BOM alert: bureau in hot water over copy-pasted climate records
9:30PM OCTOBER 16, 2026
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A forensic audit has uncovered false readings and widespread errors in the Bureau of Meteorology’s raw climate data, including blocks of temperature readings copied and pasted across different years and seasons, raising questions about the integrity of records used for climate analysis.
Anomalies in the BOM’s online temperature records ranged from whole months of duplicated data decades apart to statistically impossible whole weeks of identical temperatures to one decimal place.
The most striking examples were from Sydney Observatory, where minimum temperatures for August 1907 were found duplicated in the August 1867 record. A fact check by The Australian at the National Archives confirmed the double-up did not exist in the handwritten records and the 1867 data was wrong online.
The data errors are not just historical, with the audit, conducted with pattern-recognition software, finding more than 40 per cent of the flagged entries or events dated after 1990.
The audit also identified what it described as a “broken seam” pattern, in which 14 days of data were repeated, followed by a two-day gap precisely where source records were missing, then another 15 days of duplicated readings. In other instances, there were 17 consecutive days of identical daily maximum temperatures, a flatline the audit said was statistically impossible.
Other examples included 647 consecutive days with no observations at a station rated to ACORN standard, the reference network used for climate calculations, and 408 consecutive days at another station with no decimal precision recorded.
The audit also found that at Sydney Observatory, maximum temperature adjustments were positive in every year from 1910 to 2020, amounting to 110 years of one-way changes with no net cooling adjustment applied.
The BOM admitted to errors and promised to correct them. However, the findings raise serious questions about the bureau’s data-handling and quality-assurance processes, particularly given the role long-term temperature series play in climate research and public policy.
Investigator Tom Berger, a former computer engineer and specialist in data-based deception analysis, said the bureau had “acknowledged a few trees but denied the existence of the forest”. He said the anomalies identified were so statistically unlikely they would be like winning the lottery every week for a year.
Mr Berger argued that whatever effect the errors might have had on temperature trends, the presence of copied, duplicated and incomplete data had compromised the dataset to the point that it was no longer reliable for serious big-data analysis or machine learning.
“These are not subtle statistical anomalies; they are obvious patterns of human intervention that should have been flagged by any competent quality control system,” Mr Berger said.
“This is not a transcription error by the same observer – it is a database‐level duplication that persisted through multiple generations of data management, across different computer systems, and through every version of the bureau’s quality control and homogenisation software.
“The bureau presents these as independent temperature measurements; they are not, they are duplicates.”
Mr Berger said none of the findings required any knowledge of climate science but were purely data-integrity failures that would disqualify any dataset in any other field of science.
Mr Berger undertook the audit with retired scientist Geoffrey Sherrington who said he lived by the motto “trust, but verify”.
“We are concerned that government policies like net zero are informed by data represented as raw and unadjusted when under investigation by our forensic pattern analysis programs, that is incorrect,” Mr Sherrington said.
Mr Berger is a former computer engineer and specialist in data-based deception analysis. He has assisted the FBI with deception training and develops specialist software to conduct forensic analysis of big data.
He said analysis of the fifty largest duplicate temperature block events across 17 Australian weather stations reveals that 31 out of 50 involve a block of temperatures being copied from one calendar month into a different calendar month. Mr Berger said this was one of the most damning features of the dataset.
“A genuine temperature sequence is anchored to its season,” he said. “When a block of temperatures is copied across months, it imports the wrong seasonal signal into the destination month.”
Temperatures from a warm month appearing in a cool month introduce a warming bias and temperatures from a cool month appearing in a warm month introduce a cooling bias.
Mr Sherrington said it was a network-wide problem with the affected stations spanning the full geographic range of the Australian continent including tropical Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia, southern Victoria, and sub‐Antarctic Macquarie Island.
The audit results were raised with BOM by independent Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie on behalf of Mr Berger.
I've become increasingly doubtful of all climate and/weather predictions and thought at times that i was just another conspiracy theorist. I see that my questioning mind has good reason to doubt. Some will say, confirmation bias. I will say, we're being suckered. Unfortunately many of us that see this 'conspiracy' are in the too quiet minority. This is costing ALL of us. This is reducing ALL of us to pawns in the elites deadly greed.
Never much impressed with Bill Nye nor am I impressed by the climate doomsayers. The various predictions have come and gone. Having read numerous books and articles on climate the arguments put forth by Bill Nye are opinion and conjecture not science as he claims. Trust the science made famous during COVID put a nail in the coffin of “trust the experts.” I am open to debate and persuasion, but not demagogy.
Thanks for the background info, John. Liked him better in kid form. All I have to say is:
Stop it Bill. You're giving engineers a bad name.
