Central Queensland

Central Queensland includes data form Richmond, Barcaldine and Longreach airports. Maximum and minimum temperatures as well as temperatures at 9am and 3pm reach back to 1910. Most other times have limited data going back to the mid 1970s with midnight and 9pm only having 15 years of data. Hence analysis into this area is a little limited but still worthwhile taking.

Maximum temperatures showed no significant increase (t =1.5, p = 0.12) despite the fact that the last 6 years and 14 of the last 16 years have had higher than the norm. Minimum temperatures increased highly significantly (t = 6.07, p<0.01) with 10 of the last 23 years having a minimum temperature at more than 1 degree greater than the norm.

With limited time based data, it was hard to find any significant increases or decreases in temperature, however, looking at temperatures at 9am we saw higher than normal temperatures pre 1940, and then a sudden decrease followed by an increasing temperature trend until today. Temperatures at 3pm saw no significant difference despite the last 6 years showing above average temperatures.

With limited time based temperatures, most changes in temperature anomalies between neighbouring times were found non significant leading up to the heat of the day. However, temperatures anomalies at 6pm were found to be significant lower than at 3pm (p < 0.05).

The minimum temperature anomaly was found to be around 0.5 to 1.0 degrees above the temperature anomalies at 3am and 6am, thus once again highlighting the suns effect on global warming in the aptly named sunshine state.