Queensland 2013 bigwet floods, tornados and climate change

Ex-tropical cyclone Oswald has left a trail of damage and destruction from it's origins in the Gulf of Carpentaria to crossing Cape York and working it's way down the Queensland Coast. The storms brought destructive winds, tornados, rough seas, storm surge and torrential rain, followed by flooding. Quite a few rain records were broken for 24 and 48 hour periods in Rockhampton, Gladstone and Bundaberg with some rain gauges recording well over one metre of rain in 48 hours. Now flood level records are being broken for many river basins and towns like Bunderberg and Gympie.

Although the flood levels in Brisbane city may be lower than the devastating floods in 2011, largely due to better management of water storage in the Wivenhoe Dam, in many regional towns and areas these floods are much much worse and are at record levels.

While the Brisbane CBD may be spared flooding damage, many low lying suburbs around Brisbane will feel the force of the muddy dirty water swirling through their yards and houses. And regional towns are faring much worse in these floods than in 2011.

Thousands of people are being displaced, and hundreds are requiring rooftop emergency rescues from rapidly rising floodwaters especially around Bundaberg. Thousands will utilise emergency disaster assistance provided by State and Federal governments.

Asking whether climate change 'caused' these storms and floods is the wrong question. As climatologist Kevin Trenbeth outlines below, all weather events now have a component of climate change in them. It is now a part of our weather system contributing to all extreme weather events.

Torrential rain, tornados on Queensland coast causing flash flooding and damage

Monday night: Significant flooding events are ocurring at Bundaberg, Gympie, Maryborough, Ipswich, Warwick and in the Lockyer Valley. Rockhampton is expecting significant flood from the Fitzroy river on the weekend. There have been four deaths so far confirmed and two people missing. Nearly 180,000 properties across SE Queensland are still without power Monday night reports Energex. Storm system now bringing torrential rain and flooding to NSW coast, expected to be over Sydney Tuesday dawn and the Illawarra during Tuesday morning before heading out to sea.

In Bundaberg the Burnett River is at 9.2 metres and rising fast, with flow speeds of about 40knots (70km/hr). It is expected to peak at a record level of 9.5 metres late on Tuesday. There was mandatory evacuations carried out today affecting about 5000 people, with over 1500 people from 1000 properties are in evacuation centres. 16 helicopters were brought in, including 4 Black Hawks from the Australian Defence Force to rescue people from house roofs after flood waters rose rapidly today. Patients from Bundaberg hospital are being evacuated to Brisbane.

Sunday 6pm: Rain Likely to continue overnight then subside as the system moves south into NSW. Substantial flooding is occurring in Gladstone, Bundaberg, and Gympie much higher than the 2011 floods. Moderate flooding is expected Monday and Tuesday on the Bremer and Brisbane rivers with up to 3,600 Brisbane properties likely to be impacted, significantly less than the 2011 floods. Brisbane City Council have released flood maps for people to prepare. Flood waters will peak on Monday in Ipswich and Moggill and Tuesday night in Brisbane, where another peak is expected on Wednesday afternoon.

It was reported by Energex at 6.08pm Sunday 27 January that nearly 100,000 customers were without power in south east Queensland. By 7:48pm the number had climbed to 124,845. At 10:18pm 154,497 customers were without power. Just after midnight on Monday 12:28am power was off for 179,835 customers.

Related: Official alert information: QldAlert.com | Emergency QLD media releases | Climate change now affects all weather events

Australian political responses to Obama's climate change Inauguration speech

The parliamentary leaders of the Labor Party, Liberal Party and the Greens all responded to Barack Obama's statement on the necessity to act on climate change made during his 2013 inauguration speech.

The Prime Minister Julia Gillard welcomed the statement and also reiterated government policy on carbon pricing, and the trend for more extreme weather events due to climate change as articulated by climate scientists.

Tony Abbott was more combative, attempting to use his press conference question for taking a cheap shot at President Obama not being able to get climate legislation passed through congress, and attacking the Government's carbon pricing policy.

Greens leader, Senator Christine Milne, also welcomed the change in priority on climate change by the US administration and said that "the proof of President Obama's commitment will be in what the US does in the global negotiations" over the next two years.

Obama: "We will respond to the threat of climate change..."

