The Great Global Warming/Cooling Thread Part 2

[Halcyon Daze]

Why this desperate need to avoid reality is beyond me, I can't see what's so confronting about this stuff, I really can't.

It's the gambler's mentality - 'Double or nothing', 'Do or Die!'

They get high off it.

Hoping a silver bullet will save them from all the world's troubles.

[Halcyon Daze]

City heat warming rural areas thousands of kilometres away

City Heat travels about 800m into the air and then its energy changes the high-altitude currents in the atmosphere that dictate prevailing weather.

This doesn't change overall global temperature averages significantly, unlike man-made greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/city-heat-warming-rural-areas-thousands-of-kilometres-away-study/story-e6frg8y6-1226563462832

I found it interesting to see yet another way in which humans are altering climates.

Hey if a butterfly flapping it's wings can cause a hurricane on the opposite side of the planet, imagine what it's doing when we take billions of tons of fossil fuels from the ground (where it belongs) and pump it into the atmosphere where it doesn't belong.

Here's an unsettling thought, The very air of the entire planet has been chemically altered by mankind, every breath you take has twice the CO2 as it should have.

Of-course there's going to be repercussions.

Edited January 28, 2013 by Halcyon Daze

[qualia]

Fact check: is Australia destroying its economy by going it alone on carbon pricing?

…It became absolutely obvious after the Copenhagen conference that the rest of the world was not going anywhere near carbon taxes or emission trading schemes and that’s why the Coalition is absolutely right to say no to a carbon tax and to say no to an emissions trading scheme. As long as a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme damages our economy, without reducing emissions because it’s not being copied anywhere else, we would be crazy to go down that path –

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, answering questions

at the National Press Club

on January 31, 2013.

 

Mr Abbott’s statement is inaccurate on two levels. His first claim that “the world is not going near a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme” is not correct. His second assertion that “a carbon price damages our economy without reducing emissions” is also far from the truth.

More than 33 countries, covering a population of over 540 million, now have a carbon price in place. In each case, the decision to implement a price on carbon came after detailed economic assessments on the best form of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. After considering approaches such as direct regulation, it was decided that pricing carbon was a cheaper and more environmentally effective way to achieving emission reductions goals.

Let’s look at the facts. The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (“EU ETS”) has been operating since 2005. Norway, Switzerland, New Zealand now also have emissions trading schemes in place. Last year, Korea passed laws to implement an emissions trading scheme. On 1 January this year, emissions trading schemes started up in California, Quebec, Kazakhstan and Croatia. China, after closely examining the European and Australian experiences, has concluded that of all policy options available, an emissions trading scheme is the most economically and environmentally effective; and it is already implementing schemes in several provinces, to be followed by a national scheme (the size of the Beijing one alone is significantly larger than Australia’s).

What this indicates is that there has clearly been a global trend towards the implementation of carbon pricing since the Copenhagen Conference in 2009.

In 2011, the World Bank launched its Partnership of Market Readiness. This $100 million targeted fund is aimed at helping developing countries to implement market mechanisms. Through this fund, major developing countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico and South Africa have revealed plans to introduce a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme.

Needless to say the World Bank is not known for its social radicalism. It is economically conservative and yet it clearly accepts that market mechanisms such as emissions trading schemes and carbon taxes are the most efficient means to achieve emissions reductions. There is no equivalent World Bank “direct action” fund.

Tony Abbott’s statement also flies in the face of other leading global economic institutions such as the OECD, the International Monetary Fund and the Productivity Commission. They have all suggested that carbon pricing, through instruments such as emissions trading schemes, is the most effective means of tackling climate change.

Now to the second claim. Treasury modelling predicted that the carbon price would have a less than 0.1% impact on Australia’s gross national income growth. Figures released for the last quarter have shown these figures to be accurate; the impact on the economy has been minor.

In combination with this, six months since the start of the carbon price, emissions from the electricity sector in Australia have fallen, as has the demand for energy by consumers. Cedex, the consultancy that published these figures, described these changes as “unprecedented” in the entire 120 year history of the electricity supply in Australia. In short, the evidence suggests that the carbon price is already contributing to a reduction in Australia’s emissions without ruining our economy.

https://theconversation.edu.au/fact-check-is-australia-destroying-its-economy-by-going-it-alone-on-carbon-pricing-11903

[whitewind]

Dramatic Forest Death In Amazon Casts Shadow Over Future Of Climate Change

 

January 29, 2013

Image Credit: Photos.com

 

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it have a direct impact on climate change? A new study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) set out to answer this question.

Forests are critical to the equilibrium of Earth’s climate since they absorb large quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide directly from our atmosphere. The death of a tree, however, reverses the flow of carbon and releases it back into the atmosphere. The Berkeley Lab study sought to quantify tree mortality in the hopes that they might achieve a better understanding of the role forests play in our global climate system. Tropical old-growth forests like those in the Amazon River basin may play a significant part in carbon dioxide absorption, but the mortality patterns for these specific forests are not well understood.

For the study, lead researcher Jeffrey Chambers and his colleagues created a method for detecting forest mortality patterns and trends that combines satellite images, simulation modeling and fieldwork. The research team believes that their new method will be an invaluable resource for broadening our understanding of the role of forests in the process of carbon sequestration and its impact of climate change should there be a disturbance in this delicate balance.

