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Some Crazy Weather, Australian Style — A Trend, or Just Unusual Weather?

March 23, 2010

Weather is not climate. One region is not global climate. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that Australia’s bizarrely hot weather last summer – so hot that Koala’s were abandoning their normally shy habits and bonding closely with humans in return for some much needed water and cooling off — was followed by yet another scorcher this summer.

It turns out, at least in much of Australia, that 2010 was another hot, dry summer. And Western Australia had its hottest summer on record.

It also had one of its driest, as much of Australia remain in a severe 10 year plus drought that has led to rampant wildfires, and reportedly left some of the country’s major rivers close to high and dry.

This has been particularly true in the South, where in the Southeastern Murray – Darling river basin, an estimated10,000 farming families were climatically pushed off their land from’04 through ‘08.  [The drought, which really got going  in 2002 with the "worst drought on record," became so tenacious that in 2007, the state of Queensland planned to introduce recycled sewage for drinking water beginning the following year. At the beginning of 2009, before another dry year was added on top -- the volume of water flowing into the Murray, Australia's main river and once called the "Mighty Murray," was the lowest on record.]

It was so dry these past few months in the Western Australia town of Perth, which had just experienced its driest summer in 113 years, that when one of the freakiest (and costliest) storms in decades hit, at least there was a bona fide silver lining for many — finally, some rain:  Yesterday, the town of Perth was hit with a storm that brought almost a month’s worth of average rainfall in just seven minutes.

The storm also brought hailstones the size of golf balls, landslides, flooding, reported winds of over 70 m.p.h., and likely over $100 million in damage — including the partial collapse of the terminal roof at Perth International Airport where the the rainfall was measured.

What does this mean? When one peruses the climate news for the Australian summer of 2010 — using the search words “Australia, summer, 2010, and “climate change,” near the top is of course a post on the wildly popular disinformation climate site “Watts Up With That?” making a big deal out of the fact that it snowed for the first time in some areas of Australia this past summer; while of course entirely leaving out the more important “also” part of the equation.

Since it was also one of the hottest, and driest, summers on record at the same time the summer’s first snowfalls were also at the same time recorded, this minimal bit of information would seem to be more — albeit slight — empirical support for the inference that the area is getting warmer, and the weather more volatile at the same time.

The idea that weather does not define climate was examined here.  But A. Watts’ “Watts Up With That?” webblog elected to simply re post verbatim excerpts — note that the site often simply reposts large chunks or an entire article verbatim without much or any additional commentary, insight or analysis — from an original snowfall article,with the simple, snarky introduction:

More from the “weather is not climate department.”

Read through the 154 comments to the snowfall article to see if this kind of subtle (and very often not so subtle) ‘arguing’ doesn’t have a profound effect on shaping and misinforming the discussion. Unfortunately, as a perusal of the comments on the site at any point in time aptly illustrate, it does.  (Here’s an interesting related video, which Watts improperly had YouTube take down, and which was then put back up: see from minutes 3:56 on — as the earlier part is peripheral, and it is true, someone does have to defend smokers.)

Not only can a single weather event not necessarily be tied to so called “climate change” – it is rather scientifically silly to do so.  Climate is what it is, over time. Many of our actions invariably effect it. (Normally, minimally, and have been ever since we started building fires many millennia ago, however minutely).  Physics and biology says that when we increase long lived heat trapping atmospheric gases to levels not seen in perhaps millions of years, that the climate will eventually change — if not on a predictable time scale or one that we may want to neatly and clearly “tell us” exactly what is going on.

The question, and it is a complex one — is exactly what type of change, and whether or not that change will involve an increasing number of what we would consider radical, wild, extreme, and even heavily destructive weather events and patterns.

Climate scientists have long predicted that with an ongoing increase in atmospheric heat trapping gases, that this likelihood existed.

Are we seeing it?

One interesting storm in Perth, Australia alone –even following two successive summers of record breaking, and near record breaking, heat and dryness — tells us little to nothing.  But one of the things we will be doing on this blog in the coming months is looking more closely at weather patterns, both over much longer periods of  time, and across the globe, to see if we can get a feel for whether — whatever the cause — weather is in fact changing and becoming more volatile as the casual observations by any keen outdoor observer seem to highly suggest.

New Report Concludes Changing Climate Altering Patterns of Migratory Birds

March 13, 2010

The report, a follow-up to a comprehensive report from a year ago showing that almost one-third of the nation’s birds are either threatened or in “significant decline,” was issued by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Thursday.

