Weather bureau says hottest, driest year on record led to extreme bushfire season

It’s the first time since overlapping records began that Australia experienced both its lowest rainfall and highest temperatures in the same year.
dan HIMBRECHTS/AAP

David Jones, Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Karl Braganza, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and Skie Tobin, Australian Bureau of Meteorology

The Bureau of Meteorology’s annual climate statement released today confirms 2019 was the nation’s warmest and driest year on record. It’s the first time since overlapping records began that Australia experienced both its lowest rainfall and highest temperatures in the same year.

The national rainfall total was 37mm, or 11.7%, below the 314.5 mm recorded in the previous driest year in 1902. The national average temperature was nearly 0.2°C above the previous warmest year in 2013.

Globally, 2019 is likely to be the second-warmest year, with global temperatures about 0.8 °C above the 1961–1990 average. It has been the warmest year without the influence of El Niño.

Across the year, Australia experienced many extreme events including flooding in Queensland and large hail in New South Wales. However, due to prolonged heat and drought, the year began and ended with fires burning across the Australian landscape.

---

Read more:
‘This crisis has been unfolding for years’: 4 photos of Australia from space, before and after the bushfires

---

Part of Menindee Lakes on the Darling River, which is under pressure from low water flow as a result of the prolonged drought.
Dean Lewins/AAP

The effect of the long dry

Bushfire activity for the 2018–19 season began in late November 2018, when fires burned along a 600km stretch of the central Queensland coast. Widespread fires later followed across Victoria and Tasmania throughout the summer.

Persistent drought and record temperatures were a major driver of the fire activity, and the context for 2019 lies in the past three years of drought.

The dry conditions steadily worsened over 2019, resulting in Australia’s driest year on record, with area-average rainfall of just 277.6mm (the 1961–1990 average is 465.2 mm).

---

---

Almost the entire continent experienced rainfall in the lowest 10th percentile over the year.

Record low rainfall affected the central and southern inland regions of the continent and the north-eastern Murray–Darling Basin straddling the NSW and Queensland border. Many weather stations over central parts of Australia received less than 30mm of rainfall for the year.

Every capital city recorded below average annual rainfall. For the first time, national rainfall was below average in every month.

---

---

Record heat dominates the nation

2019 was Australia’s warmest year on record, with the annual mean temperature 1.52°C above the 1961–1990 average, surpassing the previous record of 1.33°C above average in 2013.

January, February, March, April, July, October, November, and December were all amongst the ten warmest on record for Australian mean temperature for their respective months, with January and December exceeding their previous records by 0.98°C and 1.08°C respectively.

Maximum temperatures recorded an even larger departure from average of +2.09°C for the year. This is the first time the nation has seen an anomaly of more than 2 °C, and about half a degree warmer than the previous record in 2013.

---

---

The year brought the nation’s six hottest days on record peaking at 41.9°C
(December 18), the hottest week 40.5 °C (week ending December 24), hottest month 38.6 °C (December 2019), and hottest season 36.9 °C (summer 2018–19).

The highest temperature for the year was 49.9 °C at Nullarbor (a new national December record) on December 19 and the coldest temperature was –12.0°C at Perisher Valley on June 20.

Keith West in southeast South Australia recorded a maximum 49.2°C on December 20, while Dover in far southern Tasmania saw 40.1°C on March 2, the furthest south such high temperatures have been observed in Australia.

Accumulating fire danger over 2019

The combination of prolonged record heat and drought led to record fire weather over large areas throughout the year, with destructive bushfires affecting all states, and multiple states at once in the final week of the year.

Many fires were difficult to contain in regions where drought has been severe, such as northern NSW and southeast Queensland, or where below average rainfall has been persistent, such as southeast Australia.

The Forest Fire Danger Index, a measure of fire weather severity, accumulated over the month of December was the highest on record for that month, and the highest for any month when averaged over the whole of Australia.

---

---

Record-high daily index values for December were recorded at the very end of December around Adelaide and the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, East Gippsland in Victoria and the Monaro in NSW. These regions which experienced significant fire activity.

