Statistical analysis of the temperature records for the Northern Territory of Australia

The Northern Territory of Australia has a unique situation of an extension larger than France and a population of 200,000, with only three meteorology stations open for more than 40 years, Darwin (DW), Alice Springs (AS) and Tennant Creek, and only two of them, DW and AS, providing data over 100 years, and from 500 to more than 1,000 km separating these stations and the stations in the neighbouring states of Australia. Homogenizations of data in between different measuring sites for the same location as well as the way to derive the missed data to complete at least 100 years from the neighbouring locations are analysed in details and the effects on the temperature trends are straightforwardly investigated. Using properly homogenised data over 130 years and a linear fitting, the warming maximum and minimum temperatures are +0.009 and +0.057 °C/10 years for Alice Springs and ?0.025 and 0.064 °C/10 years for Darwin. With the data available, the only option to produce warming trends is to overweight the cold years in the middle of the 1970s and the subsequent return to warmer temperatures. Starting from 1980, to compute trends, there is still a clear warming in Alice Springs, but also clear cooling in Tennant Creek, and a mixed behaviour with warming maximum temperatures and cooling minimum temperatures in Darwin.