Heatwaves like the one sweeping Australia today will become more common as the globe warms, with record high temperatures already outpacing record lows by a ratio of three to one, experts said today.
Temperatures are expected to climb past 40 degrees celsius across the country today, with authorities warning of extreme bushfire risk in NSW. Over 130 bushfires had broken out across that state by this afternoon with 40 classified as uncontained, the NSW Rural Fire Service said.
Australia had experienced six days in a row of average temperatures above 39 degrees and another two days were expected, the Bureau of Meteorology said. The previous long run of such high average temperatures was four days, set in 1973.
A long dry spell in inland Australia, fewer cold fronts and the delayed onset of the monsoon in the country’s north had helped create today’s conditions but “the other thing at play here is climate change,” said Dr David Jones, Head of Climate Monitoring and Prediction Services at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
“We know that inland Australia is a degree and a half hotter than it was 50 to 100 years ago. Every single day we have this background warming trend which effectively means the whole climate system operates on a higher base,” he said.
“If you look at maximum temperatures, we are now finding that the rate at which we get record high temperatures is three times faster than the rate at which we get record low temperature.”
In other words, he said, “for every record cold day we see, we get three record hot days.”
“The climate system is really strongly weighted over Australia now towards record heat… that’s quite a profound shift.”
Dr Jones said Australia “was now seeing record hot nights five times more frequently than record cold nights.”
The Bureau of Meteorology has been forced to add new colours to its Interactive Weather and Wave Forecast Maps to illustrate previously unthinkable temperature highs.
The Bureau also released a Special Climate Statement yesterday saying that for the last four months of 2012, “the average Australian maximum temperature was the highest on record with a national anomaly of +1.61 degrees celsius, slightly ahead of the previous record of 1.60 degrees celsius set in 2002 (national records go back to 1910).”
A recent World Bank report warned that the globe may warm by four degrees celsius by the end of this century.
Today’s increased bushfire risk was due to a combination of extreme heat, winds and low humidity, said Dr Jason Sharples, an expert in bushfire risk modelling from the University of NSW’s School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, adding that today’s conditions were “certainly consistent with trends you would expect under global warming.”
Dr Sharples said his research showed that very big bushfires can behave quite unexpectedly, for example by spreading across the wind rather than with the wind.
“There’s still a lack of recognition that when you get these big fires, they can be different beasts and the old methods don’t apply.”
In comments released by the Australian Science Media Centre, Dr Markus Donat, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW, said that his research showed that in most regions globally, “extremely high temperatures have become more frequent and more intense, while extremely low temperatures are occurring less frequently than they did in the middle of the 20th century.”
“Counting the number of very warm days (in this specific case defined as the warmest 5% during the 1951-1980 period), we found that during the most recent three decades 1981-2010, the frequency of days in this warmest category has increased by 40% globally,” he said.
Heat waves cause more harm than any other kind of natural disaster, with the elderly, disabled and people of non-English speaking backgrounds most at risk, according to a new report released today by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility.
People most at risk were also more likely to live in hotter parts of cities, the report said.
Comments on this article are now closed.
John Coochey
Mr
Refresh my memory how much have world temperatures increased in the last sixteen years? And no changing data bases in mid stream.
Fred Pribac
logged in via email @internode.on.net
Considering the interannual through decadal variability of the climate perhaps you should ask: "Please remind us which is the warmest decade on record? And no cherry picking of data please."
Mike Hansen
Mr
There would need to be palm trees growing in Antarctica before the facts penetrate Coochey's "invincible ignorance".
As it happens Skeptical Science have just updated their escalator temp graph for the scientifically illiterate.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/temperatures-continue-up-the-escalator.html
Meanwhile, the BOM have added a new colour (54 C) to the scale to cater for their temperature forecasts for next week.
http://twitter.com/Aus_ScienceWeek/status/288452720019517441/photo/1
Comment removed by moderator.
Comment removed by moderator.
Tim Scanlon
Debunker
John, 0.16 degrees C per decade.
This would be the 100th time you've been told the answer to that question on this website. Best you write it down so you don't forget again.
Comment removed by moderator.
