Climate change
Peter
Wu
7
March 2013
Another article from New
York Time about the extreme weather Australia has been experiencing.
Queensland has had way
too much rain. A large chunk of Surfer’s Paradise beach has been washed away.
Tourists are not coming.
Kiwiland is not
immune to this as we have had an exceptionally dry summer. Much of the North
Island has just been declared a drought stricken region. While some crops like
tomatoes and melon fruits are thriving, dairy farmers are suffering. Brace for
rises in dairy and meat prices.
Attachment
By MATT SIEGEL
SYDNEY, Australia — Climate change was a major driving force
behind a string of extreme weather events that alternately scorched and soaked
large sections of Australia in recent months, according to a report issued
Monday by the government’s Climate Commission.
A blistering four-month
heat wave during the Australian summer culminated in January in bush fires that
tore through the eastern and southeastern coasts of the country, where most
Australians live. Those record-setting temperatures were followed by torrential
rains and flooding in the more densely populated states of New South Wales and
Queensland that left at least six people dead and caused roughly $2.43 billion
in damage along the eastern seaboard.
Climate scientists have
long been hesitant to link individual weather events directly to climate
change.
Australian climate
scientists in particular have been cautious to connect the two in part because
of the country’s naturally occurring cycles of drought and flooding rains,
which are already extreme when compared with much of the rest of the world. But
the report from the Climate Commission, titled “The Angry Summer,” argues that
the frequency and ferocity of recent extreme weather events indicates an
acceleration that is unlikely to abate unless serious steps are taken to
prevent further changes to the planet’s environment.
“I think one of the best
ways of thinking about it is imagining that the base line has shifted,” Tim
Flannery, the commission’s leader, told the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation. “If an athlete takes steroids, for example,” he said, “their base
line 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.”
The commission is an
independent panel of experts that issues reports on behalf of the government
but is not subject to its direction or oversight.
At least 123 weather
records fell during the 90-day period the report examined. Included were
milestones like the hottest summer on record, the hottest day for Australia as
a whole and the hottest seven consecutive days ever recorded.
To put it into perspective, in the 102 years since Australia began gathering
national records, there have been 21 days where the country averaged more than
102 Fahrenheit (39 degrees Celsius), and eight of them were in 2013.
The author of the report,
Will Steffen, said that the findings were consistent with an overall global
acceleration of weather factors like rising temperatures and heavier rains
attributed by scientists to human-caused climate change.
“Over the last 50 years,
we’ve seen a doubling of the record hot days, we’re getting twice
as much record hot weather than we did in the mid-20th century,” he told
ABC. “In fact, if you look at the last decade, we’re getting three times as many
record hot days as we are record cold days, so the statistics are telling us
too that there’s an influence on extreme events — they’re shifting.”
“Statistically, there is
a 1-in-500 chance that we are talking about natural variation causing all these
new records,” Mr. Steffen, director of the Climate Change Institute at
Australian National University, told The Sydney
Morning Herald. “Not too many people would want to put their life
savings on a 500-to-1 horse.”