Australia has been the first continent to be truly ravaged by global warming, suffering through great droughts and floods over the past 20 years, and increasingly catastrophic heat waves and wildfire outbreaks.
As we have pointed out before, the southeastern quarter of that continent has the unique distinction, because of it's flammable eucalypt-based vegetation, and subtropical location allowing occasional strong summer-time heat waves to occur, of being subject to the worst wildfire conditions on the planet.
Over the past few weeks, their latest summer-time heat wave, which are now stronger and more frequent, has made global headlines. Their meteorological service has had to adapt to the changing realities of global warming, by first, in 2009 adding a "Catastrophic" fire danger rating in their fire weather forecasting, and now, this:
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/08
Burning 'Deep Purple': Australia So Hot New Color Added to Index
An 'unparalleled setting of new heat extremes' continues
Deep purple... the Bureau of Meteorology's interactive weather
forecasting chart has added new colors. (Photo: Bureau of
Meteorology)Wild fires continue to rage across Australia Tuesday and temperatures have become so hot the country's Bureau of Meteorology was forced to add a new color—deep purple—to show areas that have exceeded all-time heat records.
Previously the Bureau's heat index was capped at 48°C (118.4°F), but now recorded temperatures of over 50°C (122°F) have pushed the limit of the scale to an unheard of 54°C, which is equivalent to 129°F.
‘‘We are well past the time of niceties, of avoiding the dire nature of what is unfolding, and politely trying not to scare the public."–Liz Hanna, climate scientists
"The scale has just been increased today and I would
anticipate it is because the forecast coming from the bureau's model is showing
temperatures in excess of 50 degrees," David Jones, head of the bureau's climate
monitoring and prediction unit,
told reporters.
Indicating that the worst may yet to come, Jones added that, "The air mass
over the inland is still heating up - it hasn't peaked."Climate scientists in Australia—with Jones among them—say the fires and the heat are unprecedented in scale and intensity, but that Australians should understand the destructive temperatures and ensuing fires across Tasmania and southern sections of the country are the new normal of runaway climate change.
‘The current heatwave – in terms of its duration,
its intensity and its extent – is now unprecedented in our records,’’ Jones was
quoted as saying
in The Age.
‘‘Clearly, the climate system is responding to the background warming trend.
Everything that happens in the climate system now is taking place on a planet
which is a degree hotter than it used to be.’’
“Those of us who spend our days trawling – and
contributing to – the scientific literature on climate change are becoming
increasingly gloomy about the future of human civilization,’’ Liz Hanna,
convener of the human health division at the Australian National University’s
Climate Change Adaptation Network, told The Age in a separate interview.
‘‘We are well past the time of niceties, of avoiding the dire nature of what
is unfolding, and politely trying not to scare the public," she said. "The
unparalleled setting of new heat extremes is forcing the continual upwards
trending of warming predictions for the future, and the timescale is
contracting.’’
Responding
to the news from Australia, The Guardian's Damian Carrington put the
heat and fires in a global context:
We already know that climate change is loading the weather dice. Scientists have shown that the European heatwave of 2003, that caused over 40,000 premature deaths, was made at least twice as likely by climate change. The Russian heatwave of 2010, that killed 50,000 and wiped out $15bn of crops, was made three times as likely by global warming and led to the warmest European summer for 500 years.
The extreme weather forecast is even worse. Mega-heatwaves like these will become five to 10 times more likely over the next 40 years, occurring at least once a decade, scientists predict.
Work by the most authoritative group of scientists, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, found that it is 90% certain that heatwaves will increase further in length and severity, as will extreme high tides. It is 66% likely that hurricanes and typhoon winds will get faster and that intense rain will increase, as well as landslides. It is more likely than not that droughts will intensify in Europe, North and Central America and, most dangerously given the poverty there, Southern Africa. There are uncertainties of course, but the basic physics is that heat-trapping carbon emissions mean more energy is being pumped into the system, increasing climate chaos.The two nations in which the fringe opinions of so-called climate sceptics have been trumpeted most loudly - the US and Australia - have now been hit by record heatwaves and, in the US, superstorm Sandy. The scientists are turning up the volume of their warnings, but whether this leads to loud and clear political action to curb emissions or more shouting from sceptics and the vested fossil fuel interests that support them remains to be seen.
According to the special
bulletin (pdf) on the record heatwave from Australia's Bureau of
Meteorology:
A particular feature of this heatwave event has been the exceptional spatial extent of high temperatures. The table below gives the national and state/territory average maximum temperature for each day of the heatwave event. Australia set a new record for the highest national area-average temperature, recording 40.33 °C and surpassing the previous record set on 21 December 1972 (40.17 °C). To date (data up to the 7 January 2013) the national area-average for each of the first 7 days of 2013 has been in the top 20 hottest days on record, with 6 January the fifth hottest on record and the first time 6 consecutive days over 39 °C has ever been recorded for Australia.
