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.”
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This fairy tale of Australian temperature records seems to be heavily reliant on a combination of HADCRUT4 modelling and natural recordings.
Bob Tisdale had this to say WUWT back April 22, 2013 “Model-Data Diferences..”: “Presenting the differences between modeled and observed global surface temp-
eratures is yet another way to show how poorly the climate models simulate global temperatures since 1880. The models cannot explain the observed cooling from
1880 to the 1910s, and they cannot explain the warming from the 1910s to the
1940s. Plotting the difference also helps to show that the divergence in recent
decades, with the models simulating too much warming, started as far back as
the early 1990s, when models overestimated the cooling from the volcanic
aerosols associated with the eruption of Mount Pinatubo.
I think in this case there is a cherry-pick from 1979
There is a debate here in Australia concerning temperature “homogenisation”.
Consider this from our records (either since erased completely or repudiated):
The hottest temperature ever in Australia: 16 January 1889 Cloncurry – outback Queensland – 53.1C (in shade … and published on 18th Sydney Morning Herald)
Hottest temperature in Sydney: 22 January 1923… 47.2C. Same day western
Sydney (Penrith 49.8C) and (Campbelltown 49.7C)
Hottest temperature Bourke (western New South Wales) 3 January 1909
(Stevenson screen) 51.7C
Kevin,
Looks like the Sydney Morning Herald has had a significant change in editorial attitude since 1889….. What about this recent crap-piece from an astronomer “expert” claiming others to be amateurs?
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/09/sydney-morning-herald-not-balanced-fair-or-factual/
Yes Bob
The Sydney Morning Herald is now but a shadow of what it once was: One of the oldest and most widely respected newspaper in the Country. It is now run by lefties and thankfully its readership is very much on the wane as a consequence.
Somebody doesn’t like what the Aussie government is doing about climate change methinks.
As far as I can tell from a quick skimming read of the BAMS special report – which also includes California droughts and Japanese and Chinese heat waves – all papers have used a similar methodology: models are produced of natural variability – and if the extreme events occur beyond the 95% probability zone they are regarded as probably not natural. The problem with this approach is, as the IPCC have consistently admitted, the science of natural variability is ‘poorly constrained’ (which means not known very well).
This is an example of global group think – where the scientists of China, Japan, Australia and the USA (India also), get together and agree a methodology which is highly questionable, but as it is the only one they have, they don’t question it.
Interestingly, the US papers include some graphs of zonal and meridional wind anomalies clearly showing that changing pressure patterns in the upper atmosphere led to the unusual conditions – bringing us back to the Jetstream and its recent shifts. I expect Australian extremes would have the same proximal cause. There is no science that can show the shifts in the jets are caused by rising carbon dioxide – but clearly there is a correlation. We do have however some proxy evidence of past shifts in the jets – not caused by carbon dioxide (that is, before James Hansen closed down the NASA research programme on this aspect of climate change).
The jury is out on the causes of the shifting jets – either rising global temperatures have reduced the global gradient because the Arctic has warmed most (but not the Antarctic!) and the looser jetstream has meandered (greater gradient supposedly means faster tighter jets and slower means loopier with extremes of heat or cold and rain within the loop); or, the jets are impacted by changes in solar UV – as the NASA work suggested (Drew Shindell, papers 2001-2003) – which is why the jets shifted during the Little ice Age. And of course, BOTH may be operating in combination. My bet is that 75% of the changes are natural and related to both solar cycles and internal ocean oscillations.
That would mean that CO2 might just be topping out the extremes. A feature of all such natural warming-induced extremes is that they precede the downslope. Global temperatures always fall precipitously despite high levels of CO2 during the end of inter-glacial periods. The current high CO2 will therefore not likely prevent the next fall, but they could potentially reduce the worst extremes of a cold period!
Remind me again how much growth Sydney has seen in the last few years , how many more miles of roads and buildings etc. After that remind me how ‘well’ they made sure the weather stations have coped with this rather interesting UHI effect .
Time we had an accurate definition of ‘Man Made Global Warming’ – I’d go with :
Warming which only occurs when man alters historic temperature records to create the illusion of a hotter planet.
+10
It is clear that the climate alarmists are using the technique of shouting louder instead of answering the plain evidence carefully documented by Jennifer Marohasy and her colleagues.
This tells us that they are relying on feeble arguments that project their double standards onto skeptics.
Keep on pushing. AGW has corrupted academia, politics and media. The pushback will take time
Tony M
If you read the reports and Climate literature that was issued by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for the information of Australian Farmers in 1968, these reports are very straightforward explain the way the Australian Climate works in terms of weather, they explain the variability and the seasonal changes, give frost indexes, and many maps and charts of the way temperature changes, how it is measured and the extremes that can be expected year by year, the floods, the droughts.
But not one mention of Global warming, just variable weather and climate facts. Since those days, climate activists and grant scavengers have infiltrated the BOM and the CSIRO – it is now a political organisation committed to providing convenient means to prove by continual propaganda and dubious method the meme of alarming warming that aligns with socially altering this country to fear climate instead of working with the known and unknown elements of our weather.
So your claim that it is today a professional organisation falls short especially in the way the Australian Climate records have been treated.
If you go further back and have a look at the very first 1913 modern BOM report titled “The Climate and Weather of Australia” by H.A.Hunt, Griffith Taylor and E.T..Quale you will find extensive references to weather records and Climate History and the extreme weather that was a feature of the continent of Australia and of great value to the early settlers of Australia, and if you read the BOM History you will see how much care and attention was put into the compiling of the valuable temperature and weather information.
No professional scientist would have deliberately trashed this record for a cheap claim of ever increasing temperature to try and match modelling projections that have been proven to be seriously out of touch with observations and the unmolested data record.
You only have to put in the time to read those contemporaneous writings to understand the corruptive influences that have eaten away at the hard won confidence that has been lost in the smeared averages, the removal/tampering with site and the homogenization of remaining site temperatures can produce a warming bias to suit a political scheme.
“Virtually impossible!”
Sounds like a dish soap ad…
Hmmm, a record day, in a record month, in a record season, in a record year…
Wow! What a coincidence!!!!
Does this mean all the heat that was supposedly hiding in the deep ocean actually went to Australia instead?