Climate Diary of an extreme heatwave across Australia and climate heat impacts

The Bureau of Meteorology in the lead up to christmas in 2018 showed a heatwave building through the week. The forecast was for severe and extreme heatwave impacts particularly Thursday 27 December to Saturday 29 December.

A blocking high in the Tasman and strong heat from the Pilbara in Western Australia and right through Central Australia, will periodically extend tendrils of sweltering heat to encompass the major population centres of Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.

While these cities may get occasional relief from weak cold fronts and coastal sea breezes, inland towns will swelter in the scorthing heat with temperatures in the mid to high 30s and low 40s.

Chevron, BP Perth HQ targeted by #Breakfree2016 climate activists

This article was originally featured at nofibs.com.au

The protest included a march and street sit-in, office occupation, and a sit-in occupation in the foyer of the QV1 building, the Perth Headquarters for BP and Chevron in Western Australia. John Englart reports using social media.

Perth is home to the largest concentration of oil and gas companies with more than 300 international companies in the sector now based in the city. Western Australia is also a regional base for more than 40 major oilfield service companies.

Climate activists stage protest outside #LNG18 in Perth

The Gas Industry and all the big fossil fuel companies have come to Perth to talk exploitation of fossil fuels regardless of the climate imperative agreed to in Paris in December 2015. They were greeted on the opening night by climate activists.

The 18th International Conference and Exhibition on Liquefied Natural Gas has brought together the fossil fuel industry to discuss production efficiencies with the current low prices in LNG, and work out how they can continue to maximise drilling and exploitation into the future. There was a Welcome to Country and headline speeches by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett.

Major companies at the conference include Chevron, Shell, Inpex, ConocoPhillips, Total and Woodside Petroleum.

Town of Yarloop destroyed in #Waroonafire #bushfire maelstrom

The Waroona bushfire South of Perth was started by lightning strike last Wednesday. It rapidly grew to be an uncontained uncontrollable fire of such size, ferocity and intensity that it produced pyrocumulus clouds creating it's own local convective weather.

Storify: Australia setting new early Spring heat and bushfire records

The early spring heatwave has brought a taste of summer extreme heat and bushfires across the continent setting new early season temperature records with temperatures anomolies of 12 degrees C and more over much of southern Australia, particularly Victoria.

This comes as a powerful El Nino is taking place in the Pacific which acts to boost temperatures and drought conditions in Australia. And all this takes place in a hotter environment with Australia having warmed by 0.9 degrees from 1910.

In September the Climate Council warned that Australia faces increased bushfire risk, with bushfire seasons extending for longer due to the impact of climate change.

The Bureau of Meteorology have issued a statement on October 7 which advises that the Indian Ocean Dipole has turned positive which will reinforce the El Nino impact on Australia.

Export solar not coal, a 21st century Australian infrastructure project

This article was originally published at nofibs.com.au

If our Australian political leaders had any vision they might consider a 21st century renewables energy scheme similar in scope and vision to the Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme, for northern Australia, and linking us with some of our northern neighbours.

Instead we have seen political pandering to the greed of fossil fuel companies, like the Chinese state owned company Shenhua proposing to develop the Watermark open cut coal mine on the fertile Liverpool Plains of NSW, with the dangers to groundwater, wildlife and agricultural productivity and food security.

Or the Indian conglomerate Adani that wants to develop the giant Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee basin of Queensland and hires Labor and Liberal staffers to make its case. Development of the Galilee basin coalfields by Adani and other Coal barons will enhance climate change and help drive destruction of World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef.

Marine heatwaves continue decimating corals in the Pilbara

Marine heatwaves are having a marked impact on coral reef systems off the Pilbara coast. A CSIRO and University of Western Australia study in progress found bleaching and decimation of ancient porite corals - many up to 400 years old - in a recent visit to Barrow Island. The oceans around Australia were unusually warm in 2013. Globally the deep oceans are also continuing to warm.

“We suspect this bleaching event was due to marine heatwaves that occurred in the region over the past few summers, and to see it up close was sobering,” said Dr Russ Babcock, CSIRO lead scientist, “But to offset this loss, some reefs only a short distance north showed much less damage and will continue to contribute to a healthy ecosystem."

A marine heatwave extreme bleaching event ocurred in 2011 that was widely spread along the Western Australian coast. Preliminary results from the study show that further damage was done in the 2012-2013 summer with elevated water temperatures.