Your lead editor greatly enjoyed the time I spent in Australia in Dec. 2008/Jan. 2009 living and working in Sydney, and came to really enjoy and admire the people and culture of that interesting and wonderful country. Their meteorological and climatological services are on the forefront of global warming science/research, with good reason, as they are among the most vulnerable of countries on the planet now, as warming intensifies. The agricultural areas in South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales, are very vulnerable to drought, and already they are facing difficulties allocating the water necessary for irrigation of crops, in addition to the annually increasing danger from catastrophic heat waves and wildfires. This will only be getting worse in the coming decades there.
Meanwhile, in the US lower 48, you probably are already aware that 2012 has now been officially declared to have been the hottest since accurate temperature records have begun. And in looking at other trends, for example, the ratio between the setting of record low temperatures, versus record highs, the trend becomes quite clear. The intense drought of 2012 in the Central U.S. also has been the worst since the 1930s, and as it is forecast to continue for at least a few more months, if not longer, may end up surpassing those of the "dust-bowl" years.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/noaa-2012-was-warmest-and-second-most-extreme-year-on-record-15436
NOAA: 2012 Hottest & 2nd-Most Extreme Year On Record
It’s official: 2012 was the warmest year on record in the lower 48 states, as the country experienced blistering spring and summer heat, tinderbox fire weather conditions amid a widespread drought, and one of the worst storms to ever strike the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2012 had an average temperature of 55.3°F, which eclipsed 1998, the previous record holder, by 1°F. That was just off Climate Central’s calculation in mid-December, which projected an expected value of 55.34°F, based on historical data.
The 1°F difference from 1998 is an unusually large margin, considering that annual temperature records are typically broken by just tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. In fact, the entire range between the coldest year on record, which occurred in 1917, and the previous record warm year of 1998 was just 4.2°F.
The year consisted of the fourth-warmest winter, the warmest spring, second-warmest summer, and a warmer-than-average fall. With an average temperature that was 3.6°F above average, July became the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous U.S. The average springtime temperature in the lower 48 was so far above the 1901-2000 average — 5.2°F, to be exact — that the country set a record for the largest temperature departure for any season on record.
"Climate change has had a role in this [record],” said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. He said it isn't clear yet exactly how much of the temperature record was due to climate change compared to natural variability, but that it's unlikely such a record would have occurred without the long-term warming trend caused in large part by emissions of greenhouse gases.
During the summer, nearly 100 million people experienced 10 or more days with temperatures greater than 100°F, which is about one-third of the nation’s population, NOAA reported.
With 34,008 daily high temperature records set or tied the year compared to just 6,664 daily record lows — a ratio of about five high temperature records for every one low temperature record — 2012 was no ordinary weather year in the U.S. It wasn’t just the high temperatures that set records, though. Overnight low temperatures were also extremely warm, and in a few cases the overnight low was so warm that it set a high temperature record, a rare feat.
Even more astonishing is the imbalance between all-time records. According to data from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, there were 356 all-time high temperature records set or tied across the entire U.S. in 2012, compared to four all-time low temperature records. All of the all-time record lows occurred in Hawaii.
As the climate has warmed during the past several decades, there has been a growing imbalance between record daily high temperatures in the contiguous U.S. and record daily lows. A study published in 2009 found that rather than a 1-to-1 ratio, as would be expected if the climate were not warming, the ratio has been closer to 2-to-1 in favor of warm temperature records during the past decade (2000-2009). This finding cannot be explained by natural climate variability alone, the study found, and is instead consistent with global warming.
Driven largely by the warm temperatures and the massive drought, one measure of extreme weather conditions, known as the Climate Extremes Index, shows that it was the second-most extreme year on record, second only to 1998. Studies show that in response to global warming, some extreme events, such as heat waves, are already becoming more likely to occur and more intense.
Nineteen states had their warmest year on record in 2012, mainly in the Plains and Midwest, where summer heat and drought was the most intense. An additional 26 states had one of their top 10 warmest years on record. Remarkably, every state in the lower 48 experienced an above-average annual temperature.
The extreme heat is even more vivid when examined at the local level. Cities such as New York, Boston, Washington, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Denver, Des Moines, and Chicago all set records for their warmest year.
Marquette, Mich., which is well-known for its cold and snowy winters, not only set a record for the warmest year, but also set a record for the most amount of days above freezing (32°F) in a single year, with 293 such days, and the number of consecutive days above freezing, with 237.
In Des Moines, which set a record for its warmest year smashing the old 1931 record by 1.5°F, it was the first year not to reach 0°F. In addition, March had the largest monthly temperature departure from average of any month on record there, coming in at 16.4°F above average.