Don’t forget the floods

Amidst the dry, 2019 also included significant flooding across Queensland and the eastern Top End.

Heavy rain fell from January into early February, with damaging floods around Townsville and parts of the western Peninsula and Gulf Country.

Tropical cyclone Trevor brought further heavy rainfall in April in the eastern Northern Territory and Queensland. Floodwaters eventually reached Lake Eyre/Kati Thanda which, amidst severe local rainfall deficiencies in South Australia, experienced its most significant filling since 2010–11.

There was a notable absence of rainfall on Australia’s snow fields during winter and spring which meant less snow melt. Snow cover was generous, particularly at higher elevations.

A Townsville resident removes damaged items from a house after the Townsville floods in early 2019.
Dan Peled/AAP

What role did climate change play in 2019?

The climate each year reflects random variations in weather, slowly evolving natural climate drivers such as El Niño, and long-term trends through the influence of climate change.

A strong and long-lived positive Indian Ocean Dipole – another natural climate driver – affected Australia from May until the end of the year, and played a major role in suppressing rainfall and raising temperatures for much of the year.

Spring brought an unusual breakdown of the southern polar vortex which allowed westerly winds to affect mainland Australia. This reduced rainfall, raising temperature and contributing to the increased fire risk.

Climate change continues to cause long-term changes to Australia’s climate. Conditions in 2019 were consistent with trends of declining rainfall in parts of the south, worsening fire seasons and rising temperatures.

---

Read more:
Australia can expect far more fire catastrophes. A proper disaster plan is worth paying for

---

David Jones, Climate Scientist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Karl Braganza, Climate Scientist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and Skie Tobin, Climatologist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Advertisement

2016 is likely to be the world’s hottest year: here’s why

Andrew King, University of Melbourne and Ed Hawkins, University of Reading

We’re not even halfway through the year but already you may have heard talk of 2016 being the hottest on record. But how can scientists be so sure we’re going to beat the previous record, set just last year?

Even before the end of 2015, the UK Met Office was forecasting with 95% confidence that 2016 would beat the record. Since then, that confidence has grown still further, as record after record has tumbled. April 2016 broke the record for the hottest April after we had experienced the hottest February and March on record already this year.

NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt recently estimated at least a 99% likelihood of 2016 being hotter than 2015.

The role of El Niño

The main reason why scientists are so sure that 2016 will be the hottest year is El Niño, which is associated with warmer sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The 2015-16 El Niño was among the strongest on record and has increased global average temperatures.

Even though the El Niño is now decaying, the second year of a major El Niño event is often associated with much warmer than normal conditions and is typically warmer than the first.

For instance, the 1997-98 El Niño was by some measures the strongest on record, and contributed to 1998 becoming the hottest year on record globally at the time.

Since the start of this year, we have seen global temperature records smashed time and time again. This means that much colder temperatures for the second half of the year would be needed for 2016 not to surpass the 2015 record.

Even a strong La Niña event (the cooler opposite of El Niño), which some analysts are forecasting, is unlikely to produce cold enough temperatures.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

One thing that could prevent 2016 becoming a record-breaking hot year is a major volcanic eruption in the tropics. Volcanic eruptions at low latitudes can eject aerosols high into the atmosphere reducing the amount of energy from the sun reaching the Earth’s surface.

Previous eruptions such as Pinatubo in 1991 and Tambora in 1815 (which caused 1816 to be “the year without a summer”) reduced temperatures across much of the globe.

However, it is the year after the eruption that often experiences the most severe cooling, so an eruption would have to be pretty soon and very strong to scupper 2016’s chances of being the hottest year on record.

What about climate change?

The role of climate change is smaller because we’re comparing 2016 with last year (the previous record). Over such short periods of time, the contribution from global warming doesn’t change much.

However, scientists estimated that 2015 was about 1℃ hotter than it would have been without human-caused climate change. As the human influence on the climate has not increased greatly since last year this 1℃ estimate will also apply to 2016.

