It was only a matter of time. NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth plays the never ending blame game.
Scientists see climate change link to Australian floods
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Climate change has likely intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered record floods in Australia’s Queensland state, scientists said on Wednesday, with several months of heavy rain and storms still to come.
But while scientists say a warmer world is predicted to lead to more intense droughts and floods, it wasn’t yet possible to say if climate change would trigger stronger La Nina and El Nino weather patterns that can cause weather chaos across the globe.
“I think people will end up concluding that at least some of the intensity of the monsoon in Queensland can be attributed to climate change,” said Matthew England of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
“The waters off Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon,” he told Reuters.
…
The rains have been blamed on one of the strongest La Nina patterns ever recorded. La Nina is a cooling of ocean temperatures in the east and central Pacific, which usually leads to more rain over much of Australia, Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia.
This is because the phenomena leads to stronger easterly winds in the tropics that pile up warm water in the western Pacific and around Australia. Indonesia said on Wednesday it expected prolonged rains until June.
…
Prominent U.S. climate scientist Kevin Trenberth said the floods and the intense La Nina were a combination of factors.
He pointed to high ocean temperatures in the Indian Ocean near Indonesia early last year as well as the rapid onset of La Nina after the last El Nino ended in May.
“The rapid onset of La Nina meant the Asian monsoon was enhanced and the over 1 degree Celsius anomalies in sea surface temperatures led to the flooding in India and China in July and Pakistan in August,” he told Reuters in an email.
He said a portion, about 0.5C, of the ocean temperatures around northern Australia, which are more than 1.5C above pre-1970 levels, could be attributed to global warming.
===========================================================
Read the entire news article here
Below is the Nino3.4 index from the WUWT Enso/Sea level page here
Note that in late 2007 and early 2008, a La Niña even deeper than the one we are in now occurred. Now we are quickly coming off a strong El Niño, so no doubt there would be some heat left in SST’s and some additional water vapor in the region. The current SST image shows it rather warm around Australia. Of course, it is summer there. You can also see the current strong La Niña in blue
Mike Hulme from University of East Anglia was on BBC Radio 5 Live this morning talking about Australian and Bangladeshi floods and Brazilian mudslides.
When asked whether it was due to climate change he said that he assumed he was being asked about the manmade component and that no, you couldn’t make a connection, it was down to a strong La Nina and that these cycles were well understood.
What a nice surprise!
I find it odd that while the media and the climatology establishment have largely acknowledged the pivotal role of the La Nina cycle in the current round of Australian flooding episodes, there has been almost no mention of another, equally important factor – the Indian Ocean Dipole.
http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/indian-ocean-drought/
After many years in positive territory – which led to extended drought conditions down here – the IOD switched last year to its negative phase, which brought drought-breaking rain across much of the country. This widespread, plentiful and regular rain over a 6 month period has led to soil profiles being replenished with moisture down to a considerable depth, so much so that the major river catchments are effectively saturated, and any rain now becomes instant runoff rather than being soaked up by what would normally be grateful parched earth.
While the relatively recent discovery of the significance of the IOD to Australian rainfall patterns should have been a cause for celebrations, I find it is rarely mentioned. Perhaps I’m a bit paranoid, but it seems to me that the warmists (amongst whom Prof Matthew England is a leading Usual Suspect) are a bit embarrassed about finding yet another natural cycle that actually determines our weather but has bugger-all to do with every plant’s favourite food.
Which of these concepts are people specifically objecting too?
* Are the waters not 1.5 C warmer than pre-1970 averages?
* Do warm waters not contribute to stronger monsoons in Australia?
* Is most of the warming of the water not due to La Nina?
* Is the globe not warmer than it was 40 years ago?
I’m not a meteorologist, but it all seems reasonable to me. The record temperatures would reasonably be attributed to a combination of a strong La Nina and generally warm temperatures around the globe. Record rainfalls would reasonable be associated with increased evaporation from the ocean.
NOTE: “anthropogenic” is never mentioned (by me or the article). Whether you consider the current global warmth due to GHGs or natural cycles or changes in the sun or any other favorite hypothesis, that doesn’t change the conclusion that temperatures are different than they were 40 years ago.
@Greg says:
January 13, 2011 at 12:48 am
“Heck, I live here in Brisbane, Australia and lived through the 1974 floods as well while the peak here was only 4.2 metres, not the 4.6 metres on 1974. However this is not the only instance of earlier floods being worse. The floods in the 1840s and 1890s peaked at over 8 metres how does Trenberth explain this, especially since the levels of CO2 were much lower then. Fools like this burn me up especially when I don’t see people like this here rescuing people or helping to clean up the flood mess.”
I can’t imagine how insulting these people must be to you. Using a genuine tragedy like this to further their bogus cause. It’s apthetic and shameless.
I hope you and your friends/loved ones are safe.
Alarming report on Brisbane River risks covered up,
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/alarming-report-on-risks-covered-up/story-e6frg6nf-1225986634328
REPLY: thanks already of the front page of WUWT -A
Robuk, re Brisbane 1841:
“Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the street! ”
😉
Report from. Recife:
Hey,cold and wet here (comparatively). Hey, someone’s got to do the dirty work. Off to Rio and Sao Paulo next week. coming in, we could see the floods. you should find more info on Ecotretas. Boy,what bad timing for a vacation!
It appears more likely that a belief in AGW, not AGW itself caused the flooding.
If you believe the future holds only drought, why would you build flood control systems? Only if you believed the climate worked in cycles, that the previous floods would return, only then would you prepare.
“NOTE: “anthropogenic” is never mentioned (by me or the article).”
Most people assume GW = AGW. Otherwise, instead of saying “disaster caused by GW”, the headlines would read “disaster caused by natural cycle”.
Dr Trenberth:
Today the AMSU-A satellite reports a drop of .82 degrees F from last year in lower tropospheric temps.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
This appears to be unprecedented. Should we be worried about this? I understand that president Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren is familiar with global cooling that occurred during the 1970’s. I assume this is a good thing for agriculture and lowering our air conditioning bills. Please advise.
rich;
Like I said elsewhere: warmth draws more moisture into the air, and cooling makes it fall out as rain, causing floods.
🙂