President Obama at his 2nd term inauguration as the 44th President of the United States has announced that tackling the issue of climate change will be a priority. In his 20 minute speech he devoted an entire section to the climate issue:

"We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.

"Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.

"The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise.

"That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared."

Related: Australian political responses to Obama's climate change Inauguration speech

Tour Down Under sponsor Santos told 'on ya bike' over CSG in the Pilliga

The Santos sponsored Tour Down Under was visited today by anti-CSG activists from the Pilliga Forest near Gunnedah in New South Wales. The protesters on bicycles took their protest to Santos Head Office in Adelaide today. Santos is the major sponsor of the Tour Down Under, so activists such as @thepilligamouse and several koalas hoped on their bikes to ride around Adelaide this morning to protest Santos’s destructive and toxic coal seam gas operations in Eastern Australia’s largest remaining temperate woodland and surrounding farmlands. They were joined by NSW politician and grazier David Quince.

Related: Total Fire Ban exemption for Santos CSG plant riles Pilliga residents

Planners need to allow for Coastal wetlands migration due to sea level rise, climate change

Coastal Wetlands are under pressure. They face rising seas from climate change, but their biggest obstacle to migrate naturally inland is human development with roads, houses and other infrastructure blocking their way. And our urban planners are largely unaware of this tricky situation.

We all love to live beside the sea, but coastal urban development and rising seas will increasingly threaten sensitive coastal wetlands with no room to move and imperilling the survival of their unique plants, birds and fish.

Our urban planners have taken a stable sea level for granted with development to date, often destroying wetland environments for coastal development, agriculture and aquaculture.

More recent urban planning incorporating sea level rise predictions places an emphasis on the threat to peoples houses, roads, railway embankments and other human infrastructure. But planning also needs to encompass the coastal wetland environments that share our coastlines. These ecosystems will also need to migrate inland as the ocean rises.

See also: Mangrove Alliance | Mangrove Action Project | Mangrove Watch Australia | Coastal ecosystems suffer 100 fold decrease in capacity to store carbon mitigating climate change

Glaciers continue losing mass adding to sea level rise

Figure 2: Mean cumulative mass balance of all reported glaciers (blue line) and the reference glaciers (red line), from glaciers in the Americas and Eurasia.

Preliminary figures for glacier mass balance for 2010/2011 have just been released and show that data from more than 100 mountain glaciers from around the world continue a strong trend of losing mass. The melt water from glaciers flows into the oceans and adds to sea level rise.

The report says:

"The average mass balance of the glaciers with available long-term observation series around the world continues to be negative, with tentative figures indicating a further thickness reduction of one metre water equivalent (m w.e.) during the hydrological year 2011. The new data continues the global trend in strong ice loss over the past few decades and brings the cumulative average thickness loss of the reference glaciers since 1980 at more than 15 m w.e."

Submission to Australian Senate Extreme Weather Inquiry

This is my submission to the Australian Senate Committee on Recent trends in and preparedness for extreme weather events. It was submission No 342 and can be accessed as a PDF on the submissions page.

Introduction

I am a pretty ordinary Australian with no special skills or experience in agriculture, health, transport or disaster management. Neither have I been placed in any urgent life threatening instance from extreme weather to speak from personal experience.

I am in fact fairly risk adverse at my present age in life. I used to take more risks in my youth. I even cycled from Sydney to Canberra, without a bicycle helmet, in the 1970s to camp on the lawns of parliament house. The issue was uranium mining. There were efforts made then to discuss Australia's energy future and energy alternatives. I helped (in a small way) construct a demonstration solar hot water system in front of parliament house. But most politicians were not listening to my small voice then.

My voice grew stronger at the end of the 1990s with the advent of the internet. I had become a web developer and web content administrator, a citizen journalist and blogger writing stories from the streets, on issues and from people who were largely ignored by the mainstream media.

Around 2003 I started to take an especially keen interest in the climate change issue, educating myself by reading scientific reports and studies, and writing up and communicating the issues raised online. I was still a small voice, but somewhat more amplified than in 1976.

Climate change and Extreme Weather

From my extensive layperson's reading, I have no doubt we are changing the climate through greenhouse gas emissions. And one of the results of that is more frequent and intense extreme weather events. I have read the IPCC Special Report on Extreme weather. James Hansen describes what is happening as loading the climate dice.

