Climate Commission chief Professor Tim Flannery says that while Australia may have always been a land of drought and flooding rains, the nation is now experiencing a “climate on steroids”.
“I think one of the best ways of thinking about it is imagining that the baseline has shifted,” he said.
“If an athlete takes steroids for example… their baseline shifts, they’ll do fewer slow times and many more record-breaking fast times.
“The same thing is happening with our climate system. As it warms up, we’re getting fewer cold days and cold events and many more record hot events. In effect, it’s a climate on steroids.”
..the summer was remarkable in almost every respect, as the Australian continent smashed records for heat intensity, geographic scope, and duration. Moreover, the heat continued a recent trend toward much warmer summers in Australia, and climate models show that, depending on global emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases, Australia’s summer of 2012-2013 could be the norm by the 2040s, the BOM said.
The record warm summer adding another data point to a spate of recent extreme heat events that some scientists say are becoming more common as a result of manmade emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide.
A 2012 study by NASA scientist James Hansen and others found that a new category of extremely hot summers, such as events that occurred in Russia in 2010 and Texas in 2011, has become far more common than would ever have happened without global warming.
Here are some of the sizzling data points:
- The average summer temperature for Australia was 83.5°F (28.6°C), which was about 2°F (1.1°C) above average. That exceeded the previous record, set during the summer of 1997-98, by about 0.2°F.
- A new national daytime maximum temperature record was set at 96.3°F (35.7°C).
- The highest temperature recorded during the January heatwave was at Moomba, in South Australia, with a high of 121°F (49.6°C). All-time record high temperatures were also set in Sydney and Hobart. The temperature in Sydney climbed to a stifling 114.4°F on Jan. 18.
- A record was set for the number of consecutive days when the average daily high temperature for Australia exceeded 102°F (about 39°C), with seven such days between January 2-8. The previous record was four days in 1973, according to BOM data.
- January was Australia’s hottest month since recordkeeping began in 1910.
- At one point during the January heat wave, meteorologists had to add a new color to the weather map as temperatures climbed off the standard charts.
The summer heat wasn’t confined to the Australian continent, either. Southern Hemisphere land areas had their hottest months of December and January on record, as parts of Africa and South America also saw above-average temperatures.
Naturally, Aussie climate deniers have gone on the offensive, once again, against reality.
AUSTRALIA’S summer may have been the hottest on record but it’s the long-term trends that matter, not figures for one season, opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt says.
After all, over the same period Russia, China and the United States shivered through their coldest weather on record, he says.
OPPOSITION spokesperson on climate change Greg Hunt has been quoted across the news wires today as saying that while Australia has experienced its hottest summer on record, it’s been unusually cold elsewhere.
The story is based on an interview with ABC Radio, where Mr Hunt is commenting on a new report – The Angry Summer – from Australia’s Climate Commission. The report points out the role that climate change is playing in heatwaves, bushfires and floods.
The report comes just a week after the Bureau of Meteorology declared that Australia’s summer of 2012/2013 was the hottest on record. January 2013 was also Australia’s hottest month on record.
If you listen to the interview, Mr Hunt makes a point of saying that when considering global warming, we need to look at the long term trends rather than pick single events. Quite right.
To demonstrate this, he said that “we have had record cold temperatures in Russia, parts of the United States and China” over a similar period to Australia’s hottest summer on record.
Even in a warming world, you’ll still get record cold events – it’s just that the hot ones are outnumbering the cold ones. In Australia, for example, for every record cold temperature there’s three record hot ones. In the US, a 2009 study found record high temperatures were outstripping record colds by two to one.
I had a quick look at this unusually cold US winter which Greg Hunt alludes to. The government’s National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration has all the figures. Incidentally, January 2013 is the 335th consecutive month where global average temperatures have been above average.
Final rankings for the US winter are not expected to be out for a week or so yet but, so far, the chilly winter turns out not to have been that chilly after all. In fact, the period November 2012 to January 2013 ranks 109th (with a rank of 1 indicating the coldest and 118 the warmest) in a record going back 118 years.
So there you go. As Mr Hunt says, best to check with the experts.
So can we call the new normal a “Lance Armstrong” climate?
Re: “So can we call the new normal a “Lance Armstrong” climate?”
In the sense that we’re faced with a constantly deteriorating mess of our own making? Or in the sense that we’ve jacked up the climate with performance enhancing pollutants that allow a series of record setting events just before the crash? 🙂
Are we having a laugh?
oh both, for sure!
Hi Gail,
Check out this Livestream:
http://new.livestream.com/internetsociety/f2c
They just went on break and should be back just about 11:00 AM ET.
***
If anyone here is naive enough to trust Barack Obama, the last speaker at the conference had some really bad news for you.
