Special Report: The 200-Value Claim: Falsified by the Bureau's Own Data
They didn't fix it. They didn't scan the network. And there are thousands more duplicates than they admitted.
What follows is the result of a special investigation into the Bureau of Meteorology's temperature and rain record. Over the past weeks, database expert Patrick Lloyd contacted me to contribute independent forensic reports to this blog. Together with his AI assistant, Claude, Patrick has painstakingly replicated the Bureau's entire public database—raw observations and homogenised ACORN data alike—totalling roughly 8 million individual records of temperature and rainfall data.
This level of independent, line-by-line verification was practically impossible just a few years ago. The findings you are about to read are not based on theories or speculation. They are based on the data itself.
When The Australian newspaper exposed the Bureau of Meteorology’s temperature record in October 2026, the Bureau rushed to defend itself.
They issued a statement: The problem was tiny—"fewer than 200 values in a database of seven million." They had "confirmed and fixed" the errors. And they promised there were "no further duplicate months in the entire bureau network."
Every single one of those claims is falsified by the Bureau's own data.
A forensic audit of the Bureau's complete temperature and rainfall data has revealed the truth. The Bureau didn't fix the data; they deleted it. And the copy-paste problem isn't a minor glitch—it is a systemic failure that plagues the entire network.
Here is the evidence.
The Temperature "Fix": Deleting the Evidence
The audit originally identified 978 copied days at 15 stations—nearly five times the Bureau's "fewer than 200" claim. But the Bureau's "fix" for the Sydney and Charleville stations was not to correct the copied values. It was to delete whole months of data.
* At Sydney Observatory Hill, 515 values were removed.
* At Charleville, 56 values were removed.
* In many cases, the Bureau deleted both the copied month and the genuine month, destroying real historical observations alongside the fabricated ones.
But the Bureau said there were "no further duplicate months." That is also falsified by the Bureau's own data. The audit found whole months still copied at Cairns, Toowoomba, Charleville, Weeaproinah, Inverell, and Bathurst Gaol.
The Rainfall Bombshell: 1,337 Copies Left Untouched
If you thought the temperature copies were bad, the rainfall data is worse.
A comprehensive search of the Bureau's daily rainfall records found 1,337 copied stretches at 1,191 stations, covering 61,877 days. These are not just historical relics—60 copies are from the year 2000 or later, the latest in 2026.
* The Scale: You can find copies in every state, every decade. There are 268 copies in the 1970s alone.
* The Bureau's "Fix": On 30 October 2026—after the temperature scandal broke—the Bureau was asked what it had done. The answer: Nothing. 1,334 of the 1,337 rainfall copies were still published exactly as they were. The older records, where almost all the copies sit, had not been touched.
* The Quality Flag: Over 97% of these copied stretches carry the Bureau's "Y" flag, meaning "Quality Checked." The Bureau's QC system is certifying copied data as genuine.
The "Late-1990s Batches": The Bureau's Database Error
Perhaps the most damning finding is the "late-1990s batches."
At 22 stations in six states, rainfall from 1998, 1999, and 2000 appears under dates in 1980, 1990, and 1997. The stations share exact offsets, several at a time. This is not an observer's mistake. This is a systematic database operation at the Bureau's end.
As the report states: "Whether overwritten or filled in, what fell on those dates is no longer in the public file."
The Bureau overwrote the historical rainfall records with data from other years, and then certified the results as "Quality Checked."
The Bottom Line
The Bureau's temperature and rainfall records are not a faithful historical account. They are a patchwork of copy-pasted values, deleted months, and overwritten databases.
The Bureau claimed the temperature copy-paste problem was limited to "fewer than 200 values." The forensic audit found 978 copied temperature days at 15 stations. But if you thought that was bad, look at the rainfall. A separate search found 61,877 copied rainfall days across 1,191 stations.
The Bureau's quality control system missed 62,000 days of copied data, and 97% of it is still flagged as "Quality Checked."
They claimed they "fixed" it. They didn't. They just deleted the temperature evidence and left the rainfall copies in place.
The Bureau's quality control system is not a quality control system. It is a rubber stamp that certifies copied data as genuine observations.
Until the Bureau conducts a full, independent audit of every temperature and rainfall record—and explains why it deleted months instead of correcting them—the public cannot trust any of its data.
Thanks to Patrick Lloyd and his assistant, Claude AI for the analysis.
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