John Coochey
Mr
OK Mike, I will pay you $1000 out of my own pocket if you will publicly debate him. Easy money an instant fame!
Alice Kelly
sole parent
A bit smug? John , While your thinking about money, check out the money trail with some of the sites you visit. The big petroleum companies have all pulled out due to impending and future litigation.
Daryl Deal
retired
“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Danderson
logged in via Twitter
If I start rolling a dice and note each run of 6's which is greater than the previous longest run the record will forever be broken, but it will take more time between each successive record being set.
Reliable temperature records have been kept in Australia for roughly the past 100 years (or semi-reliable). The record that was set 60 years into our 'game' at 1973 took another 40 years to be broken. To me that seems like a long time and should have been broken sooner if hot spells have indeed been on the increase over the course of those 40 years (or 40 % of the game period).
Also one should ask why 39 degrees was selected as the magic number for this record.
Mark Harrigan
Dr
Except that each run of 6's would be interspersed with runs of 1's in an unloaded die (dice is the plural). But a die that was progressively being loaded would have more and more and more 6's and fewer and fewer 1's - oh wait - that's what's happening isn't it?
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_17/shifting.gif
Pesky things facts - they get in the way of pre-disposed ideologies all the time
Wade Macdonald
Technician
I found these two articles (links below) on the history of environmental variability and its effect on humans interesting and thought I would share them here for those interested.
Given these periods of natural variability in climate history and the more recent carbon debate it just throws another spanner in the works for me personally. How much of this excessive freezing in the north and excessive heat in the south, is part of a possible natural sharp variation period potencially exacerbated by the current carbon PPM?
There seems to be so much scientific data on climate change surrounding carbon influence, but where do these scientists who also focus on other areas of climate science sit on said topic?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110921115910.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121226080906.htm
John Nicol
logged in via email @bigpond.com
Wade,
It is interesting that we now have all sorts of comments made about events which are cited as being the "most severe in 30 or 40years, 120 or 160 a hundred years, ...."
One is left wondering what was the cause in the distant past since it appears that only global warming could have caused the most recent serious events!!
Your point is well made Wade, since even the IPCC have fairly recently released the results of a study which showed, as one would expect, that a small amount of…
Read moreAlex Cannara
logged in via LinkedIn
Aha, JohnN is back, trying to fluff the stats a bit, but never dealing with low variance stuff like sea rise, ocean expansion or acidification -- you know John, the things we offered you some tools to go out and measure yourself.
So John, remember the bet offered you a while back about even average world temps? How come you're certainty that IPCC offers you cover prevents you from taking a manly bet about reality?
By the way, as we experienced up here last year, thew results are in...
www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/science/earth/2012-was-hottest-year-ever-in-us.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
And, John, if still bet-shy, have you taken out that bond/trust we taked about, so your descendents will ahve some buffer to the expense of climate change down there, if you, in the remotest event, should be just a teeny bit wrong?
How about letting us know about your care for your kids and theirs, even if you care not about others?
Alex Cannara
logged in via LinkedIn
Wade, if you want historical facts, try studying Milankovitch Cycles, Vostok Ice Core data, etc.
It should become clear we're not entering the ice age we were historically scheduled to begin about now.
From there you can move to isotopic analyses of air/sea carbon and the very clear realities of sea rise, thermal seawater expansion, increasing airborne water vapor, and decreasing ocean pH (acidification).
The relevant molecules are traced to their sources -- our continuing combustion trashing the Carbon Cycle...
http://energyseminar.stanford.edu/node/461 (follow DePaolo papers)
Some other facts...
http://online.wr.usgs.gov/calendar/2012/mar12.html
http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/#seaIce..
Murray Webster
Forestry-Ecology Consultant/Contractor
Fascinating information in those links Wade, I could spend all day reading through that and associated links ( in fact have done before much to the chagrin of my wife).
Personally I don't need the threat of climate change to move from fossil fuels to renewables (or safe nuclear if it can be done). I mean, what are we going to do, just keep digging it all up until there's none left?