The highly likely record temperature of 2016 will join the previous 17 record-breaking hot years back to 1937 which were all made more likely due to human-caused climate change (the rising global temperatures were even noticed as far back as 1938).

So even if El Niño is driving the 2016 record, we can say that the temperatures of this year (and indeed the temperatures associated with all the records over the last few years) would be virtually impossible without climate change.

Climate change has been increasing the likelihood of global temperature records for many decades. The vertical red bars show the record-breaking hot years we can attribute to human-induced climate change. The shorter yellow bars show ranges of estimates for how much more likely a record hot year becomes each year.
Andrew King, Author provided

An omen for the future?

We expect 2016 to beat the 2015 record for global average temperature as the decaying El Niño event pushes up surface temperatures.

This year, we’ve already seen devastating events associated with unusually warm temperatures, like the mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef, which has been largely attributed to human-induced climate change.

In future, we can expect to see more extreme heat events, like we’ve already seen in 2016, impacting society and ecosystems across the world.

And even though 2016 is likely to be the hottest year by some margin, we wouldn’t bet on this record lasting too long. While 2017 is very likely to be cooler due to a possible La Niña, with the strong warming trend the world’s experiencing it’s only a matter of time before we have another record-breaking hot year.

Only if we substantially reduce our greenhouse gas emissions now will we see the benefit of fewer record heat events in the future.

Andrew King, Climate Extremes Research Fellow, University of Melbourne and Ed Hawkins, Associate professor of climate science , University of Reading

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

It’s official: 2015 was the hottest year ever recorded

Janette Lindesay, Australian National University and Mark Howden, CSIRO

It’s official: 2015 was the hottest year on record. The US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has confirmed overnight that 2015 saw the global average temperature climbing to 0.90°C above the 20th-century average of 13.9°C. The record has been confirmed by the UK Met Office.

It’s been only a year since the record was previously broken, but 2015 stands out as an extraordinarily hot year. 2014, the previous hottest year, was 0.74°C above the global average. December 2015 marks the first time in the NOAA record a global monthly temperature anomaly has exceeded 1°C – it reached 1.11°C.

Every month since February 1985 has been warmer than average, and 2015 is the 39th consecutive year with above-average annual temperatures in an uninterrupted run that began in the mid 1970s. Ten months in 2015 beat previous records for those months.

The evidence that the so-called “global warming hiatus” is over is compelling – if it ever existed.

https://charts.datawrapper.de/9RvfW/index.html

Air temperatures over the land rose markedly to a new record of 1.33°C above average, and ocean temperatures also reached a new record anomaly of 0.74°C in 2015. The global ocean has absorbed up to 90% of the excess heat retained or accumulated by human activities since the industrial revolution, and ocean temperatures show clear warming trends both at the surface and deep down.

In 2015/2016 a strong El Niño event is bringing some of that heat buried in the ocean back to the surface.

The “perfect storm”

Global temperatures are influenced by both natural and human factors.

2015 saw the development of an El Niño event classed as one of the three strongest on record, comparable to those of 1982/83 and 1997/98.

These events are linked to higher global air temperatures. Since 1850 many of the warmest years have also been El Niño years. El Niño events are driven by changes in the winds across the Pacific Ocean, which move warm water from the western Pacific to the east.

In 2015 central Pacific sea surface temperatures were more than 3°C above average over an area of approximately 5.5 million square kilometres, around 70% of the size of the Australian continent. Air temperatures increase during El Niño events as heat is transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere.

Sea surface temperature anomalies, Oct-Dec 2015 showing the characteristic El Niño pattern of increases across the central to eastern Pacific
NOAA

But a strong El Niño event alone is not sufficient to account for the 2015 record temperature anomaly.

In May 2015 carbon dioxide concentrations reached a monthly value of 403.9 parts per million (ppm) – the highest ever recorded. The average concentration of CO₂ in 2015 may exceed 400 pppm for the first time in human history. CO₂ is the one of the principal greenhouse gases responsible for human-induced global warming.

Since 2008 the CO₂ concentration has increased by an average of 2.1 ppm per year, largely due to fossil fuel and land-use emissions, emphasising the significant impact of human activity on the atmosphere.

