I WAS interested to read Dr Michael Brown's letter "Weather Facts" (February 27, The Land) in which he explained that Australia's scientific community is very interested in pre-1910 weather records and climate.
This is exemplified, he suggests, by the South East Australian Recent Climate History (SEARCH) project, based at the University of Melbourne, which is using colonial records to understand climate.
The associated website includes a reconstruction of historical streamflows for the Murray River back to 1783 based on investigations from a team of palaeoclimatologists, meteorologists, hydrologists and historians.
A key finding of the work of these scientists is there was record low streamflow in the Murray River during the recent drought designated as the period 1998 to 2008.
What ignorance from the learned.
Once upon a time when there was drought the Murray River did run dry.
For example, according to Russell McDonald from Riversdale in the Central Murray Valley near Koondrook: "Water was never more than two feet deep while we carted timber, and for a long time in autumn 1915 was perfectly dry, the river having stopped running in February or March".
Then dams were built so surplus water could be stored.
From 1998 to 2008 the Murray River never ran dry.
During the worst of the drought, in November 2007, I stayed in a house just upstream from Koondrook.
During this period the river was often brimming with water.
I drank from the kitchen tap that sourced water directly from the river.
The water was of good quality.
Dr Brown went on to suggest in his letter, that I should know there was limited temperature data available for Western Australia prior to 1910.
Again I disagree.
It has been brought to my attention there are records for Geraldton, Rottnest, Bunbury, York and Albany from 1880 and a further 10 regional centres in WA were recording official temperature data by 1895.
I do have a question for Dr Brown: despite the claimed unreliability of pre-1910 temperature data, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology contributes to an international program, co-ordinated by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which calculates annual average temperatures for Australia back to 1850.
This information is then used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to calculate warming during the past 160 years.
This seems incongruous and inconsistent and should be explained.
It undermines the contention that pre-1910 data is unreliable.
Dr Jennifer Marohasy is an independent environmental writer and researcher now living near Rockhampton in central Queensland.
