Essay by Eric Worrall
Our old friend Senior Lecturer in Climate Science Andrew King on why global warming is producing so much cold weather.
Southern Australia is freezing. How can it be so cold in a warming climate?
Published: July 5, 2024 2.34pm AEST
Andrew King
Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of MelbournePeople living in southern Australia won’t have failed to notice how cold it is. Frosty nights and chilly days have been the weather for many of us since the start of July.
As winter continues, we are left wondering how unusual the cold is and whether we can expect several more months of this. Warmer conditions are in the forecast but winter has a long way to go. Further cold snaps could occur.
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What’s causing the cold?
A persistent and strong high-pressure system has been hanging around over southeast Australia. The atmospheric pressure was so high it approached the Australian record of 1,044.3 hPa set on June 7 1967. An initial observation of a new record has since been disregarded, but nonetheless this is an exceptional, near-record high-pressure pattern.
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In winter we expect cold weather across most of Australia and occasional cold snaps that bring widespread frosty and icy conditions. However, this current cold weather is pretty unusual and we are seeing some records fall.
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As this week shows, we still occasionally get daily cold records in the current climate. But it’s much harder to get record cold months, and record cold years at a given location are almost impossible.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/southern-australia-is-freezing-how-can-it-be-so-cold-in-a-warming-climate-233977
Bitterly cold winter high pressure systems also coincide with low wind output. There have been problems for months with Aussie wind output.
May 2024 – Another wind drought pulls combined renewables output below last year
June 2024 – ‘Dark doldrums’ hits wind power supply
July 2024 – Coal power on comeback trail as wind, solar falter
Climate scientist Andrew King, who wrote the article above, thinks the answer to Australia’s future energy needs is renewables. In 2022 Andrew King channelled Greta Thunberg with a demand for a faster energy transition.
But renewables have not been a lot of help during this year of wind droughts. Not only are they subject to prolonged outages during unfavourable weather conditions, King himself admitted his own science suggests storms might get worse – which begs the question of why people who think the weather might turn nasty would even consider advocating for solutions which are profoundly vulnerable to bad weather.
Regardless of what the future holds, Australia would likely have suffered prolonged blackouts at night during recent freezing cold wind drought nights, if the real fossil fuel powered energy network hadn’t been ready to be switched on at a moment’s notice, to prop up the fake renewable system.
Maintaining two systems in parallel, the fake renewable system, and the real fossil fuel powered system, is what is driving up energy bills. It is time for Australia to choose, between a system with a proven track record of reliability, and a useless renewable system which we know will regularly let us down.
How can it be so cold in a warming climate?”
In the UK we’re usually told it’s the jet stream – and a warming Arctic
Best person to ask is probably John Holden.
Clearly it’s as the Met Office told us about the cold June and will probably tell us about the cold July – weather variability. Heaven forfend it could be a cooling climate and the rising atmospheric CO2 levels has nothing to do with anything.
I thought the UK Met Office’s position is, it’s not cold, it’s warm – your senses are mistaken.
I always attribute colder weather to winter, unless it’s due to climate change.
I was kind of wondering why they were surprised it was cold in the winter time.
The Climate Alarmists are just having a hard time reconciling “The Hottest Year Evah!”, with their cold temperatues. In their mind, if the Earth’s atmosphere is boiling, as NOAA and NASA claim, then it must be boiling in Australia, too, but it’s not, so they have a problem fitting this cold spell in with their Human-caused Climate Change Delusions.
“Best person to ask is probably John Holden.”
That made me bust out laughing! 🙂
The Texas February 2021 storm should have shown the issues with renewables. Windmills produce vanishingly little power in still air and freezing rain.
Of course, the subsidy miners went full tilt boogie on freezing gas lines, and inadequate weatherization for the worst cold spell in over a hundred years ( What was that about global warming?).
We didn’t learn anything. There is too much invested in unreliable power to back away. The public needs more suffering, I guess.
For at least until morale improves.
Or the subsidy miners are kicking back enough to make it worthwhile for the politicians?
You can be guaranteed that the purveyors of this scam will not be doing any suffering, quite the contrary.
They are making out like bandits.