From the press release:

“For well over a century, migratory birds have faced stresses such as commercial hunting, loss of forests,  the use of DDT and other pesticides, a loss of wetlands and other key habitat, the introduction of invasive species, and other impacts of human development,” Salazar said. “Now they are facing a new threat–climate change–that could dramatically alter their habitat and food supply and push many species towards extinction.”

The study — take it for what you will — the release notes, was a collaborative effort of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and several leading conservation organizations.

The idea of an apparently changing climate’s effect is not necessarily “news” to anyone who pays close attention to goings on outside in the natural world.  For years, the patterns of migratory birds, for example, have seemed to be shifting. And many birds in the northern hemisphere, for example, have also apparently been making their winter sojourn south at later and later times. The question is whether or not the changes have come too fast for species to fully adapt. Or, perhaps more critically, whether they might be starting to come, or in the near future, might, in such a rapid manner as to increase the rate on non adaptive responses.

Salazar seems to at least be hinting at this possibility, suggesting, whether rightly or wrongly, that birds might once again, so to speak, be a sort of “canary in a coal mine:”

“Just as they did in 1962 when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, our migratory birds are sending us a message about the health of our planet,” Salazar said. “That is why–for the first time ever–the Department of the Interior has deployed a coordinated strategy to plan for and respond to the impacts of climate change on the resources we manage.”

The report covers some of the ways in which a rapidly changing climate can negatively effect already threatened bird populations. Among them, as written in the text of the report:

• Altering habitats, allowing for the increase of invasive species. As invasive species expand, they can outcompete native species, leading to the reduction or loss of native plants and wildlife.
• Spreading disease. Distribution of disease patterns and changes in wildlife occurrence will affect the transmission of diseases. It is also expected that infectious diseases will emerge more frequently and in new areas due to climate change.
• Exacerbating the impacts of storm-surge flooding and shoreline erosion. Increasingly developed coastal communities and rising sea level will limit potential habitat for coastal birds.
• Changing the distribution and availability of surface and ground water. Climate change will constrain water resources, further increasing competition among agricultural, municipal, industrial, and wildlife uses.

Time will tell. At least, according to some scientists, however, it is already.

Climate Change Effect Increasingly Visible and Measurable, Broad Studies Review Concludes

March 08, 2010

New research by Britain’s Met Office reviewed more than 100 recent studies on Climate Change.  The review concludes that is is an “increasingly remote possibility” that human activity is not the main cause of observed climate change.

This is not exactly new news. But it does offer additional recent independent studies consistent with the overwhelming already existent scientific consensus (not to be confused with the very different, and non existent “public consensus” on the issue).

Many skeptics, often without support, assert that any changes we have observed are simply due to “natural cycles” or variation. Even more egregiously, it is often asserted that the bulk, if not all, of observed changes, are due to specific factors, such as volcanic eruption; or, worse, increased solar radiation.

As Peter Stock of the Met Office, who led the review, puts it:

There hasn’t been an increase in solar output for the last 50 years and solar output would not have caused cooling of the higher atmosphere and the warming of the lower atmosphere that we have seen.

Judith Lean led a seminal study in 1998 “Reconstruction of solar irradiance since 1610: Implications for climate change,” that concluded that less than a third of the observed warming since 1970 could be attributed to solar forcing.

Since that time, solar forcing has only decreased. As NASA points out, the earth has actually been in a solar minimum recently (which, all else being equal, would tend to have a slight cooling effect).   And the longer term trend since 1978 has been for a slight cooling effect from solar activity.

Moreover, a new study last month, published in GeoPhysical Research Letters, suggests that even if predictions for an extended period of solar minimum turn out to be correct, it would have only a minimal impact upon climate in comparison to the current anthropogenic atmospheric forcing,so there’s no potential temporary respite from “sun assistance.”

And, as NASA also points out, 2000-2009 was still the warmest decade ever recorded, with 2009 being tied for the second warmest year ever recorded.

However, it should be pointed out that whether it one year or another was the warmest, of seventh warmest, is fairly insignificant.  (This has not stopped disinformants like the Washington Post’s George Will from claiming otherwise.)  What is important to note however, is the longer term trend. As NASA/GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt notes: “The difference between the second and sixth warmest years is trivial because the known uncertainty in the temperature measurement is larger than some of the differences between the warmest years.”

