From the Spirit of Mawson “ship of fools” University of New South Wales –
Climate detectives reveal handprint of human caused climate change in Australia
Australia’s hottest year on record was almost impossible without man-made climate change
Australia’s hottest year on record in 2013 along with the accompanying droughts, heat waves and record-breaking seasons of that year was virtually impossible without the influence of human-caused global warming.
New research from ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (ARCCSS) researchers and colleagues, over five different Australian papers in a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), has highlighted the powerful influence of global warming on Australia’s climate.
“We often talk about the fingerprint of human-caused climate change when we look at extreme weather patterns,” said Prof David Karoly, an ARCCSS researcher with the University of Melbourne.
“This research across four different papers goes well beyond that. If we were climate detectives then Australia’s hottest year on record in 2013 wasn’t just a smudged fingerprint at the scene of the crime, it was a clear and unequivocal handprint showing the impact of human caused global warming.”
In 2013, heat records fell like dominoes. Australia had its hottest day on record, its hottest month on record, its hottest summer on record, its hottest spring on record and then rounded it off with the hottest year on record.
According to the research papers presented in BAMS, the impact of climate change significantly increased the chances of record heat events in 2013. Looking back over the observational record the researchers found global warming over Australia (see attached graphic): doubled the chance of the most intense heat waves, tripled the likelihood of heatwave events, made extreme summer temperature across Australia five time more likely increased the chance of hot dry drought-like conditions seven times made hot spring temperatures across Australia 30 times more likely.
But perhaps most importantly, it showed the record hot year of 2013 across Australia was virtually impossible without the influence of human-caused global warming. At its most conservative, the science showed the heat of 2013 was made 2000 times more likely by global warming.
“When it comes to what helped cause our hottest year on record, human-caused climate change is no longer a prime suspect, it is the guilty party,” said ARCCSS Australian National University researcher Dr Sophie Lewis.
“Too often we talk about climate change impacts as if they are far in the future. This research shows they are here, now.”
The extreme year of 2013 is just the latest peak in a trend over the observational record that has seen increasing bushfire days, the record-breaking warming of oceans around Australia, the movement of tropical species into temperate zones and the shifting of rain bearing storm tracks further south and away from some of our most important agricultural zones.
“The most striking aspect of the extreme heat of 2013 and its impacts is that this is only at the very beginning of the time when we are expected to experience the first impacts of human-caused climate change,” said Dr Sarah Perkins an ARCCSS researcher with the University of New South Wales.
“If we continue to put carbon into our atmosphere at the currently accelerating rate, years like 2013 will quickly be considered normal and the impacts of future extremes will be well beyond anything modern society has experienced.”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So University of New South Wales want to stop something that always existed on Planet Earth: Climate Change.
The shear level of arrogance and pretentiousness is outstanding.
Perhaps these people are confusing writing the answers on their hands prior to an exam and real research.
That’s why they have used their left hand!
Hottest year, almost entirely made up of higher minimum temperatures recorded at city sites and the truncating of regional temperature records.
As a farmer, I know that we were able to grow quite good crops in this “disaster” year. No records this year but a much tougher season on our farm, go figure.
Yep. So 2013 has to be the disaster year, because it isn’t looking good for 2014, with extended ski resort seasons down south and frost at relatively low altitudes up here in the tropics. They have been in a panic after the ship of fools didn’t work out. They obviously regard the zombie portraiture of scaredscientists as a failure as well, so now we have The Purple Hand as a progression from the red mapping of AngrySummer. Wondering what’s next. Are they trying to catch up on Josh or Fenbeagle? ARCCSS morphs into ARCCSH – Centre for Climate System Hyperbole.
The only manmade climate change happening in Australia has to do with erasing and rewriting historical records.
More on the 2013 so called “Angry Summer” BS
http://climatism.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/claim-humans-behind-record-australian-heat-research-shows/
From Wiki, David Karoly is a meteorologist, NOT a climate scientist (whatever that is).
Who are you going to believe, Karoly with his snout firmly in the trough or luminaries such as our host who is still waiting for his “Big Oil’ cheques?
I also note that his meteorological qualifications make him an expert in other areas:
.
Well done, Anthony, for also being an expert in so many areas of research.
The only news that comes out of the Land Down Under anymore is CAGW tripe. It’s to the point where if I see the country’s name mentioned, I roll my eyes and turn the page or change the channel.
All you Australian skeptics have remarkably strong wills and unshakable spirits. I tip my hat to you.
At least we canned our carbon tax!
I had a very mild summer where I live. Does that automatically debunk global warming, you know like a couple of hot days here and there automatically prove it?
