About

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Hi all and welcome to my blog.

I am Brian Gunter, a retired civil engineer living in the small coastal town of Narooma in NSW, Australia.  During much of my life I was involved in engineering development projects involving hydrology (estimating floods, droughts, streamflows, etc) and I worked in a variety of locations including New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal and Papua New Guinea.

This blog will concentrate on my interest in analysing trends in climate data – a practise used during much of my professional working life.  I will introduce some other items from time to time just to prove that I am not a complete nerd!   There is a lot of controversy around concerning the subject of global climate change but not a lot of people seem to be prepared to sit down and look objectively at the basic data that are available.

I am not a climatologist or physicist but, as an engineer I believe that I can look at subjects such as climate change with an objective view.   I have heard it said that “engineers are scientists with their feet on the ground”, so lets see what you think!

Any feedback comments that you may have will be much appreciated.

5 thoughts on “About”

  1. Hello, Brian,
    I have only this morning come across your blog, and I am writing immediately in the hope that we may be able to communicate by email – you have my address.
    I’m a long retired “industrial scientist” and have been interested in climate and changes therein since about 1992. One main thing that interests me is the possibility of abrupt change being the controller of what we observe and feel. I use non-standard methods in my attempts to identify possible points of change, and would be happy to explain at length if you are interested.
    I do not have a blog, or website, so can send diagrams only via email.
    Have you spotted the widespread change in NW Europe and across Russia that occurred around September 1987, and perhaps somewhat later in the East.
    I normally work with monthly average data, hopefully from uncontaminated records.
    Hope to hear from you.
    Best wishes, Robin

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      1. Hello, Brian,
        Have just noticed your that I can’t find a reply from you. (My posting of 14th August).
        I’m still interested in abrupt change, and am now involved with a Prof of Oceanography who has similar interests, plus /loads/ of data of many types, which I am helping to analyse with my methods. We hope to publish something late in the year.

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  3. Thanks for your message and interest Clyde. The paper on the US droughts looks most interesting and I will go through it in detail.

    You will probably notice that my inclination is to analyse data at specific locations (like Nenana, Gunnedah or Vostok) rather than trying to derive some sort of regional average. Average values can conceal trends at specific locations. For example, the worldwide average annual temperature is a meaningless number to me as it averages temperatures as diverse as at Moscow, Sydney and Singapore! Furthermore, the length and quality of data at different locations can differ a lot and this would skew any averaging process.

    If you have any thoughts or suggestions I would love to hear from you.

    Cheers, Brian

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