Two systems are more expensive than one. However, one system composed of renewables plus storage is more expensive than two systems.
But it will still need fossil fuel back up, because intermittency affects ability to recharge storage as required, and wind/solar/batteries cannot provide base load.
We will really find out when the next AMO transition occurs. Here’s what happened back in the 1990s.
While a similar change won’t likely affect Australia, the entire NH will start cooling. That will eventually cool the rest of the planet.
“That will eventually cool the rest of the planet.” Not if we relocate weather stations next to heat sources. Then the “data” will continue to show the planet is overheating.
In the ’70s I read a short sci fi story about how car manufacturers started manipulating speedometers so that drivers would think they were getting faster and faster cars. Over a period of decades, speedometers were showing drivers were now driving 100 mph on highways when in fact they were still only doing 60. I thought the story was silly until I saw the tricks our governments are pulling to convince people they were living in a dangerously warming world.
We are truly gullible.
Speedometers in cars are tuned to run a bit faster , a few mph. But not that much that you mention.
LOL, you are looking only how they work today, Anything can be tweak anyway the government wants. In mechanical it gear changes in a digital system it is only programing. Yet with today tech GPS would have to go away for such a thing to happen.
Duker,
I have watched the major Australian manufacturer of the speedo system, now closed because we are not making new cars in Australia.
There was no offset like that.
Speedos werew run up and checked with a hardware store electric drill running at 1440 rpm. It is a rather goiod method, cheap and accurate.
“Not if we relocate weather stations next to heat sources.”
UK Met Office is doing just that with new sites.
Only 9 of the 58 new sites installed since 2000 meet class 1, or 2 specification.
That is either absolute INCOMPETENCE….. or it is DELIBERATE.
Oh come on bnice!! Always with the conspiracy theories.
Don’t you think that 84% of most anything that is supposed to follow a standard probably doesn’t? There’s no conspiracy! 16% is a pretty robust performance. If 84% of industries failed to meet wastewater standards who would even care? Wouldn’t you be satisfied if 16% of patients survived their appendectomy surgery?
Right! Of course you would. So why are you whining that 84% of weather stations don’t perfectly conform just because they’re conveniently mounted on the back of an air conditioner or some trivial detail?
You forgot the sarc tag, dummy !
Which do you think it is…. gross incompetence.. or deliberate.
Hmmm, who’s the dummy who would need a sarc tag?
Let’s just say, it’s hard to imagine even a government worker that incompetent. Oh wait, except pretty much every government worker.
Seriously too hard to say, unless you get a confession.
who’s the dummy who would need a sarc tag?
There are a few.. eg fungal, RG and his mates.
Don’t forget Simon, bgdwx, and Nick Stokes.
True and only 1 meets class 1!
It wasn’t sci-fi in Australia when they went metric, 60 speed signs became 100, but worse than that those who lived out of town near the 20 distance marker suddenly found they were now near the 32 marker, but even worse their 45 acres had shrunk to 17 hectares.
And the fuel economy got worse.
It got a lot colder as well.
The present warming is locked in for hundreds of years. It will gradually slow down but that will be observed as increasing snow extent over NH land.
The warming trend started around 400 years ago.
It is winter in Australia in July?
Christmas is on the 25th, presents are being wrapped, Santa is supplementing the reindeer’s feed for the long flight from the South Pole.
Yep: it’s because they insist on walking around upside down.
If you fly in Australia, you’re up over down under
But isn’t it just a convention to say Australia is upside down? I don’t think anyone really knows which part of Earth is up and which is down.
The truth is, in space there is no up or down, Had the aborigines built the technical world that evolved the globe would be 180 degrees from the way it is today. All we really have is arbitrary reference points.
And the toilet water flushes down in reverse.
“And the toilet water flushes down in reverse.”
Which is why we always close the lid before we press the button. ! 😉
Gravity does.
and the polarity of batteries has to be reversed as well, adding enormous cost of living for everyone.
Why doesn’t the gubmint DO SOMEFINK???
When I lived in Sydney, I once told a friend I was going up to Canberra (Canberra is at higher elevation that Sydney).
A great discussion ensued, because he insisted you go “down” to get to Canberra.
Yes. After all Australia is known globally as down under.
