Essay by Eric Worrall
A “record breaking” winter heatwave gripping Australia has likely saved householders millions of dollars in home heating costs. But apparently we shouldn’t look on the abrupt end of winter as a good thing.
Heatwave brings Australia’s winter weather to an abrupt end as climate change up-ends the seasons
By climate reporter Jess Davis
On Sunday afternoon, Australians across the country basked in the glorious winter sunshine.
The blossoms had sprung early, in Melbourne the footy was played in 24 degrees, and the ski fields mourned as heavy rain killed the remainder of another poor snow season.
…
And despite the start of winter feeling quite cold to many, that’s partly because our memories are short.
“It did feel quite cold to us because a lot of our other winters have been warm in the last 20 or so years,” Professor Perkins-Kirkpatrick said.
“The human experience, we generally only remember weather events or seasonal events up to eight years ago.
…
“To be honest, for most of us, it’s quite pleasant, a really nice change from cooler conditions,” Dr King said.
“But for spring or summer, if we get heat waves, of a similar kind of strength to what we’ve seen over the last week or so, or similar kind of level of unusualness, we would be really worried about those heat events.”
…
More than a thousand people died during the annual hajj in Saudi Arabia when temperatures reached 51.8 degrees Celsius.
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-29/winter-ends-with-heatwave-as-climate-change-upends-seasons/104279250
…
The old and infirm do suffer in heatwaves, just as they suffer in periods of extreme cold. But affordable coal or gas energy to power air-conditioning, or increasing winter fuel subsidies for retirees, would do far more to help infirm and elderly people on limited incomes, than wasting billions of dollars of government cash on wild schemes to nudge future temperatures by a fraction of a degree.
Home heating (and cooling) costs are a huge problem in Australia, especially in the colder, more climate obsessed southern states.
Almost half of Australians have gone cold this winter over power bill fears
By Emily McPherson • Senior Journalist 8:56am Aug 12, 2024
Millions of Australians have been shivering through this winter, avoiding using their heater over fears of how much it will cost, a new survey has revealed.
The new research, from comparison site Finder, found 1 in 8 Australians go without heating “all the time”, while a further 36 percent said they avoid using the heater as often as they can.
The findings, based on a survey of 1,049 respondents, mean almost half of Australians – or the equivalent of 4.9 million households – are living without adequate heating.
…
Read more: https://www.9news.com.au/national/almost-half-of-australians-have-gone-cold-this-winter-over-power-bill-fears/adbbac4e-301b-459f-8f37-a20500b050d8
An extreme heatwave or cold wave is only a problem for the infirm if they are forced to endure its effects, say because they can’t afford to switch on the air conditioner.
For those who are not infirm, the kind of heat they are talking about is not a challenge, providing people stay properly hydrated.
When I was young, for a time I worked in a poorly ventilated plastics factory in Melbourne, Australia. The chemical process and leaky hydraulic hot presses released huge clouds of steam, so the environment was dripping wet. On the hottest days the thermometer on the factory floor reached 55C / 130F. Management patrolled the floor every 5 minutes, offering hydration drinks.
My grandpa told me he worked in similar conditions in a metal foundry in Melbourne in WW2, 18 hours per day building Artillery pieces for the war effort. His factory featured large molten pots of lead, continuously maintained at 660F for heat treating steel, so I’m guessing his factory floor was likely hotter than what I experienced.
The human body is adaptable. When my work day finished at 3pm, it was a memorable experience stepping out into blazing sunlight on a 110F day, and shivering uncontrollably with cold for 2 minutes as my body adjusted to the abrupt drop in temperature.
I’m sure people who work in bakeries and mines have similar experiences.
But you wouldn’t expect climate scientists who spend most of their lives in comfortable air conditioned offices to know any of this.
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“Aussie Climate Scientists: Winter Heatwaves are Bad”
Who said that, and what exactly did they say?
The article does have people lamenting the early end of the ski season, but you don’t need to be a climate scientist to see why that is annoying. And someone worries about the snow gums. But for the rest, they are saying, as quoted here:
“To be honest, for most of us, it’s quite pleasant, a really nice change from cooler conditions,” Dr King said.
“But for spring or summer, if we get heat waves, of a similar kind of strength to what we’ve seen over the last week or so, or similar kind of level of unusualness, we would be really worried about those heat events.”
And he’s right.
Winter heatwaves are bad … because “for spring or summer…”. Seriously Nick, I included that quote to make it clear what they were saying.
Eric,
Your headline says
“Aussie Climate Scientists: Winter Heatwaves are Bad” (chortle chortle)
But they didn’t say that. They said spring and summer summer heatwaves are bad. And if we got summer heat as much out of line as this winter episode, we’d be in strife. All true.
Why don’t you propose an alternate headline, equal length, instead of just telling everyone else they didn’t try hard enough?