Alex Cannara
logged in via LinkedIn
Hi Murray. Up here the Kochs, etc. indeed want us to "just keep digging it all up until there's none left"
In a recent interview, David Koch explained their "30-year plan" which depends on their $ billions outlasting all political entities that might threaten them.
Alice Kelly
sole parent
Excessive freezing in the north, what north, the north pole, and last summers unprecedented melting. Don't think I'll take up your science daily suggestion, sounds a bit like a daily rag. You could follow ruperts tweets about green trees, then really become informed.
Tim Scanlon
Debunker
Thanks for the article. I guess now we can finally get on to stopping greenhouse gas emissions.
Unless of course there is still money to be made destroying the planet.
Comment removed by moderator.
Mike Swinbourne
logged in via Facebook
Thanks for that John.
I haven't seen a good live comedy show for a long time. Monckton should be good for a laugh.
Comment removed by moderator.
Alex Cannara
logged in via LinkedIn
Aha, John thinks, like Monckton, that repeating a false statement (maybe for 16 years) will sway the unsuspecting!
Really, John? Why not take the bet Monckton was afraid to? That inaction says it all, as far as who's lying and who isn't, eh mate!?
;]
Of course Monckton needs the $ to preserve his title. You, John?
Alice Kelly
sole parent
Not just laughing, my advice is the laughers on one side, and hard-core whistles, heckling, and what about those annoying plastic trumpets, on the other side. People, please, on the outside, and inside also, thanks.
Mark Harrigan
Dr
Hey - if he hurries back from NZ he will land in Melbourne just in time for the Comedy Festival!!
Co-incidence? I think not!
(I have it on good authority that Lord Monckton is actually Sacha Baron Cohen - in disguise - it's the middle name that gives it away don't you think?)
Mark Harrigan
Dr
Monckton keeps great company
http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/01/08/fringes-climate-denialist-lord-monckton-and-anti-islam-anti-abortion-creationist-pastor?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
John - how old do you think the earth is??
Bernie Masters
environmental consultant at FIA Technology Pty Ltd, B K Masters and Associates
Oh please, gentlemen (all posters to date are male!), get real. The issue is not about whether global or Australian temperatures have gone up over recent decades - they have - but instead it's about Australia's and the world's response to global climate change. The Gillard government's carbon tax will have virtually no impact on global GHG emissions and, to date, we haven't convinced any other nations to follow our example so the first question that we should seriously and honestly debate is whether…
Read moreAlice Kelly
sole parent
You said it Bernie, We don't need to worry about people dying of heat? What about a raging bushfire. Bjorn Lomberg isn't from around here is he? So what's realistic about telling all those people in danger of charring in tasmania or N.S.W, that they should really be thinking about all those poor people dying of cold, somewhere in the northern hemisphere. The carbon tax, is the start, of further necessary action in Australia. It was never intended to solve the worlds co2 problems. Get Real? phe!
Mike Hansen
Mr
Bernie's argument is just another form of denial.
We have the crude denial of Coochey/Monckton "it is not happening"
Or the slightly less crude denial of Masters/Lomborg "it is happening but it is not bad"
There is no effective difference between the two positions since the policy that flows from both is that we can continue to burn fossil fuels - a policy that Gina Reinhardt would have no issue with.
As to the claim "global warming will save 10s of 1000s of lives" - that claim is equivalent to magic - an assertion that has no factual or scientific basis.
Bernie Masters
environmental consultant at FIA Technology Pty Ltd, B K Masters and Associates
Alice (nice to have a female post for a change), I can understand why you and others want to focus on the close-at-hand, immediate problems or issues facing us, but eventually we have to look at the big picture. Nothing - absolutely nothing - that Australia does in relation to CO2 emissions will make any difference to global climate change so what is our best set of actions that we as a nation should implement to make a difference. And, at the local level, if the world is going to warm by 2 or 4 or 6 degrees over coming decades regardless of our CO2 emission reductions, what should we do in Australia to adapt to the absolutely certain climate changes that we're going to have to live with for the rest of this century?
If the bushfire disasters tell us anything, their message is that we should learn to focus on things that are real, not the potentialities that are highly unlikely to occur.