Both NASA and the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science provided funding for this study. Collaborators on the team include Robinson Negron-Juarez of Tulane University along with researchers from Brazil’s National Institute for Amazon Research (INPA). For their study, the team selected a section of the Central Amazon near Manaus, Brazil that spans over a 1,000 square miles.

“One quarter of CO₂ emissions are going to terrestrial ecosystems, but the details of those processes and how they will respond to a changing climate are inadequately understood, particularly for tropical forests,” explained Chambers. “It’s important we get a better understanding of the terrestrial sink because if it weakens, more of our emissions will end up in the atmosphere, increasing the rate of climate warming. To develop a better estimate of the contribution of forests, we need to have a better understanding of forest tree mortality.”

The researchers were able to compare data using images collected from the Landsat Program, NASA’s fleet of low-Earth orbiting satellites which has been collecting images for over 20 years. What they determined was that between 9.1 and 16.9 percent of tree mortality has been missing from the more conventional plot-based method for analyzing forests. According to the researchers, this means that as many as a half million dead trees went unaccounted for each year in previous studies. This marked deficit in previous methods is important and must be taken into account in future forest carbon budgets, explains the team.

Chambers and his researchers published their paper online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“If these results hold for most tropical forests, then it would indicate that because we missed some of the mortality, then the contribution of these forests to the net sink might be less than previous studies have suggested,” Chambers said. “An old-growth forest has a mosaic of patches all doing different things. So if you want to understand the average behavior of that system you need to sample at a much larger spatial scale over larger time intervals than was previously appreciated. You don’t see this mosaic if you walk through the forest or study only one patch. You really need to look at the forest at the landscape scale.”

ACCOUNTING FOR FOREST LOSS THROUGH STORMS

The global carbon cycle – a complex biogeochemical process in which carbon is exchanged between the atmosphere, the ocean, the biosphere and Earth’s crust – relies heavily on the participation of trees and other living organisms. With the elevated tree mortality discovered by the researchers, the depletion of the tree population means not only a weakening of the forests’ ability to absorb carbon, but also an increased release of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. The team argues that such a large-scale tree mortality in a tropical ecosystem could function as a positive feedback mechanism and accelerate global warming.

One factor that plays into the elevated tree mortality rates in this region are the fierce thunderstorms that sweep through the area, producing outbursts of violent winds of speeds as high as 170 miles per hour. At times, many acres of forest can be devastated by a single storm. Through the team’s data collection and field research, Chambers was able to provide a much more nuanced explanation of how storms affected the forest.

Satellite imagery taken both before and after the storm allowed the researchers to discern changes in the reflectivity of the forest. This reflectivity, they suspected, was due to damage to the canopy through tree loss. At this point, the field researchers were sent into the storm-ravaged areas to get an actual count of the number of trees that were felled by the storm. Through the combination of the field observations paired with satellite images, the researchers were able to draw a detailed mortality map for the entire landscape.

Chambers explains that the team discovered that tree mortality occurred in clusters, both in time and space. “It’s not [either] blowdown or no blowdown – it’s a gradient, with everything in between. Some areas have 80 percent trees down, some have 15 percent.”

One storm in particular was responsible for an extreme loss of tree life. Back in 2005, the squall line was wider than 150 miles and traveled 1,000 miles inland across the entire Amazon basin. Upon reviewing the satellite imagery, the team was able to estimate that the destruction of trees numbered into the hundreds of millions. The return of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere was equivalent to a significant fraction of the estimated mean annual carbon accumulation for the entire Amazon rainforest.

In addition to violent storm activity, drought is another major contributor to widespread tree mortality in the Amazon basin. Intense droughts for the region were reported in both 2005 and 2010.

It is important to understand the effects of these increasingly common storms and droughts on the forest ecosystems, as climatic warming is increasing not only the strength but also the frequency of these events. “We need to establish a baseline so we can say how these forests functioned before we changed the climate,” Chambers noted.

Though developed for the observation of tree mortality rates in the Amazon River basin region, the new method can also be used to assess tree mortality in other types of forests as well. In a 2007 issue of the journal Science, Chambers and his colleagues published a report detailing how the 2005 super Hurricane was responsible for killing or severely damaging upwards of 320 million trees. The amount of carbon contained in the these felled trees has been estimated as roughly equal to the net amount of carbon absorbed by all U.S. forests in a year.

The team cited not only Hurricane Katrina but also the recent Superstorm Sandy, pointing out the massive impact these weather events have to the terrestrial carbon cycle, forest tree mortality and carbon dioxide emissions from decomposition. Until now, however, these processes have been underrepresented or missed entirely in global climate models.

USING THE FINDINGS TO CURB CLIMATE CHANGE

The researchers believe that the first step towards addressing these issues is to gain an accurate knowledge of the extent of the damage. “A better understanding of tree mortality provides a path forward towards improving coupled earth system models,” says Chambers.

Chambers and his colleagues believe their findings will have a two-fold application. In addition to increasing the understanding of how a forest can affect the carbon cycle, they believe their new technique will also be instrumental in understanding how climate change will affect the forests. For decades, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have been on a steady upward trajectory. It’s only now we are starting to feel the effects of a warming climate, however. This is evidenced by the stronger and more frequent violent storms, brutal heat waves and the epidemic of glacial melt across the globe.