The headline is plain wrong. It doesn’t make it OK that it is short.
I didn’t say shorter. I said better. But I see your problem: you just don’t read very well.
Nick, If the heatwaves are a similar kind of strength, what is the problem? If the winter heatwave is 25C and the summer heatwave is of similar strength,25C, there is no problem. He is supposedly a scientist, surely he knows how to write a grant application?
leefor,
I suspect he reached the level of approving grant applications.
Geoff S
So is 77 degrees F considered a heatwave in Australia?
I thought it got hot there.
But certainly climate alarmists say winter heatwaves are bad- perhaps not in that article but as a general rule.
“similar kind of level of unusualness”
Nick, could you define or give the technical description of ‘unusualness’ for us
Using terms such as this makes a farce of the rest of it
If (when!) another heatwave arrives such as experienced across most of Australia in 1896, killing ~450 people, then there will be something worth headlines.
Until then, stay cool sportsfans.
What doesn’t Nick read or comprehend.
Has he been studying at the mosh school of Eng-Lit ??
You do love quoting selectively. What they said was
“Instead of enjoying what felt like a late spring or hot summer’s day in some places, an ominous shadow hung over the weather.
In Victoria, dark clouds gathered in the evening unleashing summer storms across parts of the state.”
And it did.
It might not have been intentional but they are two different paragraphs.
Instead of enjoying what felt like a late spring or hot summer’s day in some places, an ominous shadow hung over the weather.
In Victoria, dark clouds gathered in the evening unleashing summer storms across parts of the state.”
The meaning is obvious.
Obvious it was two separate paragraphs.
Seems you don’t understand what that means.
You really are getting desperate, aren’t you Nick
A “never-was”, trying desperately to support a totally ineffectual legacy as a mindless climate shill.
In ABC news, every sentence appears as an extra paragraph. Here is how it looked in context. Note that they are talking specifically about Sunday afternoon, when we did indeed get storms after a warm day:
We agree, complete BS.
How the hell can “unfamiliar” become “the norm”? It is either one or the other, no?
Personally, I would have a dig at
About 0.8 degrees since we put enough CO2 to raise levels. Doubtful anyone could notice that. Maybe it was due to a weather pattern?
No you can’t unless you arbitrarily choose a point at which a tenth of a degree below is normal and a tenth above is extreme.
And less cold events is based on very dodgy record keeping. I still shake my remembering how for three days in a row, the minimum at my town was exactly 0.1 degrees above the record lowest for August.
Perhaps Dr. King could give links to prove that the heat is caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
Climate change causes nothing. Climate change is the record of long term changes in weather patterns. Weather causes climate change, not the converse.
What does the 65,000 year old Rainbow Serpent Dreaming have to say about the temperature record at present Nick? You’re not oppressing the blackfella mob with your century old whitefella colonial Stevenson Screen thermometers are you?
(5) The Rolling Stones – Paint It Black – Live OFFICIAL (Chapter 4/5) – YouTube
Nick,
As you know, I have studied the math at low level of Australian heat waves for 30 years using BOM data mainly Tmax daily for major cities and isolated locations that fill geographic holes of coverage.
It can be taken with some confidence that adjectives describing heat waves are open slather. They mean nothing, but they need not be invalid. They are used like Victorians put tomato sauce on a meat pie at the footy, copiously and by reflex action.
In the real world, anyone can play with these numbers and with adequate imagination can make them sing the song they want. There are adjustments to the original data to help, like ACORN-SAT now into its 5th version, each version rather different to the others to give a broad range for story tellers. There is no :”easy” official BOM definition of heatwave, nor any “easy” international definition. Some agencies like BOM have composed their own definitions and I must say that they do provide scope for stories that suit.
Nick, you know how powerful pure mathematics are and you often express objections to bloggers who do not use pure enough logic. Sometimes I agree with you, sometimes I write as such, because because it is hard to argue against pure, simple logic.
Having said that, I do hope that you can see like I have, that there is not a great deal of character in the annual heatwave records, compiled as simply as I can imagine, for these 8 Australian cities attached.I see no signal strong enough or rare enough to inflame a climate crisis. There is a year 2024 high blip requiring more research at global scale, but it it quite muted by comparison in Australian data, even in UAH lower troposphere numbers.
I would be grateful if you or a colleage sought the raw data behind these graphs of mine in Excel, for your own studies and to find fault with mine.
There is a decided lack of friendly cooperation between the sceptical folk and The Establishment folk ikn Australia. I’d like to reduce that barrier.
Geoff S
https://www.geoffstuff.com/eightheatwave2022.xlsx
Geoff,
You can get unadjusted data from GHCN Daily and also from BoM Climate Data Online, as a zipped csv file for each station. I could get you those for the 8 stations, but will take a little while, cos has to be done manually.
