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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.