Only the sun heats up Southern Pilbara

Ok guys you are going to love this, whilst not giving all the analysis away today, the rest will follow most likely Friday, but let me introduce the area first.

The area is southern Pilbara. Obviously south of North Pilbara on the west coast of Australia. A delightful place. Some great national parks, and not a lot in between. Anyway, There are three main weather stations in the area with significant data, these being Carnavon airport, Meekatharra airport and Geraldton airport.

Analysis of maximum and minimum temperatures shoes a very significant increase in maximum temperatures (t = 4.87, p < 0.05) and a significant increase in minimum temperatures (t = 2.3, p = 0.023). So it seems at first that this place is just hotting up all year round. Data for this area is pretty good, all temperature data (max, min, and specific times) go back to the mid 1940’s with the exception of 9pm which starts in 1975.

When we look at certain times we see a few interesting things. Temperatures at Midnight, 3am, 6am, 6pm and 9pm show no significant increase in temperature. (Midnight: t = -0.67, p = 0.5; 3am: t = -0.42, p = 0.67, 6am: t = 1.03, p = 0.30; 6pm: t = -1.94, p = 0.54; 9pm: t = -1.01, p = 0.31). In fact temperatures at 6pm almost show a significant decrease.

When we look at 9am, Noon and 3pm we see highly significant increases in temperature. (9am: t = 4.9, p < 0.01; Noon: t = 3.9, p < 0.01; 3pm: t = 2.7, p < 0.01). So in other words we are seeing that when the sun is in the air in full glory Southern Pilbara is heating up more so now that it has in the past. However, when the sun is on the other side of the globe and the stars are twinkling, there is no difference in temperature.

Seems like the sun has a lot to do with recent warming in southern pilbarara doesnt it? Well that would be the case, however we funnily observe a significant increase in minimum temperatures as well. This is very strange, as from between 6pm and 6am there was nothing to suggest that temperatures are increasing. So why has this strange phenomenon occurred? We’ll look real deep at the data tomorrow for some ground breaking research and amazing results.