We are changing the background climate conditions to a warmer atmosphere and ocean. A warmer atmosphere dries out soils and vegetation, changes rainfall patterns, increases temperatures, causes more extreme droughts, storms and heatwaves. And increases the fireweather conditions. Elevated sea surface temperatures assist with storm and tropical cyclone formation and intensity.

According to CSIRO and BOM much of south eastern Australia and the south west are showing a clear trend over the last few decades for drier conditions and drought, and increasing fire weather. When it rains the storms and cyclones are likely to be more severe causing hailstorms, torrential downpours and flash flooding.

Scientists have been telling us this for the last couple of decades. But it has only been recently we are taking more notice of the warnings.

Of course there has always been severe weather, but we are seeing extreme events more frequently, and when they occur they are more intense than the weather we had during the middle decades of the twentieth century. We have rigged the climate dice. We are seeing it currently with the extreme heatwave and ferocious bushfires across Australia; in the number of temperature records being broken. And this trend is happening on a global basis.

The trend is clear: extreme weather is only going to worsen, both in frequency and intensity. The world has warmed globally by 0.8 degrees, and in Australia by 0.9 degrees. But most of the global warming energy has gone into heating the oceans. Even if we could stop all anthropogenic emissions today, the vast inertia in the ocean would result in perhaps another degree rise in average global temperature still taking place.

Managing the risk, mitigation, adaptation

Dealing with Climate change is about managing risk. Unfortunately we haven't managed that risk very well up to the present time. We should have started action on reducing carbon emissions twenty years ago. Instead we face increasing extreme weather events. Our mitigation tasks to avoid dangerous and catastrophic climate change now involve making costly rapid emission cuts plus the
costs of adaptation and disaster response plans to extreme weather events and other climate impacts such as sea level rise.

So how do we manage extreme weather events into the future?

1. Mitigation. We need to increase our ambition in cutting greenhouse gas emissions sharply.

The 2007 Bali roadmap advised that industrialised countries, like Australia, should cut emissions by
25-40% of 1990 levels by 2020. We are very far from doing that: 5% reduction on 2000 levels by
2020 just doesn't cut it. Carbon dioxide is cumulative in the atmosphere, so the more we can cut, the earlier, the better for our atmosphere and climate. This will affect the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events far into the future for our children and grandchildren.

Climate maths

We need to look at the simple climate maths. To achieve a limit of 2 degrees of warming, as widely agreed internationally in UNFCCC negotiations including by Australia, we can only afford to emit globally 565 gigatonnes of CO2. However, known fossil fuel reserves - oil, coal, natural gas - amount to over five times this quantity, some 2,795 gigatons in reserves.

John Schellnhuber. Director of the prestigous Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) has stated "If we venture far beyond the 2 degrees guardrail, towards the 4 degrees line, the risk of crossing tipping points rises sharply. The only way to avoid this is to break the business-as-usual pattern of production and consumption."

Stationary Energy

Australia's stationary energy has been highly reliant on coal to produce a large portion of our electricity to date. But the carbon pollution and damage to the atmosphere and oceans (ocean acidification) from coal fired power now needs to be fully accounted. We need to transition from coal and natural gas to low carbon technologies: wind, solar thermal (with storage), solar PV, wave, geothermal. We have an abundance of renewable resources in Australia which can be developed, if the right policies are put into place to regulate the energy sector. We have a first rate industrial research community in our Universities and CSIRO. We need to leverage this knowledge. The renewable energy startup fund and renewable energy target are a good start, but the target now needs to be lifted.

Transport

We need increased fuel efficiency standards for new cars to reduce transport emissions, and investment in public transport and cycling networks to encourage reduced vehicle usage in our cities and regional towns.

Our freight transport is dependant on cheap fossil fuels, and we are now past peak oil. We need to look at more carbon efficient ways of freight distribution and transport of goods and produce, including preferential treatment of rail and sea transport over road between major distribution nodes.

Agriculture and Forestry

Agriculture and forestry activities are a major source of carbon emissions. We need to research methods of reducing emissions from these activities and incorporate methods of agriculture that limit emissions and even capture emissions (Biochar?). I know CSIRO and other scientists are researching this and it is an important aspect of climate mitigation.