CO₂ concentrations now exceed pre-industrial levels by more than 40%, and the likelihood of this increase and the associated warming being due only to natural factors is vanishingly small.

Carbon dioxide exceeded 400 ppm in 8 months in 2015.
NOAA

Climate extremes everywhere

Across the globe 2015 was characterised by weather and climate extremes from floods and severe storms to droughts and heatwaves.

In Australia climate conditions are being pushed beyond our historical experience of natural climate variability and into new territory. Global warming has increased the likelihood of record-breaking temperatures by up to 100 times.

In 2015 records were broken once again across Australia, in a series of high temperature events particularly in Western Australia (January), Queensland (March), and the south-eastern states (October, November and December).

The Bureau of Meteorology 2015 Annual Climate Statement highlights October as particularly noteworthy. October 2015 was 2.89℃ warmer than the average October inn Australia. While this doesn’t make October the hottest month overall (that title still belongs to the summer months), it is the largest margin by which a monthly record has ever been broken.

High temperatures broke the internet (literally); led to cancelled sporting events in Victoria and South Australia; and added to severe bushfire conditions in several states.

October 2015 warmest on record with largest temperature anomaly.
Australia Bureau of Meteorology

In response to concerns about this ongoing warming and the associated heat extremes, the wine industry is exploring adaptation options including changing grape varieties; cereal crop, fruit, vegetable and milk producers are trying to reduce the impact of heatwaves and droughts on yields; and we need to change our behaviour and infrastructure to deal with the health impacts of more extreme temperatures and more frequent heatwaves.

We are all affected by global warming.

The necessity of mitigation

The climate and weather impacts of 2015 in Australia are examples of what is happening around the globe, adding to the overwhelming body of evidence of the reality and impacts of global warming.

The combination of a strong El Niño event with ongoing human-induced warming of the ocean and atmosphere set up the conditions for 2015. It is unlikely to be the last such record.

El Niño events are part of natural climate variability and will continue to occur, and until greenhouse gas emissions are reduced at least in line with the Paris Climate Agreement global temperatures will continue to rise for the foreseeable future.

As agreed by the governments of the world at the Paris UNFCCC meeting, the need for effective and urgent local, national and global action to reduce emissions has never been more pointed.

Janette Lindesay, Professor of Climatology, Australian National University and Mark Howden, Research Scientist, Agriculture Flagship, CSIRO

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

2015 to be hottest year ever: World Meteorological Organization

Paul Yacoumis, The Conversation

2015 will likely be the hottest year on record, according to a preliminary analysis released by the World Meteorological Organization. Worldwide temperatures are expected for the first time to reach more than 1℃ above pre-industrial temperatures.

The five years from 2011-2015 will also likely be the hottest five-year period on record. Average global atmospheric CO₂ concentrations over three months also hit 400 parts per million for the first time during the southern hemisphere Autumn this year. On top of this, we are experiencing one of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded.

According to Dr Karl Braganza, head of climate monitoring at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, these climate milestones are both symbolic and highly significant.

“One degree is half way to the 2 degree guardrail of warming that the global community is aiming for in terms of future climate change,” Dr Braganza said.

“400 parts per million of CO₂ in the atmosphere is a composition that the climate system has not likely seen in probably the past 2.5 million years.”

In Australia, 2015 is likely to fall into the top 10 warmest years on record, all of which have occurred this century.

Dr Braganza said that record breaking hot weather was now six times more likely than it was early last century. Meanwhile, the oceans continue to warm at an alarming rate.

“About 90% of the additional heat from the advanced greenhouse effect goes into warming the oceans,” he said.

This is particularly worrying as any change to sea temperature is potentially very significant in terms of impacts on Australia’s weather, from droughts to flooding rains.

Dr David Karoly, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Melbourne, said that there was little doubt as to the cause of the warming.

“It is now all but certain that 2015 will be the hottest year since record keeping began.

“The new record high global temperature in 2015 is mainly due to human-caused global warming, with smaller contributions from El Niño and from other natural climate variations,” Dr Karoly said.