The year was also characterized by extreme drought, and two states — Nebraska and Wyoming — also had their driest year on record. Eight more states had annual precipitation totals that ranked in the bottom 10.
At its maximum extent in July, drought conditions encompassed 61 percent of the nation, with the most intense conditions in the Great Plains, West, and Midwest. The nationally averaged annual precipitation total was 2.57 inches below average, making 2012 the 15th-driest year, and the driest year since 1988, which also featured a major drought.
The drought of 2011-12, which is still ongoing, is comparable in size to severe droughts that occurred in the 1950s, and is already being blamed for more than $35 billion in crop losses alone, according to the reinsurance company Aon Benfield. In fact, it’s quite possible that damage from the drought will eclipse the total bill from Hurricane Sandy, which some estimates place at more than $100 billion. Overall, the drought could end up robbing the limping U.S. economy’s GDP of a full percentage point, said Deutsche Bank Securities.
The drought was instigated in large part of very low snow cover and warm temperatures during the winter of 2011, and record warmth during the spring, which allowed for an early start to the growing season and depleted soil moisture earlier than normal. The record March heat wave put the drought into overdrive, accelerating its development across the Plains and Midwest in particular.
The drought conditions created ideal conditions for wildfires, as 9.2 million acres went up in smoke in the West, the third-highest on record.
The same weather patterns that led to the drought helped suppress severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, with a final tornado count that is likely to be under 1,000, which would be the fewest twisters since 2002.
According to NOAA, the year saw 11 natural disasters that cost at least $1 billion in losses, including Hurricane Sandy, which struck the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on October 29-30. Globally, 2012 is expected to be ranked as the eighth-warmest year on record, with that announcement coming later in the month.
Related Content:
Sandy Tops List of 2012 Extreme Weather and Climate Events
Four Major Heat Records Fall in Stunning NOAA Report
Book It: The Hottest Year on Record
2012 Heat Wave is Historic, If Not Unprecedented
Coverage of 2012 Summer Heat Waves
U.S. Drought is Most Severe Since 1950s, Report Says
Ongoing Coverage of Historic Drought in U.S.
Meanwhile, here in Alaska, global warming deniers, usually sponsored by the fossil-fuel industry, have been using what has been happening in our climate to try and deny/downplay the global problem of the overall warming of the planet, irrespective of regional anomalies.
As the article below describes, Alaska from the Brooks Range south (but not the Arctic Coastal Plain) has actually had a cooling trend in the first decade of this century, due to the change in phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toascj/articles/V006/111TOASCJ.pdf
What is the PDO?
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
"The "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" (PDO) is a long-lived El Niño-like pattern of Pacific climate variability. While the two climate oscillations have similar spatial climate fingerprints, they have very different behavior in time. Fisheries scientist Steven Hare coined the term "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" (PDO) in 1996 while researching connections between Alaska salmon production cycles and Pacific climate (his dissertation topic with advisor Robert Francis). Two main characteristics distinguish PDO from El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO): first, 20th century PDO "events" persisted for 20-to-30 years, while typical ENSO events persisted for 6 to 18 months; second, the climatic fingerprints of the PDO are most visible in the North Pacific/North American sector, while secondary signatures exist in the tropics - the opposite is true for ENSO. Several independent studies find evidence for just two full PDO cycles in the past century: "cool" PDO regimes prevailed from 1890-1924 and again from 1947-1976, while "warm" PDO regimes dominated from 1925-1946 and from 1977 through (at least) the mid-1990's. Shoshiro Minobe has shown that 20th century PDO fluctuations were most energetic in two general periodicities, one from 15-to-25 years, and the other from 50-to-70 years.
http://ingrid.ldeo.columbia.edu/%28/home/alexeyk/mydata/TSsvd.in%29readfile/.SST/.PDO/
Major changes in northeast Pacific marine ecosystems have been correlated with phase changes in the PDO; warm eras have seen enhanced coastal ocean biological productivity in Alaska and inhibited productivity off the west coast of the contiguous United States, while cold PDO eras have seen the opposite north-south pattern of marine ecosystem productivity. Causes for the PDO are not currently known. Likewise, the potential predictability for this climate oscillation are not known. Some climate simulation models produce PDO-like oscillations, although often for different reasons. The mechanisms giving rise to PDO will determine whether skillful decades-long PDO climate predictions are possible. For example, if PDO arises from air-sea interactions that require 10 year ocean adjustment times, then aspects of the phenomenon will (in theory) be predictable at lead times of up to 10 years. Even in the absence of a theoretical understanding, PDO climate information improves season-to-season and year-to-year climate forecasts for North America because of its strong tendency for multi-season and multi-year persistence. From a societal impacts perspective, recognition of PDO is important because it shows that "normal" climate conditions can vary over time periods comparable to the length of a human's lifetime."