Alx, that was the icy tit of the global cooling witch you felt rub up against you. What were the odds of that. I don’t think it could have happened by chance.
Well, I sure do not know why our power bills were so high over winter/spring …… and why I pulled out my old jumpers and leggings….. perhaps thinking I was so cold was just another senior moment!!!!!
They showed a map the other day with the SW of Western Australia well above ‘normal’, but I used more wood.
Yep, the ABC has started a big push with Professor Karoly on Frantic Fran Kelly’s Radio National breakfast radio show this morning.
I think the Prof lost Fran on his convoluted explanation on how they proved the villain was human produced CO2 with all their computer models so she asked for something in simple terms:
What are the odds that humans are the cause?
The answer – 2000 to one on.
So that means you will win $2000 if it is proven that humans are NOT the cause of the “record breaking” 2013 year which is now going to continue into the future (unless the world gets together and stops using coal and oil of course).
And what about bush fires? Fran asked adding that there are some critics who are denying there is any connection between human CO2 and more bush fires.
Well, the Professor’s team are working on that one and a report will be out next year. For their sake I only hope we do not have a wet summer and no bush fires which could upset the publishing of their data somewhat.
Anyhow, Green’s leader Christine Milne has enough material to rival the invasion of Normandy when she and her army saturate the media to-day.
The only thing that puzzles me is why did this sinister serial killer single out Australia in 2013?
What not the UK? – Where according to their Met Office “the annual statistics for 2013 are generally near average and unremarkable”.
Why not the USA? – Where according to the NOAA “the 2013 annual temperature marked the coolest year for the nation since 2009 and tied with 1980 as the 37th warmest year in the 119-year period of record”.
Why not South Africa? Where according to the South African Weather Service 2013 summer and spring were marked by heavy rains and winter experienced cold to very cold weather fronts.
Why not many other countries in the world which did not have high “record breaking heat” and why hasn’t the hand of human produced global warming crushed the ever increasing Antarctic sea ice?
And what happened in Australia in 2011 when the mean averaged temperature was 0.12 deg C below the 1961-190 average? The serial killer have a year off? Or homogenisation hadn’t kicked in?
You have to think like a climate scientist:
Since Australia is at the bottom of the world and CO2 is a heavy gas, it is all accumulating around Australia, making Australia extra special global warming nightmare hot.
Of course the Antarctic ice is growing as a result of the CO2 fizzing into the sea and making it carbonated, because every good climate scientist knows that fizzy drinks make the ice go longer.
2007:
“Environmental researcher Tim Flannery has warned that Brisbane andAdelaide could run
out of water by year’s end.”
2008:
“The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009.”
2009:
“Our fifth-largest city, Adelaide, may be out of drinking water next year.”
….
2014: ?
[Global Idiocy Alarmist-Of-The-Year Award: Dr. Tim Flannery]
Australia, in the minds of the climate obsessed, is special because while the globe is cooling (global climate and all that), since Australia is warm (cooking the books always makes them warm, no?) the only cause is CO and the world must be coming to an end, and soon.
Australian police are carrying out opps on suspected terrorists groups . It would be nice to see them at the doors of this place. http://mobile.news.com.au/national/pine-gap-australia8217s-most-secretive-location/story-fncynjr2-1226687597135
The owner of that hand should have washed it after his/her comfort break.
So it seems most of you do not take on trust the statements –
or
Are people here just a bit cynical about such statements, or are we all just a bit tired of yet more alarmist drivel?
extremely cynical, especially since our power use has dropped so much they now say we are Over supplied.
and adding fuel tax to inflated fuel prices i dont know many people who can drive anywhere except for strictly necessary trips.
they stated we are already ahead of the proposed dropped levels of co2 emitting
go figure.
Not so much a handprint more a BOM thumb on the scales.
The Australian Federation came into existence in 1901. BOM was formed in 1906 with the sovereign States transferring their weather recording responsibilities to BOM in 1908. Hence BOM refers to its records as starting 1910. There are indeed hotter record days before this, with some using Stephenson screens, but are not part of the official BOM records.
Criticising BOM can look foolish. It is a professional organization and will follow the latest methodology accepted internationally – including homogenization.
This does not mean that we should not question – as has Dr. Marohasy- and demand explanations. But the issue I feel has to do with the procedure than any deliberate bias. What really comes into question is whether the homogenization process and algorithms have fundamental statistical flaws. This can only really be addressed by someone expert in this area.
The second issue has to do with the gravy train like the “ship of fools” and other researchers like ARCCS. It is in their interests to hype up the extreme events. Yet even here they will be using official data to make statements most of which will be “true.”