“But these climate change signals will start popping out of the noise faster and faster as the years go on,” Chambers said. “So, what’s going to happen to old-growth tropical forests? On one hand they are being fertilized by some unknown extent by the rising CO₂ concentration, and on the other hand a warming climate will likely accelerate tree mortality. So which of these processes will win out in the long-term: growth or death? Our study provides the tools to continue to make these critical observations and answer this question as climate change processes fully kick in over the coming years.”

Chambers’ co-authors on the PNAS paper were Alan Di Vittorio of Berkeley Lab and Robinson Negron-Juarez, Daniel Marra, Joerg Tews, Dar Roberts, Gabriel Ribeiro, Susan Trumbore and Niro Higuchi of other institutions, including INPA, Brazil; Tulane University, USA; Noreca Consulting Inc, Canada; the University of California at Santa Barbara, USA; and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Germany.

[waterboy 2.0]

[Halcyon Daze]

Australia's carbon emissions drop 8% in the first 6 months of the carbon tax,

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/emissions-drop-signals-fall-in-carbon-tax-take/story-e6frg6xf-1226559632995

while wind power has become more economical than coal,

http://designbuildsource.com.au/wind-power-in-australia-beats-fossil-fuels-on-cost

meanwhile attacks on climate scientists have started to decrease.

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/attacks-on-climate-science-ebb-after-start-of-carbon-tax-20130211-2e96w.html

Edited February 12, 2013 by Halcyon Daze

[whitewind]

Filipino super-typhoon an ominous warning of climate change impact

Philippines is having to adapt and adjust to rapidly deteriorating climatic trends at a great cost to its economy

Simon Tisdall

guardian.co.uk,

Sunday 17 February 2013 16.27 GMT

Thousands of banana trees toppled by Bopha in New Bataan, Philippines.

Photograph: Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images

When super-typhoon Bopha struck without warning before dawn, flattening the walls of their home, Maria Amparo Jenobiagon, her two daughters and her grandchildren ran for their lives.

The storm on 4 December was the worst ever to hit the southern Philippines: torrential rain turned New Bataan's river into a raging flood. Roads were washed away and the bridge turned into an enormous dam. Tens of thousands of coconut trees crashed down in an instant as unbelievably powerful winds struck. The banana crop was destroyed in a flash – and with it the livelihoods of hundreds of farmers.

The only safe place the family could think of was the concrete grandstand at the village sports stadium. Two months later, Jenobiagon, 36, and her three-year-old granddaughter, Mary Aieshe, are still there, living in one of the improvised tents spanning its steep concrete tiers along with hundreds of other people.

"We were terrified. All we could hear was loud crashing. We didn't know what to do. So we came here," Jenobiagon said. "Everyone ran to the health centre but houses were being swept away and the water was neck deep. Everywhere we went was full of mud and water. We went to a school but it was flooded, so we came to the stadium."

Lorenzo Balbin, the mayor of New Bataan, said the fury of the storm was far beyond the experience of anyone living in Mindanao. It would take 10 years to replace the coconut crop, he said. Some villages in Compostela Valley may be too unsafe to live in.

Bopha, known locally as Pablo, broke records as well as hearts. At its height, it produced wind speeds of 160mph, gusting to 195mph. It was the world's deadliest typhoon in 2012, killing 1,067 people, with 800 left missing. More than 6.2 million people were affected; the cost of the damage may top $1bn. As a category 5 storm (the highest), Bopha was significantly more powerful than hurricane Katrina (category 3), which hit the US in 2005, and last year's heavily publicised hurricane Sandy (category 2).

With an estimated 216,000 houses destroyed or damaged, tens of thousands of people remain displaced, presenting a challenge for the government and aid agencies.

The lack of international media coverage of Bopha may in part be explained – though not excused – by western-centric news values, and in part by the high incidence of storms in the Pacific region.

The Philippines experiences an average of 20 typhoons a year (including three super-typhoons) plus numerous incidents of flooding, drought, earthquakes and tremors and occasional volcanic eruptions, making it one of the most naturally disaster-prone countries in the world.

But more disturbing than Bopha's size was the fact that it appeared to reflect rapidly deteriorating climatic trends.

The five most devastating typhoons recorded in the Philippines have occurred since 1990, affecting 23 million people. Four of the costliest typhoons anywhere occurred in same period, according to an Oxfam report. What is more, Bopha hit an area where typhoons are all but unknown.

The inter-governmental panel on climate change says mean temperatures in the Philippines are rising by 0.14C per decade. Since the 1980s, there has been an increase in annual mean rainfall. Yet two of the severest droughts ever recorded occurred in 1991-92 and 1997-98.

Scientists are also registering steadily rising sea levels around the Philippines, and a falling water table. All this appears to increase the likelihood and incidence of extreme weather events while adversely affecting food production and yields through land erosion and degradation, analysts say.

Mary Ann Lucille Sering, head of the Philippine government's climate change commission, is in no doubt her country faces a deepening crisis that it can ill afford, financially and in human terms. Typhoon-related costs in 2009, the year the commission was created, amounted to 2.9% of GDP, she said, and have been rising each year since then.