What has been happening in Alaska, with our overall warming trend over the past century, is that it has occurred in steps, rather than as a slow, steady increase. Due to changes in overall atmospheric circulation patterns caused by changes in phase of the PDO, and other effects. And as the following research shows, distinct changes in late spring snow-cover seen across the entire Northern Hemisphere are still quite prominent in Alaska as well.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=80102&src=ve
Snow Cover Extent Declines in the Arctic January 8, 2013
In the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, snow typically covers the land surface for nine months each year. The snow serves as a reservoir of water, and a reflector of the Sun’s energy, but recent decades have witnessed significant changes in snow cover extent. Studies of snow cover published in Geophysical Research Letters and the Arctic Report Card: Update for 2012 found that, between 1979 and 2012, June snow cover extent decreased by 17.6 percent per decade compared to the 1979–2000 average.
The maps on this page show June snow cover extent anomalies for every third year from 1967 through 2012. Each June’s snow cover is compared to the 1971–2000 mean. Above-average extent appears in shades of blue, and below-average extent appears in shades of orange. Toward the beginning of the series, above-average extents predominate. Toward the end of the series, below-average extents predominate.
The graph shows June snow cover in millions of square kilometers from 1967 through 2012, and the overall decline in snow cover is consistent with the changes shown in the maps. The graph and maps are based on data from the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab.
The snow-cover study authors, Chris Derksen and Ross Brown, found an overall decline in snow cover from 1967 through 2012, and also detected an acceleration of snow loss after the year 2003. Between June 2008 and June 2012, North America experienced three record-low snow cover extents. In Eurasia, each successive June from 2008 to 2012 set a new record for the lowest snow cover extent yet recorded for that month.
Previous research identified a link between rising air temperatures and shrinking snow cover, so Derksen and Brown were not surprised to see an overall loss of snow, “But we were surprised at the continued broken records of June Arctic snow cover extent over the past five years,” says Brown. “Arctic spring snow cover typically fluctuates over cycles of about three to four years so you don’t expect to see sequences of decreasing snow cover persisting through these natural cycles.”
As with sea ice, declining snow cover extent means decreasing albedo. The overall “whiteness” of an object determines how much sunlight it reflects back into space. Snow has very high albedo, reflecting up to 90 percent of the sunlight it receives. As snow cover declines, dark soils and vegetation absorb more of the Sun’s energy. The Geophysical Research Letters study pointed out that declining snow cover raises ground temperatures and increases the thickness of the active layer—the uppermost layer of permafrost that thaws each summer. When organic material in thawing permafrost decomposes, it can release methane, a potent greenhouse gas when released to the atmosphere.
Anticipating future changes in Arctic snow cover poses challenges for researchers. “Changes in fall snow cover are complicated because the longer open-water season provides additional moisture for increasing snowfall,” Brown says. “As for future snow cover, climate is strongly influenced by interannual variability over periods of five to ten years, so that time range is hard to predict. But global climate models show the rate of Arctic snow cover decline speeding up over the long term.”
References
- National Snow and Ice Data Center. (2012, September 19) Arctic sea ice reaches lowest extent for the year and the satellite record. Accessed October 2, 2012.
- Derksen, C., Brown, R. (2012) Spring snow cover extent reductions in the 2008–2012 period exceeding climate model projections. Geophysical Research Letters. 39, L19504.
- Derksen, C., Brown, R. (2012, November 7) Snow. Arctic Report Card: Update for 2012. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Accessed January 4, 2013.
- Brown, R., Derksen, C., Wang, L. (2010) A multi-data set analysis of variability and change in Arctic spring snow cover extent, 1967–2008. Journal of Geophysical Research, 115, D16111.
Image by Robert Simmon, using data from the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab.
So, no, just because Alaska has had a small cooling trend during the first decade of this century, does not mean it is a safe harbour from the ravages of global warming/climate change, occurring over the entire planet. It is still warmer overall than say, 40-50 years ago. And when the PDO changes phase again, an abrupt jump in average temperatures will occur, to a new, higher state, south of the Brooks Range. In addition, increasingly higher amounts of heat energy and moisture available in a warmed atmosphere to the south of Alaska, combined with our cooler conditions, provides more fuel for stronger storms to occur here.
Which in winter, often now bring abrupt changes not seen previously as often in South-Central and interior Alaska, warm-ups with rain, followed by heavy snows, or freezes which leave icy roads/trails to persist all the rest of the winter.
A fact that all Alaskans have had to reconcile with. No, we are not a "safe harbour". Cheers.