We need to reduce soil erosion and nutrient pollution of our rivers and take care of our groundwater systems and farm for the long term.

For forestry we need to stop native forest clear fell logging activities, and start reforestation programs to enhance forest carbon sinks. Research has indicated that mature temperate native forests like Victoria's Mountain Ash are huge stores of carbon and biodiversity, and also more resistant to bushfire than regrowth forests. Old growth forests trap moisture and provide an
important bulwark against bushfires, while previously logged forest regrowth with trees of the same maturity will tend to burn at a much higher intensity.

With a significant portion of native forests burnt in the 2009 Victorian bushfires, logging in these forests needs to stop immediately to preserve biodiversity and prevent 'landscape traps' in which the forest ecosystem is permanently changed to a more fire-prone landscape which provides far less ecosystem services.

But fire is also a natural part of the Australian landscape, and aboriginal nations used controlled fire burns to enhance this landscape for providing food and safety. Active programs of controlled burning during winter are necessary to reduce fuel load, and to help forest ecosystems that rely on fire to regenerate.

Coastal Development

Many of us live near the sea, or visit our beautiful beaches for holidays. We need to take great care with coastal development. Mangroves, coastal wetlands and seagrass meadows are highly important as blue carbon sinks, animal nurseries and biodiversity hotspots.

I asked Professor Lesley Hughes at a Climate Commission public forum in Melbourne about what long term plans there are to encourage the migration of coastal wetlands inland as sea level rises. Her brief answer? None. We need to start long range planning to allow these ecosystems to migrate inland as sea level rises. They provide important ecosystem services for biodiversity, carbon storage and for extreme weather storm surge and tsunami protection.

Coal Export

Perhaps Australia's greatest contribution to global atmospheric CO2 emissions comes from the coal we export. Taking into account the simple climate maths as stated above, we should not be developing new coal mines, new coal export terminals or coal seam gas. Mining exploration and development should be significantly regulated with much more input and say by local communities. We should be discouraging coal export, with a view to phasing it out over the medium term.

2. Adaptation Planning and Disaster Management Response plans.

We need to have comprehensive response and adaptation plans for individuals and communities to implement for different extreme weather events. We need to educate people in disaster preparedness to strengthen resilience in the face of extreme weather events and disasters.

It has been gratifying seeing that there have been almost no casualties from the intense fires we have been experiencing in Australia over this summer. I think the deaths from the 2009 black saturday fires and the efforts of emergency services over the last three years in educating the community have raised the awareness of many people of the importance of having personal
response plans and the dangers of extreme fire weather and bushfires. But I suspect bushfire disaster response plans will still need tweaking.

I am very concerned that funding for the Bushfire CRC is about to end in June 2013, with no ongoing Federal Government funding. We spend millions on the cost of fighting bushfires each year, surely we can afford a few million dollars to continue funding ground breaking and internationally significant long term research into bushfires, bushfire management, adaptation and response. Australia should be at the front in this area of research. Such a funding cut is very short- sighted.

We also need to develop disaster response plans for flash flooding, flooding, tropical cyclones and for heatwave and drought. Much of this work has been done, to varying degrees. People need to have the information to look after themselves or know where and when to go during an extreme event.

After the event there will be recovery and rebuilding phases. Plans for emergency assistance and more long term recovery and rebuilding will be necessary. Having comprehensive disaster management plans in place will make recovery much easier in most instances.

3. Assessment of future impacts on infrastructure, agriculture

As severe weather events grow more intense, damage to infrastructure will become more severe. We need to increase building codes and engineering standards to have a much higher capacity to withstand predicted extreme weather events over the coming century.

Recent heatwaves have shown that some of our urban public transport infrastructure - our Metropolitan railway system - has not been built for the extreme heat conditions we now experience in our cities during heatwaves. We need to look at upgrading that infrastructure to withstand the extremes that global warming will inflict on us over the next century. Older infrastructure may need substantial retrofitting to be less susceptible to breakdown during extreme weather.

Extreme weather events can also decimate agricultural production. We need to be able to support our agricultural producers to recover from those events quickly, and have the distribution processes to avert food shortages caused by severe weather.