Thats is until you get there and go inland from the coast – thats known as outback
It is all very complicated for you poor northerners, isn’t it 😉
No, you go UP to Canberra from Melbourne, but DOWN to Canberra from Sydney.
From Perth, everywhere else in Oz is “OVER TO”.
I don’t understand why there is all this confusion about up and down, At our local station, the up train takes you down the hill, and the down train brings you in up the hill;. Just like a north wind blows from the north. SImple.
In Australia we walk the right way up. In the NH you guys walk upside down. What you think is the top is actually the bottom. Just ask God.
“What you think is the top is actually the bottom.”
So be careful how you use toilet paper. 😉
LOL… BUTT,.. I think I read enough Toilet humor. 🙃
I should have known, but on my first recent visit I was surprised that the moon is upside down there.
“Southern Australia is freezing. How can it be so cold in a warming climate?”
This is why global warming was rebranded to climate change. The fear mongers couldn’t sell cooler than average weather or excess snowfall as a symptom of global warming. The Ministry of Truth held a conference and it was decided that climate change was the best term to use.
The great advantage of climate change is the climate is always changing. Thus, they could mislead the public by conflating natural and possibly human-caused climate change into one catch-all term.
Yep: pretty convincing stuff. So, it’s to be renewables all the way (to Hell)!
“The atmospheric pressure was so high it approached the Australian record of 1,044.3 hPa set on June 7 1967.”
Ah, 1967, the depths of the “Ice Age Cometh”, 40 yrs of inconvenient sinking cold that Temperature Fiddlers erased with a stroke of the pen. They weren’t able to erase my memory of my mother accompanying me on very cold nights when I was collecting from my newspaper customers in Winnipeg in the late 1940s, nor could they fiddle away the the 1930s heat of the 20th century high stand I was born into and heard the stories about for years afterward from family and their friends
The temp fiddlers just drop any mention of temperatures or rainfall mover than 60s years ago. That way more recent events can be labelled ‘historic’, when on timelines of 100 or 150 years they are just decadel
Yes, the temperature drop from the 1930’s to 1980 was about 2.0C.
The Temperature Fiddlers reduced that figure to less than 0.4C for that time period, in their efforts to bastardized the temperature record and make it appear that today is the hottest year evah! and nothing in the past compares, and the reason it is the hottest year evah! is because CO2.
Now, think about this: The Climate Scientists in the 1970’s had watched the temperatures steadily decline for decades after the hot 1930’s, to the point that some of them were fretting that the Earth might be entering another Ice Age.
These climate scientists had watched the temperatures drop 2.0C to the coldest temperatures since the 1910’s, so it was not a surprise that they were invoking a coming Ice Age.
The climate scientists in the 1970’s didn’t have bastardized Hockey Stick charts to look at, they had regional, written temperature charts.
If bogus Hockey Stick charts had been available to them in the 1970’s, showing a small cooling of less than 0.4C, would those climate scientists be worrying about a coming Ice Age? I don’t think so. This alone shows how bogus the modern-day Hockey Stick global charts really are.
The temperatures today have cooled by about 0.3C since we hit the last high point. When the cooling hits 0.4C should we start declaring a new Ice Age might be in the offing? Of course, not. Don’t be silly. A 0.4C cooling is nothing. And it would have been nothing in the 1970’s, too. No, it got a lot colder in the 1970’s, than the bogus Hockey Stick charts show.
I certainly hope that one day the Temperature Data Mannipulators get what’s coming to them for lying to the world and scaring gullible people to insanity and death.
Here’s the real temperature profile of the globe (Hansen 1999):
Ah yes, a warmer world makes cold weather more likely.
I suggest Andrew to study some elementary thermodynamics to understand how nonsensical that notion is.
Yep. So if you like warm weather, you’d better wish for an ice age.
Indeed, because, obviously, a colder world must make hot weather more likely. Prepare yourself for heat waves in the next ice age.
One degree above normal or a new record high recorded at the end of a jet runway is trumpeted from every media orifice as climate change caused by demonic CO2. Any low temperature is either ignored or dismissed as weather.
“Any low temperature is either ignored or dismissed as weather.” or normalized upward later. That cold temperature you measured and felt was not “real” you know because it was not as cold elsewhere.