"Extreme weather is becoming more frequent, you could even call it the new normal," Sering said. "Last year one typhoon [bopha] hurt us very much. If this continues we are looking at a big drain on resources." Human activity-related "slow onset impacts" included over-fishing, over-dependence on certain crops, over-extraction of ground water, and an expanding population (the Philippines has about 95 million people and a median age of 23).

"Altogether this could eventually lead to disaster," Sering said. Unlike countries such as Britain, where changing weather has a marginal impact on most people's lives, climate change in the Philippines was "like a war". Opinion surveys showed that Filipinos rated global warming as a bigger threat than rising food and fuel prices, she said.

Even given this level of awareness, Bopha presented an enormous test for emergency services. Oxfam workers in Davao City, working with the UN, local NGO partners, and the government's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), quickly moved to the area to offer assistance. Oxfam has committed $2m in Bopha relief funds on top of its annual $4m Philippines budget. But the UN-co-ordinated Bopha Action Plan, which set an emergency funding target of $76m, has received only $27m so far.

The overall post-Bopha response has comprised three phases: immediate help, including the provision of shelter and clean water, sanitation and hygiene facilities; rebuilding and relocation; and mitigation and prevention measures.

"The first thing was to provide water bladders to the evacuation centre in New Bataan. We concentrated on providing emergency toilets and water systems," said Kevin Lee, response manager for the Humanitarian Response Consortium, a group of five local NGOs. "We had a 15-strong team from Oxfam and the HRC, digging holes and putting in plastic pipes. Next we started looking at emergency food and shelter.

"The devastation was worse than anything I have ever seen. Up to 90% of the coconut trees were just flattened. That's the local economy on the ground. And that's really difficult to fix quickly," Lee said. But his team's swift action had positive results, he added. There have been no water-borne diseases in New Bataan and no outbreak of cholera.

The consortium has now moved on to longer-term projects such as building a waste management plant, setting up markets at relocation sites, and working on disaster risk reduction programmes, so that when the next typhoon hits, local people may be better prepared.

The Lumbia resettlement project outside Cagayan de Oro, in northern Mindanao, provides an example of what can be achieved. Here, victims of tropical storm Washi, which swept through the area in 2011, killing 1,200 people and causing nearly $50m in damage, have been offered newly-built homes on land owned by the local university.

The Lumbia project's slogan is "build a community, not just homes", and it has gone down well with displaced villagers. "It's better here than before. It's more elevated, we don't have to worry about floods," said Alexie Colibano, a Lumbia resident. "Before we were living on an island in the river. Now we feel more secure."

About 15,000 Bopha victims remain in evacuation centres, including in the New Bataan stadium grandstand. In total, about 200,000 are still living with friends or relatives.

In Manila, meanwhile, Benito Ramos, the outgoing executive director of the NDRRMC, is busy planning for the next super-typhoon. "We are preparing for a national summit this month on how to prepare, including early warning, building codes, land use regulations, geo-hazard mapping, relocation and livelihoods," he said.

But the bigger issue is climate change, which posed an "existential threat" to the Philippines, Ramos said. "We are mainstreaming climate change in all government departments and policies. If we don't adapt and adjust, we all agree we are heading for disaster."

[woof woof woof]

January 2013 was the globe's 9th warmest January since records began in 1880, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) on Thursday. January 2013 global land temperatures were the 13th warmest on record, and global ocean temperatures were the 8th warmest on record. January 2013 was the 335th consecutive month with global temperatures warmer than the 20th century average and the 37th straight warmer-than-average January. The last time Earth had a below-average January global temperature was in 1976, and the last below-average month of any kind was February 1985, so no one under the age of 28 has ever seen a month with below-average global temperatures. Global satellite-measured temperatures in January 2013 for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were 4th or 2nd warmest in the 35-year record, according to Remote Sensing Systems and the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH), respectively. The Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent during January 2013 was the sixth largest on record for the month, and marked the sixth consecutive January with above-average snow cover for the hemisphere. Wunderground's weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, has a comprehensive post on the notable weather events of January 2013 in his January 2013 Global Weather Extremes Summary. The most extreme weather on the planet in January occurred in Australia, where the nationally-averaged monthly maximum temperature was the highest ever recorded. Australia also suffered record rains and flooding along the east coast due to the remains of Tropical Cyclone Oswald. Damage from the flooding totaled $2.5 billion, according to AON Benfield. One other billion-dollar weather disaster occurred in January--flooding in Indonesia that cost $3.3 billion and took 41 lives. As much as 300 millimeters (12 inches) of precipitation fell over a two-week period.


Figure 1. Departure of temperature from average for January 2013, the 9th warmest January for the globe since record keeping began in 1880. Colder than average conditions occurred in the Western U.S., northern Canada, and northern Russia. The Southern Hemisphere was record warm over land for the second month in a row, with record high monthly temperatures observed over northeastern Brazil, much of southern Africa, and northern and central Australia. No land areas in the Southern Hemisphere were cooler than average. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) .


Figure 2. Central Jakarta, Indonesia flooded following a heavy rain on Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013. Damage to Jakarta and surrounding areas was estimated at $3.3 billion. Image credit: AP.