Bill Nye has apparently EVOLVED into what he now is !A foul mouthed spoiled overgrown angry teen. But he has EVOLVED. !Imagine what comes next !
Bill Nye,the Science Lie!
BOM alert: bureau in hot water over copy-pasted climate records
9:30PM OCTOBER 16, 2026
Follow us on Apple News
A forensic audit has uncovered false readings and widespread errors in the Bureau of Meteorology’s raw climate data, including blocks of temperature readings copied and pasted across different years and seasons, raising questions about the integrity of records used for climate analysis.
Anomalies in the BOM’s online temperature records ranged from whole months of duplicated data decades apart to statistically impossible whole weeks of identical temperatures to one decimal place.
The most striking examples were from Sydney Observatory, where minimum temperatures for August 1907 were found duplicated in the August 1867 record. A fact check by The Australian at the National Archives confirmed the double-up did not exist in the handwritten records and the 1867 data was wrong online.
The data errors are not just historical, with the audit, conducted with pattern-recognition software, finding more than 40 per cent of the flagged entries or events dated after 1990.
The audit also identified what it described as a “broken seam” pattern, in which 14 days of data were repeated, followed by a two-day gap precisely where source records were missing, then another 15 days of duplicated readings. In other instances, there were 17 consecutive days of identical daily maximum temperatures, a flatline the audit said was statistically impossible.
Other examples included 647 consecutive days with no observations at a station rated to ACORN standard, the reference network used for climate calculations, and 408 consecutive days at another station with no decimal precision recorded.
The audit also found that at Sydney Observatory, maximum temperature adjustments were positive in every year from 1910 to 2020, amounting to 110 years of one-way changes with no net cooling adjustment applied.
The BOM admitted to errors and promised to correct them. However, the findings raise serious questions about the bureau’s data-handling and quality-assurance processes, particularly given the role long-term temperature series play in climate research and public policy.
Investigator Tom Berger, a former computer engineer and specialist in data-based deception analysis, said the bureau had “acknowledged a few trees but denied the existence of the forest”. He said the anomalies identified were so statistically unlikely they would be like winning the lottery every week for a year.
Mr Berger argued that whatever effect the errors might have had on temperature trends, the presence of copied, duplicated and incomplete data had compromised the dataset to the point that it was no longer reliable for serious big-data analysis or machine learning.
“These are not subtle statistical anomalies; they are obvious patterns of human intervention that should have been flagged by any competent quality control system,” Mr Berger said.
“This is not a transcription error by the same observer – it is a database‐level duplication that persisted through multiple generations of data management, across different computer systems, and through every version of the bureau’s quality control and homogenisation software.
“The bureau presents these as independent temperature measurements; they are not, they are duplicates.”
Mr Berger said none of the findings required any knowledge of climate science but were purely data-integrity failures that would disqualify any dataset in any other field of science.
Mr Berger undertook the audit with retired scientist Geoffrey Sherrington who said he lived by the motto “trust, but verify”.
“We are concerned that government policies like net zero are informed by data represented as raw and unadjusted when under investigation by our forensic pattern analysis programs, that is incorrect,” Mr Sherrington said.
Mr Berger is a former computer engineer and specialist in data-based deception analysis. He has assisted the FBI with deception training and develops specialist software to conduct forensic analysis of big data.
He said analysis of the fifty largest duplicate temperature block events across 17 Australian weather stations reveals that 31 out of 50 involve a block of temperatures being copied from one calendar month into a different calendar month. Mr Berger said this was one of the most damning features of the dataset.
“A genuine temperature sequence is anchored to its season,” he said. “When a block of temperatures is copied across months, it imports the wrong seasonal signal into the destination month.”
Temperatures from a warm month appearing in a cool month introduce a warming bias and temperatures from a cool month appearing in a warm month introduce a cooling bias.
Mr Sherrington said it was a network-wide problem with the affected stations spanning the full geographic range of the Australian continent including tropical Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia, southern Victoria, and sub‐Antarctic Macquarie Island.
The audit results were raised with BOM by independent Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie on behalf of Mr Berger.
I've become increasingly doubtful of all climate and/weather predictions and thought at times that i was just another conspiracy theorist. I see that my questioning mind has good reason to doubt. Some will say, confirmation bias. I will say, we're being suckered. Unfortunately many of us that see this 'conspiracy' are in the too quiet minority. This is costing ALL of us. This is reducing ALL of us to pawns in the elites deadly greed.
Never much impressed with Bill Nye nor am I impressed by the climate doomsayers. The various predictions have come and gone. Having read numerous books and articles on climate the arguments put forth by Bill Nye are opinion and conjecture not science as he claims. Trust the science made famous during COVID put a nail in the coffin of “trust the experts.” I am open to debate and persuasion, but not demagogy.