According to calculations by Karoly and colleagues as part of the World Weather Attribution Project coordinated by Climate Central, temperatures will likely reach around 1.05℃ above pre-industrial temperatures. Of this, about 1℃ can be attributed to the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, about 0.05ºC-0.1ºC to El Niño, and about 0.02ºC to higher solar activity. The numbers don’t quite add up to 1.05℃ due to uncertainties and natural variability.

The World Meteorological Organization statement comes as world leaders are set to meet in Paris next week to begin the next round of negotiations on taking action against climate change.

Comments compiled with the assistance of the Australian Science Media Centre.

Paul Yacoumis, Editorial intern, Environment & Energy, The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

2014 was the hottest year on record

Video: A Forest Year

Elephant: 35 000 Killed in a Year

The link below is to an article reporting on the death toll for elephants in just one year – 35 000 individuals.

For more, visit:
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/30/11467687-slaughtered-for-their-ivory-up-to-35000-elephants-slain-in-one-year-charity-says

Holiday: Destination Decided

I’m fairly sure that I have now arrived at a decision as to my destination for my upcoming holiday. I’m fairly sure I’ll be going to Uluru, probably King’s Canyon and also some places around Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. It seems like a fairly good time of the year to head that way.

I also have a date for the holiday and I will be away for two weeks.

More to come as I plan the trip.

EARTH HOUR: A COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME???

Earth Hour is to be held this Saturday (March 28) between 8.30 pm and 9.30 pm. All you need to do to take part in Earth Hour is simply turn your lights off for the hour between 8.30 pm and 9.30 pm on March 28.

Earth Hour began as an annual event in Sydney in 2007, when an estimated 2.2 million buildings switched off their lights for an hour. This year Earth Hour is going global for the second year and is giving people the opportunity to ‘vote’ for either the Earth or global warning. By switching off the lights for an hour a person can ‘vote’ for fighting global warning.

Organisers of Earth Hour are hoping some 1 billion people will ‘vote’ for the Earth and hope to be able to give world leaders 1 billion ‘votes’ for the Earth at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. The conference is the forum in which world leaders will determine policy to supersede the Kyoto Protocol on Greenhouse Gas reduction.

For more on Earth Hour visit the official website at:

http://www.earthhour.org  

However, is Earth Hour a colossal waste of time? What is really being gained by turning the lights off for an hour once a year? All other electrical devices are still on and a lot of people go for alternative lighting devices that also pollute the environment. Other than awareness of global warming (which I would suggest everyone knows about now and either believes or does not believe – turning off some lights won’t change anyone’s mind on global warming), what does Earth Hour really achieve?

The following Blog post makes for interesting reading:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/earth_hour_crashes_to_earth/

Am I against reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Am I against reducing Global Warming and other associated disasters? Am I anti-environment? The answer to those questions is no! I’m just simply saying Earth Hour is little more than tokenism by most people who are against the Rudd government Greenhouse Gas Emissions reduction policies and other policies that actually aim to make a difference.

 

 

STEVE FOSSETT MYSTERY SOLVED???

A little over a year ago, adventurer Steve Fossett disappeared while on a flight from Nevada in the United States. Now items allegedly belonging to Steve Fossett have been found by a Preston Morrow while hiking through a remote area in California near Mammoth Lakes. The area where the items were found is west of Mammoth Lakes in the Inyo National Forest.

The items included items of ID with Steve Fossett’s name on it, cash and a jumper. The ID included a pilot’s license and a Federal Aviation Administration Identity Card.

The items found on Tuesday the 30^th September 2008 have been handed over to police.

A command centre was soon set up at Mammoth Lakes Airport and aerial searches of the area where the items were found carried out. Aircraft wreckage has been found in the area and the wreckage is now being investigated.

Fossett’s plane took off from a private airfield south of Reno in Nevada on the 3^rd September 2007 and he has not been heard off since. Fossett has been declared dead by authorities.

 

BELOW: Footage covering the story

BELOW: Footage covering the original story of Fossett’s disappearance