Figure 3. In this photo provided by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service a wildfire near Deans Gap, Australia, crosses the Princes Highway Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013. (AP Photo/NSW Rural Fire Service, James Morris)

Neutral El Niño conditions continue in the Pacific
For the 10th month in row, neutral El Niño conditions existed in the equatorial Pacific during January 2013. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) expects neutral El Niño conditions to last through spring. Temperatures in the equatorial Eastern Pacific need to be 0.5°C below average or cooler for three consecutive for a La Niña episode to be declared; sea surface temperatures were 0.3°C below average as of February 18, and have ranged from 0.3 - 0.6°C below average during 2013.

Arctic sea ice falls to 6th lowest January extent on record
Arctic sea ice extent during January reached its sixth lowest extent in the 35-year satellite record, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). This was the 19th consecutive January and 140th consecutive month with below-average Arctic sea ice extent. The last ten years (2004 to 2013) have seen the ten lowest January extents in the satellite record.



Figure 4. Ice fractures in the Arctic sea ice off the coast of Alaska, as seen by the AVHRR instrument on NOAA's F-16 polar orbiting satellite on February 21, 2013. As discussed at the Arctic Sea Ice Blog, these sort of fractures are due to the thin first-year ice not being able to withstand the stresses put on the ice pack by strong winds. In previous winters when thick, multi-year ice abounded, these sort of fractures were much less common. Image credit: Environment Canada.

Category 2 Haruna hits Madagascar
Tropical Cyclone Haruna hit southwest Madagascar at 00 UTC Friday, February 22, as a Category 2 storm with 105 mph winds. Haruna was the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall so far in 2013, globally. Haruna is being blamed for one death so far, and will bring torrential rains and dangerous flooding to southern Madagascar over the weekend.


Figure 5. Tropical Cyclone Haruna over Madagascar at 11:05 UTC February 22, 2013. At the time, Haruna was a Category 1 storm with 90 mph winds. Image credit: NASA.

Japan sets snow depth record
Incredible snows fell in Japan this week, bringing the amount of snow on the ground to an astonishing 5.15 meters (16.9') at Sukayu Onsen, Aomori on Honshu Island. Wunderground weather historian Christopher C. Burt details the record in his post, Record Snow Depth (for an official site) Measured in Japan.

Wunderground's climate change blogger, Dr. Ricky Rood, has a post well-worth reading, Should We Just Adapt to Climate Change?

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Jeff Masters

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2354

[whitewind]

I think this is very significant, scientists traditionally use very conservative language - especially in regards to climate science, but to state that Australia has recorded it's hottest summer ever despite the lack of an El Nino should really be ringing alarm bells.

"..the last six months have been the hottest on record from September to February."

"Fourteen of the weather bureau's 112 long-term climate stations recorded their hottest days on record, including one in Sydney, where the temperature hit 46 degrees in the middle of January."

"Now we're setting daytime and night-time records around Australia at a very (much) more frequent rate than we were in the past and they outnumber cold records by five to one in some instances."

"If we look at previous very hot summers in Australia before this year, six of the eight hottest summers on record had occurred during El Nino years. So the fact that we've got such a hot summer without having an El Nino makes it in some ways even more exceptional."

Weatherzone

Australia breaks hottest summer record

By Tim Jeanes and Lexi Metherell, Friday March 1, 2013 - 22:08 EDT The Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed that Australia has just experienced its hottest summer on record.

The bureau says the previous hottest summer - measured by average day and night figures from across the nation - was in 1997-98.

Climate monitoring manager Dr Karl Braganza says a particularly hot spell in January has helped towards the new record.

"That's certainly contributed to it being the hottest summer on record, but it has been hot in December and February as well," he said.

"Both of those months right around Australia have been warmer than average and it's extending a real six-month period, so the last six months have been the hottest on record from September to February."

Overall, Australia's average summer temperature came in at 28.6 degrees Celsius.



Fourteen of the weather bureau's 112 long-term climate stations recorded their hottest days on record, including one in Sydney, where the temperature hit 46 degrees in the middle of January.

"Certainly there's a background trend of warming temperatures and there's also a trend in our rate of setting records particularly in the last decade," Dr Braganza said.

"Now we're setting daytime and night-time records around Australia at a very (much) more frequent rate than we were in the past and they outnumber cold records by five to one in some instances."

And he says this summer is likely to be a taste of what is to come in future decades.

"By about mid-century, so in about 40 years, you're actually talking about conditions like this becoming normal," he said.

"It depends on what emissions trajectory we go down, but on those mid to high scenarios, then this certainly would be a taste of things to come."

Extreme heatwave



Blair Trewin, a climatologist at the bureau, says the hot weather was experienced across almost all parts of the country.

"Most hot summers it's very hot in the east and cool in the west, or it's hot in the south but cooler than normal in the north, but this year it's been hotter than normal almost everywhere," he said.

"We had an extreme heatwave through the first half of January which affected much of the country and that was the peak of the summer heat.

"But even if you take out that first half of January, it was still a summer which was very much warmer than normal."

The flood disasters may give the impression that it has been not only a hot, but a wet summer, but the bureau says average national summer rainfall was at a nine-year low.

"If you look at the areas that have had above average rainfall, you are really only looking at two areas," Dr Trewin said.

"One is the east coast and adjacent ranges, from probably about Mackay southwards in Queensland and most of coastal New South Wales, and also the western half of WA. So those two regions had a wet summer but almost everywhere else it was a dry summer."