South Australia currently using DIESEL again, to prop up supply. (with imports from Victoria’s brown coal)
But it’s organic diesel, right?
Grown locally using abundant bullshit.
Hands up those who think Australians will enjoy lower priced electricity in the future!
The off-grid power system I built using Chinese sourced solar and battery produces electricity at an overage cost of $600/MWh. I challenge anyone to build a lower cost system using currently available solar panels and battery.
South Australian electricity price is now approaching this level. The cost of generation from diesel is higher than $600/MWh.
Nearing midday, and there is not a lot of solar in NSW or Vic.. Overcast and rather cool. !
O/T. UK science minister…
Lockdown fanatic and nanny statist Patrick Vallance will be given a peerage and the job
Yes, another unelected…..
The Eve of Destruction
Simple.
Ever sit in front of a campfire on a chilly evening?
The heat from the fire is what makes your back feel cold.
So heat causes cold. Simple.
(Where do I apply for my honorary PhD in “Climate Science”?)
Place a shovelful of coals under your chair to keep your bum warm too.
(Pro tip – if you smell burning bum hair, you’re gonna need a smaller shovel)
OT, I guess.
In Allen Eckert’s books the frontiersmen would do in cold weather is, have a long fire and when it died out, bury the coals under dirt then sleep on top of it to keep warm through the cold night.
(Never tried that myself.)
It doesn’t matter where you sit or stand, the smoke will follow you.
Just don’t get fooled by the mirrors!
It is not just Australia that has been having a ‘wind drought.’ On the other side of the ‘Ditch’ (the Tasman Sea) we New Zealanders have enjoyed a benign autumn with very little wind that has continued into the winter, not that anyone is complaining about it by the way. For us it meant that the leaves stayed on the deciduous trees for longer than normal. How the wind farms have gone I don’t know. I do know that the southerly systems that bring snow conditions from Antarctica to N.Z. have been channelled over Australia instead. Our South Island has been getting snow, but very little has made it to us in the North Island.
Very nice Eric. We must insist that the CAGW clowns use the term global warming not climate change. It would seem much harder to convince people that the warming is the cause of the cooling. However climate change can mean anything, that is precisely why it is their preferred term.
Melbourne winter this year 2024 is setting a record – that is, if you accept that the new station at Olympic Park opened in 2013 can be compared with the old Regional Office station by ignoring a sudden jump of about a half degree C offset in Tmin, with Olympic Park cooler. It makes a difference.
Assuming no offset, we then are mostly comparing historical values from Olympic Park alone, 2013 to 2024, because it is cooler than Regional Office most of the time.
We then compare the coldest monthly average Tmin, the lowest record setter, with this year of 2024.
Old Record 2024 Degrees C
April 11.3 13.1
May 8.6 8.6
June 6.9 6.8
May 2024 equalled the old record for coldest month at Melbourne
June 2024 was, on paper, a new record cold month, but there are uncertainties.
Have you seen public announcements that 2024 winter is setting new cold records? Don’t expect it, the emphasis has long been on record hot days in gratitude to Global Warming.
Geoff S
For a while some BOM procedures cut the temperature at -10C…no lower!!
The Olympic park site is actually likely to give rather high reading on hot summer days.
The nor-nor-westerly winds from central Australia, which cause the really hot days in Melbourne, are channelled down from the main railway yards through between two big glass buildings straight onto the weather site.
It is not a good site at all !!
Geoff,
I think you have those figures the wrong way around. June 2024 was6.9, and the record was 6.8 (2017,2018). So no record broken. But there’s only 11 years of data.
The top plot is an obvious cherry pick; the graph below refers to just the instant of the black line in the plot above. Wind has been doing well in SA; averaging 57% in 2023.
So
“Maintaining two systems in parallel, the fake renewable system, and the real fossil fuel powered system, is what is driving up energy bills.”
is the reverse of the truth. AEMO gives on the dashboard historical data of prices per FY, which I plotted up here, emphasising SA, which went with W&S, and Qld, which largely stuck with coal (as did NSW)
SA went from highest to mid-range – below the coal states, but above Vic and Tas, also heavily renewable.