4. Changing energy use behaviour

Like many people around Australia I have endeavoured to play my small personal part in reducing my energy and carbon footprint: energy saving bulbs, turning out lights, buying 100% greenpower, paying my gas utility to offset emissions, installing solar PV panels, composting and recycling, reducing car use. My household - my daughter and myself - I calculate emits just 1.6 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year - mainly from car use. It is not difficult to do with a little bit of effort, and we need a continuing program to educate and encourage low carbon footprint lifestyles.

Climate Emergency

I believe we face a climate emergency due to the danger of climate feedback mechanisms and tipping points in the climate system that may lead to runaway climate change. Ask the scientists, this is a very real worry and concern. But we don't know how soon these feedbacks will kick in, or whether they have already started. The rapid reduction in Arctic sea ice is just a first indicator. We
may be seeing the first signs of major climate feedback in widespread permafrost melting and initial release of methane hydrates trapped in Arctic ocean sediments.

Even without considering climate feedback mechanisms, the World Bank report last November made very clear that business as usual will take us to a 4 to 6 degree world by the end of the century. Such a world would be hellish to live in and would probably condemn literally billions of people to death by starvation and famine, not to mention the devastation it will do to global species biodiversity, the fellow creatures and plants we share planet earth with.

I don't want that future for my 12 year old daughter, or for my one year old grandchild from my stepdaughter. They deserve a better future. How about your children and grandchildren?

I thank the Senate for this opportunity to put my ideas forward. I hope my voice carries a little more weight than it did in 1976.
John Englart

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References

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Australian Heatwave part of global warming trend says IPCC head Pachauri

The IPCC chairperson is visiting Australia and commented that the Extreme heatwave and catastrophic bushfires that Australia is experiencing is an 'unmistakeable' part of a global trend of an increase in the frequency and intensity of heatwaves and other extreme weather events. Indeed, researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) have just released a new study - Global increase in record-breaking monthly-mean temperatures - which clearly shows the present Australian heatwave records being broken and the US recording it's hottest year in 2012, are both part of this global trend.

Obama urged to use Clean Air Act after USA experiences hottest year on record

Taking action on Climate Change is looming for President Obama. The United States experienced it's warmest year on record in 2012 according to NOAA. 2012 was also the second most extreme year on record. Over 70 environment organisations have urged Obama to use the Clean Air Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide clean energy jobs.

The contigous United States had an average annual temperature of 55.3°F which was 3.2°F above the 20th century average. The 2012 annual temperature was 1.0°F warmer than the previous record warm year of 1998. Read a quick summary by the World Resources Institute: By the Numbers: The Hottest Year on Record

"In 117 years of data the record low temperatures to 1998's previous record high average, all sit within a four degree Fahrenheit band, 2012 is 1 degree Fahrenheit above that band," said Jake Crouch, climate scientist, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).

The extent of heat records broken in 2012 is a disturbing trend globally. Australia is currently experiencing an extreme heatwave with Australia's Bureau of Meteorology saying that many temperature records exceeded and requiring an extra two colours added to the top end of the temperature scale.

Shaye Wolf, climate science director with the Center for Biological Diversity made a brief statement in reaction to the NOAA announcement calling for President Obama to use his powers through the Clean Air Act to fight greenhouse gas emissions.

"This disturbing news puts the heat on President Obama to take immediate action against carbon pollution," said Dr. Wolf. "The blazing temperatures that scorched America in 2012 are a bitter taste of the climate chaos ahead. Science tells us that our rapidly warming planet will endure more heat waves, droughts and extreme weather. The president needs to start making full use of the Clean Air Act to fight greenhouse gas emissions, before it's too late."

Time to cease expansion of coal to reduce climate change says Ad

Prominent scientists and environmental organisations have published a full page ad in today's Australian Financial Review calling for the cessation of the expansion of coal exports from Australia.

More and more people are speaking up on the cost of coal expansion to the climate and biodiversity of the planet. Development of new coal mines, new coal export terminals and growing Coal exports are being done with the support of State and Federal Governments. Yet this is at the expense of and driving climate change producing more intense extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, storms, and bushfires. Coal exports are Australia's biggest contribution to climate change. They need to stop.

