothed data (red)

The latest fully-smoothed data anomalies (July 2014) were near normal. (Dew point, like most recent values of that variable, was 3° lower than normal.)

Note:

Fully smoothed data – Gaussian smoothing with half-width 6 months – are plotted in red, partly smoothed data uncoloured, and raw data for the last data point in orange. January data points are marked by squares.
Blue diamonds and the dashed blue rectangle show the extreme values in the fully smoothed data record since September 1999.

Normal values are based on averages for the decade from March 1999.* They appear on these graphs as a turquoise (turquoise) circle at the origin (0,0). A range of anomalies called “normal” is shown by a dashed rectangle in aqua (aqua). For values in degrees, the assigned normal range is +/-0.7°; for cloudiness, +/-7%; for monthly rainfall, +/-14 mm.

 * Normal values for rainfall are based on averages for the 125 years beginning 1883.

January “Coolth” in a House without Air-Conditioning

Posted in Indoor Climate by

I have now 15 years of January average temperature data for my house at Manilla, North-west Slopes, NSW. These graphs show how the house temperature relates to the outdoor (or ambient) maximum, mean, and minimum temperatures.Regression graphs of indoor on outdoor temp in the hottest month

The house is not too hot and not too cold

Solar-Passive House from the NE.

House at Monash St Manilla from NE

In January (the hottest month) the rooms* in this solar-passive house do not heat up much during the day, nor do they cool down much at night. Since the indoor temperature always rises and falls just one or two degrees from the mean, only the mean is shown. Green lines on the graphs, which are drawn to pass through the middle of each cloud of data points, show by how much (on the average) the indoor temperatures have differed from the outdoor maximum, mean, and minimum temperatures. On the middle graph the green line shows that the rooms have been 0.5° cooler than the mean temperature outdoors. The left graph shows that the rooms have been 8.2° cooler than the daily maximum outdoor temperatures. The right graph shows that the rooms have been 7.3° warmer than the daily minimum overnight temperatures.

The design of the house aimed to protect those living there from excessive summer heat. It may seem that reducing the mean temperature by only half a degree is a failure. Not so! The January mean temperature at this site (26.1°) is near the middle of the adaptive comfort zone for this month, and so is the indoor mean temperature (25.6°). The house succeeds in keeping the indoor temperature comfortable in the heat of the day, when that outdoors is an uncomfortable 34 degrees. The high thermal mass that achieves this has the unfortunate result that the minimum indoor temperature overnight (not shown) is some five degrees warmer than the outdoor minimum. However, on average, it is still a comfortable 23.5 degrees. (Curiously, no-one knows the best room temperature for sleep.) Continue reading →

3-year trends to January 2014

Posted in 3-year climate trends, Manilla NSW by

Parametric plots of smoothed climate variables at Manilla

“January rain fails”Trends to January 2014

Raw values for several climate anomalies in January 2014 were extreme: daily maximum temperature: plus 2.1°, rainfall: minus 85 mm, dew point: minus 7.3°, and temperature range: plus 1.5°.
Fully-smoothed values for July 2013 move in the direction of “droughts”.
Subsoil temperature reaches a new record for fully-smoothed data of plus 2.36°, beating the record set a month earlier.

Note: Fully smoothed data – Gaussian smoothing with half-width 6 months – are plotted in red, partly smoothed data uncoloured, and raw data for the last data point in orange. January data points are marked by squares. Blue diamonds and the dashed blue rectangle show the extreme values in the fully smoothed data record since September 1999.

January 2014 the driest !

Posted in Manilla NSW, Monthly weather by

The daily weather logWeather log January 2014.

Two 21st century records were broken on the 3rd: the daily maximum was 43.7°, and the relative humidity fell to 2%. A west wind of 30 km/hr blew all that day. The early morning dew point on the 6th was a record January low of minus 3.3 degrees. A second warm spell came about the 15th. Subsoil temperature fell from high to normal during the month.
Rain of 1.8 mm was recorded on the 20th.

Comparing January monthsClimate January 2014.

As well as having almost no rain, this month had by far the lowest January dew point of the century: 6.9°, which is 7.3° below normal! Compared to January 2013, which was very hot, days were much the same (35.9°), but nights were cooler (18.5°). By contrast, January 2012 had been very cool and cloudy.
The total rainfall of 1.8 mm was the lowest January value in the 131-year record. The next lowest was 7 mm in January 1940.
Counting more than one month, the six-month rainfall total of 184 mm is the worst shortage at this time. It is in the 11th percentile of all six-monthly totals. However, such low totals usually come in August or September. It is rare for six-monthly totals as low as 184 mm to come in a summer month: it has happened only thirteen times. The lowest six-monthly total for a summer month was 145 mm for December 1946. Next was 151 mm for December 1951.

Data. Rainfall data is from Manilla Post Office, courtesy of Phil Pinch. Temperatures, including subsoil at 750 mm, and other data are from 3 Monash Street, Manilla.

3-year trends to January 2013

Posted in 3-year climate trends, Manilla NSW by

Parametric plots of smoothed climate variables at Manilla

“Hot nights; hot subsoil”Trends to January 2013.

Extreme heat and aridity in early January 2013 did not persist. The maximum temperature anomaly remained high, but the only other high anomalies were a very high minimum temperature and subsoil temperature.
Cloudy skies returned, after some months near the normal for 1999 to 2009.

Fully-smoothed data (in red) for July 2012 have again reached new records for low Dew Point anomaly (-2.92 degrees) and for high subsoil temperature anomaly (+2.07 degrees).

Note: Fully smoothed data – Gaussian smoothing with half-width 6 months – are plotted in red, partly smoothed data uncoloured, and raw data for the last data point in orange. January data points are marked by squares. Blue diamonds and the dashed blue rectangle show the extreme values in the fully smoothed data record since September 1999.