No El Nino



Normally, a hot summer like the one just gone would be accompanied by hotter than normal temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean - an El Nino summer, in other words.

But Dr Trewin says this year ocean temperatures were average.

"That's quite unusual for a summer like this," he said.

"If we look at previous very hot summers in Australia before this year, six of the eight hottest summers on record had occurred during El Nino years.

"So the fact that we've got such a hot summer without having an El Nino makes it in some ways even more exceptional."

Penny Whetton, a senior climate research scientist with the CSIRO, says the fact that it was not an El Nino year is significant.

"It just underlines that it's much easier, so to speak, for the climate to give us a hot year than what it used to be in the past," she said.

"It really just shows that the potential for us to get really warm conditions has increased.

"The effect of that is that we can get very warm years now without one of the factors that can contribute to warmth being in place, and that is El Nino conditions. I think that is actually quite significant. "

Edited March 1, 2013 by whitewind

[waterboy 2.0]

http://climatecommission.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/Angry-Summer-amended-040313-web.pdf

Edited March 6, 2013 by waterboy

[whitewind]

http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/continuing-heatwave-prompts-health-fears/23953

Along with my concerns that we have finally hitting a tipping point for runaway climate change, Victoria's ambulance service are warning people to take extreme care to avoid heat stroke, use air-conditioning and

NEVER LOCK CHILDREN IN YOUR CAR!

Weatherzone

Continuing heatwave prompts health fearsFriday March 8, 2013 - 17:28 EDT

Victoria's ambulance service is urging people to avoid heat stress as the state's heatwave continues.

Daily maximum temperatures have been above 30 degrees Celsius since Monday and temperatures are forecast to hit 37C early next week.

Mildura is expecting top temperatures of 35C and above for the next six days.

..........

Phil King from the weather bureau says it has been an extraordinary start to March.

"If the forecast comes to fruition, then we'll see not only a long run of days above 30C and nights above 20C, but average temperatures well above the previous records," he said.

"We're looking quite likely to be setting a record hot start for the first two weeks of March."

The normal temperatures for March are in the range of 13C overnight and 24C in the daytime.

[whitewind]

Large rise in CO2 emissions sounds climate change alarm

Extreme weather, which is predicted by climate scientists to occur more frequently as the atmosphere warms and CO2 levels rise, has already been seen widely in 2013.

China and India have experienced their coldest winter in decades and Australia has seen a four-month long heat wave with 123 weather records broken during what scientists are calling its 'angry summer'.

"We are in [getting] into new climatic territory. And when you get records being broken at that scale, you can start to see a shifting from one climate system to another. So the climate has in one sense actually changed and we are now entering a new series of climatic conditions that we just haven't seen before", said Tim Flannery, head of the Australian government's climate change commission, this week.

Earlier this week the Met Office warned that the "extreme" patterns of flood and drought experienced by Britain in 2012 were likely to become more frequent. One in every five days in 2012 saw flooding but one in four days were in drought.

-----------------

The chances of the world holding temperature rises to 2C – the level of global warming considered "safe" by scientists – appear to be fading fast with US scientists reporting the second-greatest annual rise in CO₂ emissions in 2012.

Carbon dioxide levels measured at at Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii jumped by 2.67 parts per million (ppm) in 2012 to 395ppm, said Pieter Tans, who leads the greenhouse gas measurement team for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The record was an increase of 2.93ppm in 1998.

The jump comes as a study published in Science on Thursday looking at global surface temperatures for the past 1,500 years warned that "recent warming is unprecedented", prompting UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres, to say that "staggering global temps show urgent need to act. Rapid climate change must be countered with accelerated action."

Tans told the Associated Press the major factor was an increase in fossil fuel use. "It's just a testament to human influence being dominant", he said. "The prospects of keeping climate change below that [two-degree goal] are fading away."

Preliminary data for February 2013 show CO₂ levels last month standing at their highest ever recorded at Manua Loa, a remote volcano in the Pacific. Last month they reached a record 396.80ppm with a jump of 3.26ppm parts per million between February 2012 and 2013.

Carbon dioxide levels fluctuate seasonally, with the highest levels usually observed in April. Last year the highest level at Mauna Loa was measured at 396.18ppm.

What is disturbing scientists is the the acceleration of CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere, which are occurring in spite of attempts by governments to restrain fossil fuel emissions.

According to the observatory, the average annual rate of increase for the past 10 years has been 2.07ppm – more than double the increase in the 1960s. The average increase in CO₂ levels between 1959 to the present was 1.49ppm per year.

The Mauna Loa measurements coincide with a new peer-reviewed study of the pledges made by countries to reduce CO2 emissions. The Dutch government's scientific advisers show that rich countries will have to reduce enissions by 50% percent below 1990 levels by 2020 if there is to be even a medium chance of limiting warming to 2C, thus preventing some of climate change's worst impacts.

"The challenge we already knew was great is even more difficult", said Kelly Levin, a researcher with the World Resources Instistute in Washington. "But even with an increased level of reductions necessary, it shows that a 2° goal is still attainable – if we act ambitiously and immediately."

[whitewind]

Weatherzone

Record heat across northern Tasmania

Ben McBurney, Saturday March 9, 2013 - 11:24 EDT

Launceston is having its hottest March spell on record as northern parts of Tasmania continue to swelter under near-constant heat, with hot days and very warm nights.