Read Melbourne University Associate Professor Peter Christoff's article on Why Australia must stop exporting coal. Or watch this 2010 lecture by Dr. Guy Pearse from the University of Queensland on Queensland's coal addiction.

The full text of the ad says:

Mangrove forests threatened by Climate Change in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh and India

A new study has found the Sundarban coast retreating up to 200 metres in a single year due to rapidly deteriorating health of the world's largest Mangrove forest in the Sundarbans, the Ganges delta region of India and Bangladesh.

Zoological Society of London (ZSL) researcher Dr Nathalie Pettorelli, senior author of the paper says: "Our results indicate a rapidly retreating coastline that cannot be accounted for by the regular dynamics of the Sundarbans. Degradation is happening fast, weakening this natural shield for India and Bangladesh."

In the Bengali language 'Sundarban' can be literally translated as 'beautiful forest'. The area is the largest block of continuous mangrove forest in the world, being home to almost 500 species of reptile, fish, bird and mammals, including the endangered Bengal tiger.

See Also: Mangrove Alliance | Mangrove Action Project | Mangrove Watch Australia | Planners need to allow for Coastal wetlands migration due to sea level rise, climate change

Greens Leader says 'Look at the damage to humanity being caused by people who bankroll coalmines'

Jonathon Moylan's ANZ Bank hoax letter over the Maule's Creek Project open cut coalmine continues to produce reverberations. Greens Leader Christine Milne has now come out in his support arguing that we are in a climate emergency and we need to have a very serious 'Look at the damage to humanity being caused by people who bankroll coalmines'. Independent Economist Rod Campbell implies that the real hoax being perpetrated on small and institutional investors in Whitehaven coal is by Gillespie Economics and NSW Planning Department who massively overestimated the benefits and underestimated the social, environmental, health and climate costs of the project.

Jonathon Moylan may become Australia's first high profile climate civil disobedience activist jailed as a result of an ASIC investigation. A somewhat similar case ocurred in the USA in 2011 when climate activist Tim DeChristopher was jailed for two years and fined $10,000 for climate civil disobedience for exposing the rorts in an auction of public lands for mineral exploration. Clive Hamilton on The Conversation website article - ANZ imposter takes up new climate tactic - also draws our attention to the parallels with the Tim DeChristopher case.

Take Action: Sign the ANZ Stop the Loan e-petition

Total Fire Ban exemption for Santos CSG plant riles Pilliga residents

While firefighters were battling over 137 fires across NSW, over 40 uncontrolled, and with a total fire ban in place on Tuesday and Wednesday in record temperatures, Santos Gas at it's Pillaga CSG processing plant were able to vent and burn gas as usual in the middle of a tinder dry forest. Local residents have complained about this exemption saying it poses an unacceptable fire risk for the local community and for the Pilliga forest.

Background: The Global Mail - Pillaging the Pilliga (October 2012)

Records tumble in heatwave as Julia Gillard links bushfire to climate change

On Tuesday January 8 the Bureau of Meteorology released an interim special climate statement on the Extreme January heat Australia is currently experiencing. Record temperatures both day-time maximum and night-time minimums continue to be broken. The extraordinary heatwave has also been the scene for catastrophic fires, especially in Tasmania. The Prime Minister Julia Gillard saw the devastation in Dunalley and amoung her many interviews and press conferences made a brief statement connecting the intensity of bushfires with climate change.

The Extreme Heatwave had its origins in late December, but seriously started on January 3. It covers an extensive part of the continent mainly affecting inland areas but occasionally impacting the coast. Dr Braganza described it has "It's just an extensive dome of heat over the continent," in a Sydney Morning Herald report. Dr Karl Braganza is Manager of Climate Modelling at the Bureau of Meteorology.

The Bureau statement says the spatial extent of the heatwave is highly unusual resulting in many individual station temperatures and national average temperature records being broken, "To date (data up to the 6 January 2013) the national area-average for each of the first 6 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 5 consecutive days over 39 °C has ever been recorded for Australia." says the statement.

Read Previous article: Extreme Heatwave for Australia January 2013 - bushfire strikes.