Extreme Heatwave hits Southeast Australia

This page may be updated further in coming days
Last week we saw record temperatures in a heatwave in Queensland and Western New South Wales with 34 maximum temperatures broken and mass deaths of flying foxes. The heat has been building over the last week in Western Australia and central Australia with an extreme heatwave across much of south east Australia forecast for this week.

Alasdair Hainsworth, Assistant Director for Weather Services at the Bureau of Meteorology said “What is unusual about this event, which the pilot heatwave forecast shows, is that when high maximum temperatures and above average minimum temperatures are sustained over a number of days, there is a build-up of ‘excess’ heat. Extreme heatwave conditions can be seen in southern NSW, Victoria and Tasmania."

Tess Parker from Monash University explains the dynamics of the heatwave at the Conversation: What’s cranking up the heat across south-eastern Australia?

Elevated sea surface temps threatening marine biodiversity in Western Australia

High sea surface temperatures (SST) of up to five degrees above normal are currently being experienced off the north-western Australian coast in a marine heatwave event. Like the extreme marine heatwave event in 2011 this will change marine ecosystems causing coral bleaching and fish mortality and impact on fisheries management and biodiversity.

A similar event occurred over several weeks during the 2010/2011 summer which impacted seafood stocks and marine ecosystems and was associated with an extremely strong La Niña event and a record strength Leeuwin Current down the Western Australian coast.

Carnaby's Cockatoo suffers 37 per cent population decline in one year

Flocks of Carnaby's Black Cockatoo are iconic sights for the people of Perth, the Swan River Region and the forests of the South west. But comparing two population surveys in 2010 and 2011 showed a 37 percent decline in numbers across the Swan river region. That is a 37 per cent decline in one year.

According to Statistical modelling based on the 2011 Great Cocky Count the population of Carnaby’s cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus latirostris) in the Swan Region was between 5200 and 8600 birds. A year earlier it was estimated that the population was 8000 to 10,000.

Related: Scientific American - Endangered Australian Cockatoo Loses One Third of Population in Just 1 Year | Biodiversity crisis: Habitat loss and climate change causing 6th mass extinction

Species biodiversity under threat from the velocity of climate change

Scientists have been able to calculate the velocity of climate change on land and ocean environments using temperature records to determine isotherms and their change in a fifty year period from 1960 to 2009. So how fast are climate envelopes moving? The general median answer is 27.3 km/decade on land, and 21.7 km/decade in the ocean. This equates to a speed needed to outrun climate change on land (2.7 kilometers per year) and in the oceans (2.2 kilometers per year). This rate of movement of thermal climate envelopes poses problems for species facing a high speed migration, or a difficult and abrupt adaptation or extinction.

Here is how scientists measured the velocity of climate change ocurring:

We used global surface temperatures over 50 years (1960-2009) to calculate the distribution of the velocity and seasonal shifts of isotherm migration over land and ocean on a 1°-by-1° grid. The velocity of climate change (in km/year) was calculated as the ratio of the long-term temperature trend (in °C/year) to the two-dimensional spatial gradient in temperature (in °C/km, calculated over a 3°-by-3° grid), oriented along the spatial gradient. We introduced the seasonal climate shift (in days/decade) as the ratio of the long-term temperature trend (°C/year) to the seasonal rate of change in temperature (°C/day). We present seasonal shifts for spring and fall globally using April and October temperatures.

Perth setting new summer temperature records

It is a long hot summer in Perth with new temperature records being set. Perth has just broken its record for the greatest number of consecutive warm nights. The last 14 consecutive nights the temperatures has remained above 20 degrees. The previous record was 13 days in February-March 1985 and February-March 1990.

For day time temperatures Perth has endured 21 consecutive days of temperatures over 30 degrees. Perth is predicted to swelter for at least another week in over 30 degree heat. It is very likely this will be Perth's hottest summer on record with the previous record being 25 consecutive days of temperatures above 30 degrees.

Can Perth become the first geothermally cooled city?

While the world debates emissions targets and climate funding amounts for developing countries in Copenhagen, a new research centre was launched in Perth on December 3 dedicated to developing technologies designed to help establish sustainable, low-emission, geothermal cities. At the same time the State Government is planning to double the number of coal-fired power stations at Collie.