Nice bump after 2020.
That is when it really separated from Qld and NSW, which went and remained much higher.
If NSW separated from the coal plants in Queensland it would be a very different graph. Coal didn’t get more expensive because of the cost of brown coal, which is essentially worthless except to the adjacent generator, it got more expensive because buyers wanted reliable energy.
NSW has black coal, not brown.
NSW has been importing from both Vic and Qld.
“NSW has been importing from both Vic and Qld.”
That is the most logical thing to do from a grid point of view..
The southern parts of NSW are far closer to Victoria than to the NSW Coal stations.
Same with the NSW Far North Coast, being much closer to Qld’s supply.
I’m sure we all agree that each of NSW, Vic and Qld could do with an extra modern coal-fired power station.
SA has enough gas and diesel to mostly cope on the regular wind and solar drop-out.
SA is a very minor demand.
It does basically nothing that requires lots of electricity except when it gets cold or hot.
It is linked like a parasite to Victoria.
What does the chart look like if you calculate real cost to the public by allowing for government subsidies for renewables, and for royalties and taxes on coal?
Also, the price of coal was absurdly high during 2022, thanks to a ramp up in demand from China that couldn’t be met fast enough. With coal production increasing, and the coal price down from its highs, it will be interesting to see how the chart goes.
Well, you could add in that the taxpayer actually built the coal stations and infrastructure, including transmission lines.
The coal belonged to the public; someone gets the right to mine and burn it, and then it is gone forever. Do you think there should be no royalties (they are ridiculoualy low)?
And they have provided almost un-interrupted service for 40-50 years.
And could do for many, many decades to come… plenty of coal there.
This is something wind and solar can never do.
The coal-fired power stations are providing a service that absolutely everyone uses.
If you add on royalties .. then everyone pays more.
Which of course is the aim… can’t have cheap, reliable electricity, now can we!
Just remember Nick, EVERYTHING in your whole life is there because of access to cheap reliable electricity..
Why are you supporting a scam that wants to deny that to future generations ???
Ask yourself why, Nick. !
In UK, it’s middle of ‘summer’,
today we had 10 hrs of sunshine with wind gusting to 9mph & we ‘boiled’ in temperatures of 14 °C; Had to switch heating on tonight.
At 20:30
Ground temp = +13.7 °C
Air Temp = +10.1 °C
Sky temp = -17.3 °C ( Light cloud )
Please, can anyone send some excess heat to UK (we will pay postage ),
It is of interest regarding 1967 being the year of the Australian atmospheric pressure record high as there are farmers in south western Victoria who are comparing the current drought like conditions to being the worst since those that occurred in 1967.
The perception that gas is a “cleaner” alternative to coal for power generation was challenged in a peer reviewed study that took into account all factors involved in the provision and use of each form of fuel.
Schernikau, L. and Smith, W.H. 2022; Climate impacts of fossil fuels in today’s electricity systems. Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, vol. 122, no. 3, pp.
It’s not global warming/climate change/whatever. It’s the pole shift which is happening right now.
Do you assist provide the ‘prediction’ I read on the BOM website in May, that said Australia is expected to have a milder, wetter Winter than normal. With above average night time temperatures?
Look, I’ll edit your little bio there for you Andy.
I’m a politically captured scientist, residing in an eco-hyperreality. I stare at the earth’s climate, to fabricate & provide simulated predictions and conclusions, that re-enforce the UN & IPCC’s CAGW position relating to human emissions of atmospheric carbon dioxide. I basically sit at a desk and play around with climate models all day!” — There much better!
Winter. Duh, stupid fux.
We also have been getting told for the past few years how hot our summers are, yet they are the coolest summers I have ever experienced with the number of days over 40°C being 0 or less than you can count on one hand. Our autumns have been warm though.
From the article: “Maintaining two systems in parallel, the fake renewable system, and the real fossil fuel powered system, is what is driving up energy bills.”
There it is!
And not just in Australia, but around the world. Integrating windmills and solar into national grids causes the prices of electricity to go higher and puts the grids at risk of blackouts.
It takes really stupid people to propose such ideas as adding windmills and solar to electrical grids, knowing what we know now.