http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/news/all/niwa-confirms-temperature-rise

For example, in Wellington, early temperature measurements were made near sea level, but in 1928 the measurement site was moved from Thorndon (3 metres above sea level) to Kelburn (125 m above sea level). The Kelburn site is on average 0.8°C cooler than Thorndon, because of the extra height above sea level.

Such site differences are significant and must be accounted for when analysing long-term changes in temperature. The Climate Science Coalition has not done this.

NIWA climate scientists have previously explained to members of the Coalition why such corrections must be made. NIWA’s Chief Climate Scientist, Dr David Wratt, says he’s very disappointed that the Coalition continue to ignore such advice and therefore to present misleading analyses.

http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/news/all/niwa-confirms-temperature-rise/combining-temperature-data-from-multiple-sites-in-wellington
http://www.niwa.co.nz/__data/assets/image/0008/99692/varieties/flash.jpg
Annual temperatures at three Wellington sites: Thorndon (3 metres above sea level), Kelburn (125 m asl), and Wellington Airport (4 m asl), as recorded in the NIWA Climate Database.

http://www.niwa.co.nz/__data/assets/image/0009/99693/varieties/flash.jpg
Annual temperatures at the same three sites, but with Thorndon and Wellington Airport adjusted to match the Kelburn record.

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/niwas-explanation-raises-major-new-questions.html

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/breaking-nzs-niwa-accused-of-cru-style-temperature-faking.html

In Australia, the Boreau of Meteorology has records for temperatures for about 1,700 stations, many going back to 1900. Many have remained rural and so a good base exists for defining and excluding UHI. This was not done well by Phil Jones in his early reports that helped stampede the world with about 20 or so large cities as the base for Aust SH temperature projections, uncorrected for UHI.

In the Oct 2007 CA post “CRU reveals station identities”, there are about 250 Australian stations used from this 1,700. Most seem to have been fed to CRU by the BOM, which would be normal practice. However, it does not seem easy to find the rejection criteria – yet.

The BoM does release a public version of high quality sites at

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/datasets/datasets.shtml

There are anly a handful of the 1,700 possible sites on this list and no specific criteria given for the rejection of the rest. The listed sites are mainly at airports and they could well be of good quality, since Australia science standards have historically been high wrt ROW. But, since airports started construction from beginnings in the 1930 decade and did not really move until WWII, the airport data tend to cut off early years, where there is much interest in trends.

It would be a help if the BoM posted a list of the 1,700 sites and their reasons for adoption/rejection. This is where politics can enter the equation. In the few encounters I have had with BoM and its relations in CSIRO, I hae encountered the some of the same belief-driven zealotry that the retired Chief Dr from NZ expressed. Defend the IPCC at all costs. One ?scientist said that his major problem was to get the Government to act on man-made climate change. My reaction is, first show the evidence.

In fact (as pointed out in #88) if an airport site at just 4m above sea level was introduced in 1962, this would be warmer, so a negative adjustment should be applied from 1962, the opposite of what NASA has done.

There is a link on the page to a FTP archive containing the temperature datasets:
ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/home/ncc/www/change/HQdailyT/

- and another link to it’s PDF information file:
ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/home/ncc/www/change/HQdailyT/HQdailyT_info.pdf

I have not downloaded the ZIP archived data, but it seems to consist of 99 non-urban and 6 capital city sites, with Tmax, Tmean, Tmin, and Tdiurnal, plus station list.

At USHCN you have two options: 1. Go through a UI, pick the state, see a map of stations,
pick the station, pick the data you want DOWNLOAD. Option 2: Go to the FTP
and get all the data tarred zipped and feathered.

At the NIWA site you have to register and then to get station data you have to know there
is a station in Churchhill for example. The map interface is not available.

Then when you figure out a site id number and select the data you want you get it in 1000 line chunks.
And, there is a 2M line limit overall.

There is a mcehanism for requestion all the data, but Involves writing to them.

Now, to be fair to the NZ folks I havent looked everywhere on the site and perhaps someone will
pop up and call me an idiot and point out the easy way to get the data. And then I will gladly
wear a dunce hat for a day.

The access to the data is “special”. There is no station list, you have to
know them in advance. After figuring one out I went to get that data from 1900 to present.
Daily tmax/tmin. The site only had tmin, and I was forced to request it 1000 lines at a time.

There is another interface to get stuff ( HOW ABOUT A FTP SITE?) but it requires letters to
be written to release the secret climate data of 100 years ago.

Pirate treasure I suspect.