Outback NSW

North West New South Wales comprises weather stations at Tibooburra Post Office, Wilcannia (Reid St), and Cobar, and each station has pretty good data with the exception of temperatures at Midnight which only goes back 5 years.

Maximum temperatures saw no significant increase in temperature, however minimum temperatures did (t = 3.75, p < 0.01). Surprisingly therefore, the only times where a significant increase was recorded were at 3pm, 6pm and 9pm. Temperatures at 3am, 6am, 9am and Noon saw no significant increase. However almost all graphs show an increase in temperature in the past 5 years.

Analysis of 3am,6am vs min temps show that between 1983 and 2000, minimum temperature anomalies were on average 0.25 degrees above overnight temperatures, however the last 5 years or so have not been.

Analysis between different times are different to previous areas as well. 9am temperature anomalies show no significant increase when compared to 6am, however Noon temperature anomalies are significantly higher than 9am and 3pm's are significantly higher than Noon's - something that would only occur if the sun is a major factor in global warming.

So what has happened these last 5 years? Seems to be that in most areas we have seen an increase in temperatures in the last 5 years or so, which may or may not be related to the fact that rainfall has been down in the last 5 years in this area.

Whilst purely hypothesising, this could be due to cloud cover, or lack of. Essentially keeping the temperature down overnight, and then when the sun rises an increasing temperature is found. I will look into the rainfall for previous areas as well to see if the last 5 years are correlated.