It is worth noting however, that as solar activity alone would have if anything causes a slight decrease in temperatures over the last three of so decades, temperatures increased, with each suceeeding decade (1980-1989, 1990-1999, 2000-2000,) warmer than the one before it.  Yet so called climate change “skeptics” (exhibiting a position which if anything appears skeptical that the basic long term rules of physics apply to atmospheric increases in heat trapping gases when we are the cause) repeatedly assert that observed climate change is due to changes in solar radiation.

The only thing supported by the recent evidence, would be the precise opposite.

South of Australia Got So Hot in Summer 2009, Koalas were Asking People for Water

March 5, 2010

First, the scientific analysis:  This nicely laid out NASA surface map compares the land surface temperature from January 25 to February 1, 2009  to the average mid-summer temperatures the continent experienced between 2000-2008, and shows bizarre land surface temperature anomalies for the last week of January, 2009, or “mid summer.”

In response, Koalas, which are normally shy animals, open it all up for a little agua during the heat wave; or, with soundtrack:

As NASA notes:

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) called this heat wave “exceptional,” not only for the high temperatures but for their duration. One-day records were broken in multiple cities, with temperatures in the mid-40s. In Kyancutta, South Australia, the temperature reached 48.2 degrees Celsius (118.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Many places also set records for the number of consecutive days with record-breaking heat.

Nighttime temperatures broke records, too. In their special statement on the heat wave, the BOM wrote, “On the morning of 29 January, an exceptional event also occurred in the northern suburbs of Adelaide around 3 a.m., when strong north-westerly winds mixed hot air aloft to the surface. At RAAF Edinburgh [a regional airport], the temperature rose to 41.7°C at 3:04 a.m. Such an event appears to be without known precedent in southern Australia.”

A Reuters article around this time, perhaps questionably, called this a “sign” of climate change.  Yet on its own the heat wave means very little. But as is pointed out more relevantly in the article itself, quoting from Penny Wong, Australia’s Climate Change Minister, it is very consistent with climate change:

“Eleven of the hottest years in history have been in the last 12, and we also note, particularly in the southern part of Australia, we’re seeing less rainfall,” Wong told reporters.

“All of this is consistent with climate change, and all of this is consistent with what scientists told us would happen.”

But then, an unusually cold summer would not be inconsistent– which is the part that leaves so many people baffled: Climate change is about long term effects; short term weather patterns are only relevant in so far as they add to the pattern of longer term alteration — with, obviously, the more bizarre effects having slightly greater, but still often slight, relevance to the broader issue.

As Wong notes — with a few minute corrections here (in italics) — is that what is of greater relevance is the fact that the eleven hottest years in modern history have all been in the last thirteen years.

But even longer term periods of seemingly disparate trends have to be looked at without jumping to too many conclusions, as we still don’t understand fully how and why climate precisely shifts in the way that it sometimes does, and would not expect increasing changes to our climate change system to alter inherent natural variability and even shorter term unpredictability. In fact, many climate scientists have suggested for years that both variability, and in particular, unpredictability, may increase.

It is interesting to note that almost a year later, in Melbourne, nighttime temperatures recently reached their record high, set a little over a 100 years past, as Australia seems once again to be observing higher than usual summer range heat. Yet also this summer in Australia, some towns in the Southeastern region saw their first ever recorded summer snowfalls.

As the longer term temperature trends are rising, unambiguously, such events are either meaningless variation, evidence of increasing variation, or part of an increasing array of signs that climate is changing.  Or all three.

At the same time as parts of Australia saw unprecedented snowfall in what is Australia’s summer, globally, the world just experienced its fourth warmest January in modern history, the same month it snowed in Southeastern Australia. (As of this posting, comprehensive monthly temperature records for February are not yet available.)  This followed the eighth warmest December on record, and the fourth warmest November.

Yet continuing the apparent shorter term pattern of increasingly disparate, and seemingly wackier weather — whether, again, by chance, increasing variability, or increasing signs of actual changing climate patterns — the U.S. this very same winter saw  unprecedented huge snowfall combinations in the mid Eastern Atlantic region, record setting, if not bizarre snow, in the Dallas area, while forecasters recently predicted the first snow accumulation in Western Florida since 1933.

Snow does not mean climate is not changing. Seemingly heavier snowfalls along with a continuing warming trend, in fact, is more consistent with the idea that climate is changing, than not.