The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Late Spring Heat Hits Australia
Dear Diary. I often use Climate Reanalyzer charts, keeping an eye out for anomalous temperatures that could pose as a hazard. These charts are a reliable indicator of heat or cold waves happening across various sections of the planet. Here is the one valid for today, the 15th:
Due to carbon pollution we see many orange and red colored positive anomalies in the Northern Hemisphere, but since that area of the world is well into its cold season, these are not as life threatening as those that occur from June through September. The one positive anomaly in the Southern Hemisphere that stands out is currently over Australia. This isn’t the hottest I’ve ever seen, which were from the years 2018 and 2019, but a warning nevertheless that pre sumner heat is really starting to cook in the land down under.
Here is more from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology:
This summer season I have a new ally in my effort to keep track of extreme heat. Maximiliano Herrera has been noting significant record temperatures going back to the beginning of this century. Here are his latest notes on Australia:
Australians had a big wake up call from 2018-2019 concerning what widespread prolonged record heat leading to drought can do. Wildfires were unprecedented in their size and scope those years due to climate change. Aljazeera has written a general piece published Friday on how Australia’s climate is changing, which I will share for today’s main subject matter:
Australia faces more fires, drought as climate continues to heat
Country’s weather bureau says higher temperatures and less rainfall creating conditions for more extreme weather events.
![Australia should expect a longer and more extreme bushfire season as carbon emissions create a hotter, drier climate, a government agency warned on Friday [File: Saeed Khan/AFP]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ab08782d1ec5455bb57cf321a33da342_18.jpeg?resize=770%2C513)
Australia’s climate is expected become hotter and drier, increasing the risk of drought and extreme weather events such as the bushfires that devastated swathes of southeastern Australia in the last southern hemisphere summer, according to the latest climate report from the country’s weather bureau.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM)’s latest State of the Climate report blames carbon emissions for the increase in extreme heat, noting that a hotter Australia will affect the lives and livelihoods of everyone who lives there.
“Australia needs to plan for and adapt to the changing nature of climate risk now and in the decades ahead,” the BoM said in the report, which is was produced jointly with CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency and is released every two years. “Reducing global greenhouse gas emissions will lead to less warming and fewer impacts in the future.”
Australia’s climate has warmed on average by 1.44 degrees Celsius since national records began in 1910, the report said. The country experienced its warmest year on record in 2019, and the seven years from 2013 to 2019 all ranked among the nine warmest years ever, the BoM said.
Australia as a whole is also reporting more “extremely warm” days with 43 reported in 2019, more than triple the number in any of the years prior to 2000.
“This long-term warming trend means that most years are now warmer than almost any observed during the 20th century,” the report said. “When relatively cooler years do occur, it is because natural drivers that typically cool Australia’s climate, such as La Niña, act to partially offset the background warming trend.”
While the lockdowns associated with the coronavirus pandemic have helped reduce global emissions, the Australian scientists said the effects on climate change would be “negligible” because the rate of carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere had increased with every passing decade since atmospheric measurements began.
“Atmospheric CO2 continues to rise, and fossil fuel emissions will remain the principal driver of this growth throughout 2020 and likely beyond,” they said.
Net-zero
The weather agencies’ report comes as pressure grows on the government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison to accelerate plans to reduce carbon emissions, and the country heads into another summer wary of a repeat of last year’s fires when at least 33 people died, whole communities were destroyed and billions of native animals incinerated.
Morrison has said Australia aims to reach net-zero carbon emissions after 2050, refusing to match other developed countries that have agreed to accelerate the process and achieve the target by 2050.
And Australia is far short even of meeting its Paris Agreement target of cutting carbon emissions by at least 26 percent by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.
The report also found that there had been a decline of around 12 per cent in April to October rainfall since the late 1990s in southeastern Australia, a trend expected to continue – increasing the risk of drought and a longer bushfire season.
Fire seasons in Australia have been getting longer since the 1950s and last year’s catastrophic fires began in September and continued for five months.
The seas around Australia are also heating, the report said, as it warned of more frequent and severe bleaching events in coral reefs around the country, including the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier and Ningaloo reefs.
Oceans have warmed by around 1 degree Celsius since 1910 and acidified, fuelling marine heatwaves, the report said.
“The increasing frequency of marine heatwaves around Australia in recent years has caused permanent impacts on marine ecosystem health, marine habitats and species,” it said noting the decline in kelp forests and seagrasses, the migration of some marine species, and increased disease.
A study released last month found half the coral that forms the Great Barrier Reef had already died as a result of global heating, and that climate change was ‘irreversibly destroying‘ one of the world’s natural wonders.
SOURCE : AL JAZEERA
I’ll be posting more news and notes from Australia as we go through their summer on 2020/2021.
Here is more climate and weather news from Sunday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)
Now here are some of today’s articles and notes on the horrid COVID-19 pandemic:
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Guy Walton “The Climate Guy”