Parts of the Northwest Coast, Northeast and Central North have seen daytime temperatures of up to 10 degrees above average in the last few days. Launceston has already seen four days above 30 degrees, the first time this has occured during March in 82 years of records. On Thursday, it soared to 33 degrees during the hottest March day on record. With the town forecast to reach at least 30 degrees for the next four days, this will go down as the longest run of days over 30 degrees for any month, which currently stands at five.

The hot days have also been followed by very warm nights. Marrawah only got down to 20 degrees last night, making it the hottest March night in 41 years of records. Flinders Island also experienced its hottest March night in 39 years, with a low of 21 degrees.

The unseasonably warm temperatures are being caused by a hot air mass being driven over Tasmania ahead of an approaching front. Unfortunately, most of the state has not experienced any significant rainfall since December which, combined with this warm spell, is bringing heightened fire danger. Humid winds and some showers and thunderstorms should limit the fire potential until Monday, however on Tuesday and Wednesday the winds will shift north to northwesterly and become drier.

The approaching cool change will sweep across the state on Friday, dropping the mercury significantly. The change may and even bring some showers, although totals will only be light.

[whitewind]

Weatherzone

Record heat in central Tasmania

Rob Sharpe, Sunday March 10, 2013 - 15:01 EDT

Launceston is on target to more than double the record for consecutive days above 30 degrees with three more days to go.

Today was the sixth day in a row that Launceston has exceeded 30 degrees. The previous longest run in 33 years of records was four days in a row, set in January 2006. This stretch includes a record March temperature of 33 degrees. Launceston is likely to reach 30 degrees for the next three days, more than doubling the previous record.

Butlers Gorge has also been very warm, experiencing their hottest March week in 42 years of records, averaging 27.8 degrees. This is 11 degrees above the March average.

This very unusual heat for Tasmania is due to a dominance of high pressure to the east of Tasmania. Air circulating around high pressure systems have fed heat from the mainland south over Tasmania. The fronts that typically cross Tasmania at regular intervals providing cooler air have been slipping south for over a week, only impacting the south of the state.

A weak trough is currently crossing Tasmania, providing minimal cooling, however it is bringing thunderstorms. Storms began this afternoon from Waratah to Miena, with Liawenee gaining 26mm by 2pm. Storms are likely to continue into the evening and spread further east. Hobart may gain up to 5mm today from showers or storms, yet 5mm would make it Hobart's heaviest rain in more than 5 weeks.

Cooling is coming in the form of a strong frontal system that will arrive on Wednesday, most likely in the afternoon. Ahead of this front winds will generally be northerly, drawing in even warmer air from mainland Australia.

Typical autumn weather will arrive in the wake of the front with temperatures returning to near average from Thursday.

Edited March 10, 2013 by whitewind

[whitewind]

Melbourne on track to notch up a record hot spell

Monday March 11, 2013 - 19:43 EDT

As Victoria swelters, Melbourne is on track to notch up a record hot spell.

There have been eight consecutive days above 30 degrees, the longest hot spell since February 1961.

The mercury peaked at 37 degrees around 4pm (AEDT).

If Tuesday's temperature reaches the forecast 36 degrees, it will become the longest heatwave since records began in 1856.

[qualia]

you know, it's really not that hot. just that hot spells usually get bumped out but cold spells. theres no cold spell this time. like in top WA, that last storm wouldn't move (whatever it's name was).

that said, next el nino i'm in dread of, considering the "new normal"

ugh

[Halcyon Daze]

The new normal is that nothing will be normal. Just more extreme and unpredictable than ever. That's what makes me cry alone at night.

[Heretic]

I believe that it was the advent of electricity that was the beginning of the modern global problems . Everything seems to have begun snowballing from then on - technology and industry have gone ballistic , the global populations have exploded , and the resulting pollution is creating untold problems including global warming .... . Now it seems that we are caught in an inescapable trap of our own making that in the foreseeable future is unlikely to improve at all . ... Seems to me that we must somehow reduce populations , consumption of resources , and pressures on the environment . .... But at present this appears to be an unattainable goal . I have no idea how we might be able to extricate ourselves from this mess of our own making - my guess is the Earth will do it for us sooner or later ....

[whitewind]

That's what makes me cry alone at night.

LOL. It just makes me cranky. What a stupid bunch of stupid primate twats we are, can't think ourselves out of a bind that doesn't really exist.

Oh no! The economy must grow ! No matter that we have more than enough to go around, we'll keep your poor so you have to slave your life away to "earn" it, and fuck up the environment for your children in order to do so !

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid

STUPID.

[Dolos]

Thought I'de pop back for a bit of a look see how the alarmists are going....you guys never let me down. Seriuosly...

The new normal is that nothing will be normal. Just more extreme and unpredictable than ever. That's what makes me cry alone at night.

You have got to be kidding? ROFALMAO.... OH How dramatic! Why don't you cry alone at night about something worthwhile and something REAL like this.

BRITIANS SHAME: ONE MILLION BRITIANS DEAD IN WINTER SCANDAL..