Barack Obama has prosecuted twice as many whisleblowers (John Kiriakou, for one) as all previous Presidents combined. (This conference is dedicated to the memory of Internet wise man Aaron Swartz, someone who was driven to suicide by Obama’s malevolent prosecutorial zeal.)
In the year 2011, Obama’s government created 92 Million classified documents. Compare that to the first year of George W. Bush’s administration when about 7 million classified documents were created.
What is Obama trying to hide from us? He’s acting more like a tyrant than a temporary leader of a free nation.
thanks! I couldn’t be more disillusioned, check out my post Obama Sneers at Climate Activists and
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-decorous-rally-protests-keystone-xl.html
The Nation Institute’s Tom Englehardt chimes in on climate change denialism:
http://tinyurl.com/d4hakpe
Englehardt nails the irony of the day that Bill McKibben and Michael Brune led 35,000 to march on the White House in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline:
QUOTE: “Not that President Obama was there to hear anything. He was then on a golf course in the Florida warmth teeing up with “a pair of Texans who are key oil, gas, and pipeline players.” That seemed to catch another kind of climate-change reality of our moment and strongly hinted at the strength of the forces any such movement is up against.”
Anyone still thinking that Barack Obama is a friend of the environment and a champion for CO2 sanity really ought to be paying more attention to Obama’s signals. He’s being abundantly clear which side of the Keystone issue he will come down on.
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2013/02/obama-sneers-at-climate-activists.html
I did go to the rally, even though I think drawing a line in the sand over the pipeline is a mistake.
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-decorous-rally-protests-keystone-xl.html
Thanks Gail,
I agree with you that the pipeline wasn’t a good strategic target, since we’re bound to lose on that one. The Canadian oil must be liberated, it’s our duty! (sarcasm)
***
Hey, what have you heard about the crisis in pesto? I just read that an American pest has been introduced into the Mediterranean region and is decimating the pine nut crop over there. Is there no end to the destructiveness of the poisoned madness called globalization?
The sane among us have always known that Obama is a classic moderate Republican.
Too bad so many have bought into the “leftist socialist” BS that the rightwing
nutbars have been spewing non-stop for 5 years.
OFF TOPIC
Morin,
An argument can be made that Obama is governing to the right of most recent Republican presidents.
http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2012
I think someone like Mr Hunt should be taken to court for endangering lives..The Media is the problem
Re: “I think someone like Mr Hunt should be taken to court…”
K.I.S.S.: I believe a simple flogging should suffice. 🙂
In the first decade of the 20th century, Dorothea Mackellar wrote a poem about Australia called My Country. It is oft taught to Aussie schoolkids when they are learning about history or poetry. Most Australians who attended primary school here can recite at least the second stanza which Tim Flannery is borrowing from…
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!
The humourous thing about his choosing that, is the fact that you don’t have to go far on Aussie denial blogs to find some idiot citing Mackellar’s poem as evidence that the extreme weather events we’ve been seeing more frequently are normal.
What I have found interesting about the reaction by Greg Hunt is that I had him pegged as one of the few in the federal opposition’s shadow cabinet who accepted the science underpinning climate change See http://uknowispeaksense.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/the-mad-monks-mob-of/
I extensively searched Hansard (the official record of everything ever said in the Australian Parliament) personal websites, media releases and interview transcripts for statements made by every sitting upper and lower house federal politician in this country for definitive statements that demonstrate their position on the science. I may have to reassess Mr Hunt or chase him down for clarification. If anyone is interested, you can get to my full assessments from this page… http://uknowispeaksense.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/new-page-added/
I can agree that as a result of warming globally eg: significantly increase number a warmer winters, rainfall also will increase, perhaps catastrophic floods, both especially in the summer, but … I don’t agree, never, to grow in number and intensity of heat waves.
About this tells us (even relatively recent) past.
At the time of the old warming the number of heat waves (and their extremity) is always decreasing. I will quote that I recently cited here (blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/12/dispatch-from-agu-an-equable-climate-curveball/): “According to Davis and colleagues, the higher latitude continents north of 50N in both periods [max. Eemian, mid-Holocene] were much warmer than present-day climate in winter, not so much warmer in summer. “Climate models don’t do this. „… they are generally too warm on summer …”
Most likely for relatively cool summers (without extreme heat waves) during the past strong warming, are responsible aerosols and clouds (increasing humidity of the atmosphere towards declines the pressure gradient – the dominance of anticyclones).
The current increase in heat waves is mainly the result: positive phase of the AMO + La Nina. (http://www.globalweathercycles.com/Web_Site_ENSO_Graphic_Dec_2012_update.jpg).
http://www.weatherchannel.com.au/Media/Severe-weather-2012/Full-report.aspx :
“The hotter and drier outlook is the result of a weak El Niño combined with abnormal Indian Ocean temperatures.”