Where they pull the wool over people’s eyes are the implied relationship of extreme events to CO2. If we acknowledge that T has increased then it is statistically impossible for records not to be broken “somewhere.” These are not specific predictions i.e. in advance. It is all post hoc claims. I guess most people can pick the first four horses in the Melbourne Cup when the race has been run and won.
Yet, nowhere can it be shown that CO2 is the culprit. But people are attuned to believing GHG’s must be behind all this. If it is spouted over the airways by “experts” often enough it becomes the norm.
BOM is a professional, fully funded Govt organization. Any attempt to suggest a conspiracy is barking up the wrong tree.
Not quite true, the BOM is undoubtedly professional in weather and hydrology, but it and the CSIRO are staffed by a number of earth scientists who are indoctrinated with the same “Save the planet” cause. In these two cases environmental activists have found themselves in positions of influence and have engaged in employing people who think like they do (very common even in private enterprise) and inhibited progression of those that don’t. Hence a groupthink has emerged due to selective employment. The US EPA also staffed by environmental scientists is also corrupted by this noble cause save the planet corruption. Scientists working “for a cause” are rarely cold and objective on subjects related to their cause. Science should be driven only by an intense curiosity to know the truth, never by the attainment of a cause, they MUST be prepared to go where the data takes them.
For example we stil keep hearing that the west shelf of anarctica is melting by 300 cubic kilometers every year due to climate change, where such a melting would require over 5 Watts per square meter to go into ice melting over the whole of the west shelf 24 x 7 x 365 even when the air temp is sub zero! Even this impossible feat is over 8 times the 0.6 Watts per square meter warming that CO2 is supposedly causing… therefore energetically CO2 warming CANNOT be causing that melting. It’s trivial grade school math, yet so-called climate science ignores the obvious problem and persist in attributing to global warming a melting that requires orders of magnitude more warming than exists.
Ah right so the BOM is trusted whenever there’s cold temp records, just not when there’s record hot temps…
Martin,
Could you please elaborate on your profound statement
It’s pretty easy to understand. Sceptics trust the BOM when they show cold records are broken. But when they show hot records are broken sceptics cry foul. Double standards hey!
Martin,
I’m sorry but I still don’t get your drift.
Could you please give an example or two of what disturbs you?
I’m asking for examples, not analogies or inferences
Martin, since BOM records are adjusted UP, and are UHI contaminated when cold records emerge we know that it was probably actually colder than they said it was. For example Brisbane has about a 1 degree UHI effect, if there is a cold record there, without the UHI its actually 1 Degree colder than Brisbane would measure. If such a day occured 50 years ago it would have been that much colder.
Australia’s ‘Extreme 2013’ would not be possible without the unprecedented level of stupid burning,
The planet warmed 1700-2001. Surprise, surprise, it’s warmest at the end of a warming period.
It seems odd that in that “hottest year” of 2013 the town of Ross where I live, set its “official” record for coldest temp (Many locals including me, claim it was actually colder in the town (-8) a degree lower than that recorded by officials) and the nearby town of Liawenee recorded a minimum of minus 12.2 Celsius only 0.8 degrees off the coldest temperature ever recorded in Tasmania.
Tasmanian saw the coldest September (Spring) on record that year and November was similarly cold, breaking all time cold records also!
The first link below shows graphical data from the Oz Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) collated last March to also show the unremarkable summer of 2014. It shows that the summers of 2013 in each of the seven States and Territories were individually cooler than in prior years. Whilst the BoM and other “authorities” such as David Karoly made huge headlines about alleged broken records, their claims were misleading. For instance, the claim of a record hot year was actually a statistical quirk wherein only one State (South Australia) was significantly warmer in that year, and oddly each of its four seasons were individually cooler. (See Fig 5 in link 2 for this, and more). What happens is that maxima in a large complex system generally occur at randomly different times so that any regional temporal high in one State is offset by lows elsewhere.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/australia/bobfj/fig2600.jpg
For full article:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/04/climate-trivia-headlines-and-the-boms-unscientific-obession-with-hottest-ever-records/
Oh, I forgot to mention that in Oz it is mostly the summer that would be a concern if there were to be an upward trend in heat and drought. In the cooler months there could well be benefits in what has been alleged as bad stuff. Oh and warmer nights? No more farmer alerts and frosts?
2013 is so last year, dahling.
Uh?
So a sparsely populated continent that exports most of its coal has man to blame for heatwaves? Right!!
Two days in Sydney just over 32c, a new records since records began apparently. The scare is still strong in the Aussie MSM.