Listen to Alasdair Hainsworth from the Bureau of Meteorology being interviewed on the ABC 7.30pm on 8 January 2013 (Youtube)

Here is the text of the BoM statement in full as updated by BOM on 14 January:

Uncovering the real hoax: ANZ Bank greenwash while financing coal and climate change

For a moment farmers, conservationists and climate campaigners in the north west of New South Wales thought one of the big four banks - the ANZ Bank - was living up to it's sustainability charter and taking a lead: acting ethically with regard to not destroying agricultural land, maintaining biodiversity and preventing climate change.

A media release purportedly from the bank said it was withdrawing it's $1.2 billion loan for Whitehaven for development of a new coal mine at Maules Creek on agricultural and forrested land near Narrabri, New South Wales. Further, the letter said that "ANZ is currently undertaking a review of coal and gas investments on productive agricultural lands and areas of high biodiversity."

But it was not to be.

England experiences wettest year on record, second wettest for UK

According to provisional data by the UK Met office 2012 was the second wettest year in the UK national record dating back to 1910, and just a few millimetres short of the record set in 2000. Four of the top five wettest years have now occurred since 2000. The year was the wettest year on record for England, and third wettest for Wales.

2012 saw Britain come out of one of the severest droughts on record in 2011. March was the driest for more than half a century leading to activation of hosepipe bans across much of England. While the year started dry it then set new rainfall records for the wettest April, and the wettest June for the UK causing widespread flooding.

The persistent wet weather resulted in total 2012 rainfall for the UK of 1330.7 mm, which is just 6.6 mm short of the record set in 2000.

Grounding of Shell drilling platform highlights dangers of Arctic Oil Drilling

Shell has plans for drilling several exploratory wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas area off the north coast of Alaska. The grounding of the Kulluk circular oil drilling ship while being towed in heavy seas must call into question whether safety measures by Shell and Coast Guard response capabilities are adequate to allow Arctic drilling to proceed.

Initial approval for oil drilling by Shell Oil was given by the Obama administration in August 2012 despite opposition by numerous conservation groups and a petition of over a million US citizens. To preserve a safe climate based upon the simple climate maths of how much fossil fuels we can afford to burn, we need to Go Fossil Free through divestment, start taxing carbon and leave the oil reserves beneath the Arctic alone.

Related: Greenpeace - Save The Arctic | Sierra Club - Chill the Drills: Protect America's Arctic! | Center for Biological Diversity - Arctic Oil Development | Alaska Despatch - U.S.: Shell’s grounded drilling rig raises questions | July 2011 - Smears on integrity of Polar wildlife scientist a prelude to Arctic Oil Drilling

Extreme Heatwave for Australia January 2013 - bushfires strike

Note: article may be updated over coming days.

Jan 18: Sydney swelters setting new record temperature of 45.8C Friday 18 January while fires across southern states continue to burn out of control.

Jan 5: A heatwave covering 70 per cent of Australia that started on January 3 has sparked catastrophic bushfires. Tasmania has so far been the most devastated by fire with more than 100 houses and businesses razed, the Tasman peninsula cutoff, without power, and thousands evacuated by boat to Hobart. The Temperature soared in Hobart setting new records for highest daily minimum overnight temperature of 23.4C and a new maximum temperature of 41.3C.

Other states are also experiencing bushfires, but have so far brought the fires mostly under control. The heatwave is expected to last over a week with elevated temperatures particularly in inland areas. It is very unusual that a heat wave covers such a large area of the continent at one time, according to Karl Braganza, manager of climate monitoring at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Australia's weather has switched to hot and dry after one of the wettest two year periods in Australia's history influenced by an extremely strong La Nina event.

Related: Scientists outline health limits of heat stress with Climate Change (May 2010) | Flooding rains now burning plains - Bushfire risk and climate change (Oct 2011) | Logging of Victorian mountain ash forests increases bushfire risk (Oct 2011) | Intact native Forests mitigate bushfire in a warming climate (Nov 2011) | CSIRO - Climate change impacts on fire weather

Climate Feedback: Arctic sea ice changes increase light absorption and ocean warming

A new study has examined the impact of changing sea ice and light absorption in the Arctic to reveal another climate feedback mechanism.

As multi-year sea ice is replaced with thinner first year sea ice, the properties of the sea ice change to allow more light through to the water beneath increasing ocean warming and more melting of sea ice.