Weather bureau staff are so blinded by the view that global warming will produce more intense cyclones that they exaggerated Cyclone Marcia’s size, a scientist says.
Jennifer Marohasy said the bureau had invested hundreds of millions in having researchers investigate the impacts of human-induced global warming and this had coloured its views.
“They want to have more intense cyclones. (As Marcia passed) they ignored the observational data and it’s not good enough,” she said.
Dr Marohasy, a climate change sceptic, has waged war on the bureau over global warming issues, especially that bureau observations have been altered to better support climate change arguments.
She said that, based on bureau observations at Middle Percy Island of a maximum wind gust of 208km/h, Marcia was a category 3, not five.
Dr Marohasy said Middle Percy observations of the critical period had been taken from the bureau’s website and this demanded an explanation.
Forecaster Jess Carey rejected the assertions, saying forecasts were based purely on scientific data. Mr Carey said Dr Marohasy was right that some data was missing from Middle Percy observations because Marcia wrecked the weather station about 5.30am on Friday.
Weatherwatch meteorologist Anthony Cornelius said Dr Marohasy’s reasoning was incorrect. “There may be a view to say Marcia was a high-end category 4 instead of a five but it was stronger than a category 3,’’ he said.