Winter weather has killed a million Brits since the 1980s and will kill a million more by 2050, experts have warned. Age support groups and doctors blame poor housing, high energy bills and pensioner poverty. Many killed by the cold are elderly but the ill, vulnerable and very young also die. A total of 973,000 people died due to winter weather from 1982/83 to 2011/12, Office of National Statistics data for England and Wales shows. ONS data shows another million Brits will be killed by winters by 2050, based on the average of 27,400 cold weather deaths per winter in the last five years. --Alastair Grant, Daily Star, 3 March 2013

Britain’s relentless big freeze has sparked fears of the highest winter death rate for five years. The brutal Arctic blast has seen temperatures plummet to -13C (9F) amid what could be the coldest March for almost three decades. Pensioner groups warned the death rate among Britain’s elderly has already soared this winter with fears it could hit 30,000 – 6,000 more than last year. The National Federation of Occupational Pensioners (NFOP) said deaths among its members had more than quadrupled since the end of last year. --Nathan Rao, Daily Express, 13 March 2013

Migrating birds have halted Britain’s embryonic shale gas expansion in its tracks. The company backed by Lord Browne, the former BP boss, admitted yesterday that it must delay resuming fracking near Blackpool until next year because of rules protecting thousands of birds wintering in the surrounding picturesque Fylde peninsula. --Tim Webb, The Times, 14 March 2013

European policy makers must factor in the impact of the region’s deep financial crisis and stumbling economies as they design climate and energy policies, according to a draft European Union document seen by The Wall Street Journal. The document signals that the 27-nation bloc may be reining in its ambition to lead the world in tackling climate change. --Alessandro Torello, The Wall Street Journal, 14 March 2013

The European Union is set to partially suspend its controversial airlines emissions tax scheme, officials said Tuesday, as part of a bid to push international critics into reaching a global aviation deal. After the bloc's parliament and governments struck a deal on Tuesday, the EU is now set to “stop the clock” for airlines flying intercontinental routes until the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) holds its general assembly in September. --Business Report, 14 March 2013

Eon, the German utility, has called on European governments to help operators of gas-fired power plants, who are suffering losses because wholesale prices have plummeted as renewable electricity generation has surged. “Policy makers need to act swiftly on this issue. Otherwise we are going to have to shut down power plants,” said Johannes Teyssen, Eon chief executive, stressing that gas-fired plants could guarantee supply even on cloudy and windless days. --Gerrit Wiesmann, Financial Times, 13 March 2013

http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/11076-britains-shame-one-million-britons-dead-in-winter-scandal?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climatechangedispatch%2FnkcO+%28Climate+Change+Dispatch+news%29

Considering the globe hasn't warmed in the past 15 years I would suggest you turn your mind to the real disasters besetting humans and the planet and not manufactured ones. People like you will pay down the track for the trillions in wasted dollars and missed opportunities to solve the real problems of this planet. Your missguided side track has come at a huge cost to man kind. You will work that out in the not too distant future.

"THE GLOBAL WARMING STANDSTILL" By Dr David Whitehouse.

http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/03/Whitehouse-GT_Standstill.pdf

[waterboy 2.0]

I'm finished....I'll just come back and laugh at you lot when it's over. Won't be too long.

Its over?

Iol....its climate change and this is different for each regions local "normal weather"...not just "warming".

*hats off to the fixated tenacity of Dolos - the spirit of trickery and guile

[Dolos]

Its over?

Iol....its climate change and this is different for each regions local "normal weather"...not just "warming".

*hats off to the fixated tenacity of Dolos - the spirit of trickery and guile

Well done waterboy.

How could a man resist such stomach churning nonsense. "I cry alone at night" Oh please... no more I just don't think I'm up to it...and yes my good clown friend it is over...well to the majaroty of well read people around the world who have not cocooned theselves in an alarmist bubble it is....espesially those countries freezing their balls off at present. You guys are scared to read anything but your own dogma. Woe is the world....It's okay to freeze your elderly to death.

The following is from one of your own...do you guys remember the old saying that 'as the facts change then so does my mind'.

Astrophysicist Dr David Whitehouse:

In retrospect, nobody predicted that in the age of global warming the annual average global temperature would remain unchanged for so long…

It is incontrovertible that the global annual average temperature of the past decade, and in some datasets the past 15 years, has not increased.

Year-on-year fluctuations, and any trend over this period, are within errors of measurement. The only justifiable statistical description of the global temperature during this period is a constant. Technically, this standstill can be seen in the datasets produced by NOAA, NASA, the BEST consortium, HadCRUT3, and especially, its successor HadCRUT4. This standstill has occurred as atmospheric CO2 has increased from 370 parts per million (ppm) to 390 ppm, providing an increasing forcing factor that will raise global temperatures.

Some argue that the duration of the standstill is too short to be meaningful. Thirty years is taken to be the baseline for observing climate changes and fifteen years is too short. This report argues that 15 years is not an insignificant period; what has happened to make temperatures remain constant requires an explanation. The period contains important information and should not be dismissed as having no climatic importance. The recent warming period began about 1980 after four decades of globally stable temperatures thus the years of constant temperature are about equal to years when temperatures increased. This is not a trivial observation

Calculations based on ensembles of climate models suggest prolonged standstills of about ten years can occur once every eight decades. Standstills of 15 years are much more difficult to explain. This report shows, that if we have not passed it already,

we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change.

 

Might be time to start pulling your collective heads out of your collective rear ends and read all the material.

[whitewind]

[whitewind]

[whitewind]