Although I think that (not only the last heat wave in Australia) is the result of a relatively rapid transition to weak La Nina (http://www.surfersvillage.com/img/news/0702-elninonanna.jpg)
Work James Hanson of 2012 as the base period only takes a negative phase of the AMO “50 years ago” – hence the result of 3 sigma for the current heat waves.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/05/13129330-blame-blistering-heat-waves-on-global-warming-study-says?lite:
“Science policy expert Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado said Hansen clearly doesn’t understand social science, thinking a study like his could spur action.: “Hansen is pursuing a deeply flawed model of policy change, one that will prove ineffectual and with its most lasting consequence a further politicization of climate science (if that is possible!).”
So this manipulations (also eg base period – negative phase of the AMO) estimates L. Motl, poor climate expert – denier, but an outstanding specialist when it comes to statistical analysis (http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/11/james-hansen-and-3-sigma-proofs.html):
“Let me say in advance that the degree of their sloppiness is so spectacular that they should have been kicked out of the college during the first quantitative exam they attempted to face. Today, it’s too late and we must watch how similar mediocre slackers have contaminated – and help to further contaminate – the scientific community.”
“I can agree that as a result of warming globally eg: significantly increase number a warmer winters, rainfall also will increase, perhaps catastrophic floods, both especially in the summer”
So you’ll all see how reasonable a guy he is, or something like that.
“but,…”
“I don’t agree, never, to grow in number and intensity of heat waves.”
There, unable to be moved by evidence, that’s denial and anti-scientific. Plain and simple.
Now, add some politics (Pielke) and some number juggling (Motl, a real whacko btw!) and you end up with typical denier claptrap.
Let’s not denigrate whackos by comparing them to Lubos.
Georg Cantor and Vincent Van Gogh were real whackos. Motl is something else entirely and I doubt either of those aforementioned gents would take kindly to be compared to him.
Check your facts before posting.
If you bothered to read Hansen et al 2012, it clearly states that the base period is from 1951-1980.
During that time, as seen from the image linked below, the AMO was positive for the 1st 14 yrs of the chosen baseline period.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Atlantic_Multidecadal_Oscillation.svg
If you like you can repeat Hansen’s work using 1930 – 1964 but are you sure that will produce results more to your liking?
By the way, your quote from Pielke Jr is about POLICY, not the validity of his SCIENCE.
Motl’s argument is also flawed when he talks about how hot years and cold years
“tend to clump” and talks about “getting rid of lots of heat” and “continuous functions”
Can he provide the “continuous function” that produces the image below?
Where do you see “getting rid of lots of heat” in that image, after 1976?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Enso-global-temp-anomalies.png
Can you correlate it with the Sun? It doesn’t seem likely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-cycle-data.png
Experiencing this right now here in Adelaide South Oz.
Our state had its secxond hottest summer on record and the nation its hottest and now, in March, heading into our autumn (fall) we’ve had a week -more likea fortnight actually – of temps over 30 degrees celsius (86 Fahrenheit plus) and its forecast to be 38 C (100.4) over the next two days.
Worst of all its not cooling down much overnight either meaning sleep deprivation plus loss of work (I work outside) plus really unpleasant conditions – and unusually humid as well.
Take it from me – Global Overheating and heatwaves suck.
Re: “Worst of all its not cooling down much overnight either meaning sleep deprivation plus loss of work (I work outside) plus really unpleasant conditions”
Your discomfort reminds me of one of the less well understood aspects of heat waves in grain producing regions. It turns out that corn needs cool nights in order to recover from the heat stress of the day or else the production of the cob is greatly distressed. This is what occurred in large areas of the Great Plains and Midwest last summer when daytime temperatures were well above 100 F. and overnight temps often never fell below 80 F. Corn really likes it to get into the high 60s F. at night so that it can recuperate and grow.
So, I suspect that you and I share some basic DNA code with the corn flakes we have for breakfast.
Warm nights may also affect rice growing in India, which, until recently had not seen as dramatic temperature shifts as other regions.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=warmer-nights-india-rice
Article here :
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/03/11/10/50/melbourne-on-the-verge-of-heat-record
noting even one of Australia’s more southerly capitals is being hit by the continuing March heatwave which is breaking records – inthis case nine consecutive days over 30 degrees.
Here in Adelaide its forecast for 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 F) today and 38 tomorrow. Already much too hot to go outside for long.
astrostevo,
What are your overnight temperatures? That’s the crux to our concerns. Here in Oregon, and out on the Great Plains/Midwest last summer, there were way more records set for highest low daily temperature than new daily highs. The point being that it at nighttime when the heat lingers and this is what is so ominous for the future of agriculture.
Today I read that if temperatures rise by 3.5 C. that scientist in China estimate a 38% decrease in crop yields. This is shockingly bad news for about 20% of the human species. They might get agitated. I wouldn’t blame them. Then what?
Resource Wars? http://tinyurl.com/afqu38b