Nick,
Thanks for the offer but that is familiar ground, downloaded a hundred or more weather stations routinely already.
My difficulty is not with the raw numbers but with the way that stories are spun from them and adjustments to them. When the raw data fail to tell a desired story, some people create elaborations in the hope that they will.
I am seeking a return to purity and logic but I do not see much inclination from The Establishment, except in the direction of more elaboration and taller stories.
How about you?
Geoff S
Geoff,
I don’t agree, of course. But I do use unadjusted GHCN data for my regular monthly global anomaly average. It agrees with the majors (which come later) and with my own calculations using adjusted data. I think there should be more of this. Sceptics make no real attempt to quantify their arm-waving about adjustments. How much difference does it really make? Calculate and find out.
The GAT difference is a meaningless number that tells nothing about “the climate”.
Mix in Fake Data fraud and its meaninglessness drops even farther.
GHCN is already manically “adjusted” and heavily CORRUPTED by urban warming
But I’m sure you are well aware of that and are just deliberately being disingenuous as usual.
It’s not on the Gretaheads’ touchphones-
Forgotten history: 50 degrees everywhere, right across Australia in the 1800s « JoNova (joannenova.com.au)
so it’s all fake news and disinformation/misinformation to be reported to the omniscient ones for removal and re-education camps-
Labor’s new ‘disinformation’ portal backfires after people submit party’s own ads for fact-checking via online form | Sky News Australia
It would be hilarious if it weren’t so serious with the usual jackbooters.
“so it’s all fake news and disinformation/misinformation to be reported to the omniscient ones for removal and re-education camps-“
No it’s about comparing like with like ….
https://theconversation.com/factcheck-was-the-1896-heatwave-wiped-from-the-record-33742
Most people are familiar with the white Stevenson Screens you can see at any weather-observing site around the country. But there is a great deal of documentary evidence indicating that, for much of the country, such screens were not widely used in Australia during the 19th century.
Meteorologist Clement Wragge, in an 1886 report (Wragge, C. L. 1886. Meteorological Inspection and Proposals for a New Meteorological Organisation, Report to the Colonial Secretary, Brisbane, presented to the Queensland Parliament, 14 pp.), pointed out that some thermometers:
Of course you would be quite happy for todays thermometers to be ….
“hung under verandahs and over wooden floors; others are placed against stone walls and fences.”
??
I think the death toll from the 1896 heat wave tells us more about what happened than where some thermometers were housed.
Not much AC in 1896. If anything the indoors temperatures would be higher.
Correct. How people were exposed to the heat says more about casualties back then.
The precession cycle is gradually shifting Australia to a more moderate climate with reduced extremes. Cooler summers and warmer winters. The opposite of what is happening in the northern hemisphere.
The warming that is occurring in Australia is due to increased minimums rather then higher highs.
The precession cycle has a period of about 26000 years. Pretty gradual.
Here is the progression of maximum temperatures:
Maximum temperatures measured by Australia’s defective temperature monitoring stations.
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/05/why-is-temperature-data-a-national-secret-bom-still-hiding-data/
Your link says nothing about defective stations. It is just Jennifer Marohasy with a bee in her bonnet about unpublished (and mostly undigitised) readings of secondary comparison thermometers. But that bee now seems to have escaped.
Now so DESPERATE that you are denying the parlous state of Australia’s weather station network.
You never did care about accurate data, did you Nick !!
Nope! Numbers is numbers!
Is that the T-raw data, or one of the “homogenized” ACORN-SAT dataset versions?
Maybe, let’s see raw temperature series for rural stations only.
You mean like, say Rutherglen ?
Just downloaded the raw daily max and min temperatures for my local weather station (Nilma North, station number 85313) and there is a similar downward trend in both minimum and maximum temperatures, though the dataset is much shorter with the station only opening in 2014, so you couldn’t make any climatic claims from it. But, there certainly isn’t a trend of increasing temperatures, let alone anything to be worried about. This station is reasonably well situated and the location (next to the hall) has not changed much over the time period. While urban sprawl is heading in its direction, it’s probably still 3km away for now.
Oh look, no hockey stick!
Incredible.
You know that is most totally BOGUS warming from URBAN heat and really bad sites.
But you choose to use it anyway.
DISINGENUOUS !!
In tenths of one degree even!
Well with that level of precision / accuracy, who could possibly argue?
Just one question –
why only start this construct in 1910?
There were plenty of thermometer readings being recorded in the decades prior to 1910.
Because they show it was WARMER.
Nooo.
The BoM wouldn’t resort those sorts of shenanigans would they?
Are you suggesting there is some sort of “narrative” to be promoted?
I bet the chart for the your chart came from the BoM. It is carp. It correlates to the size of the engines blasting hot air onto the temperature gauges at the airports.
I have attached UAH difference from for February and August 1980 to 2023. Makes my point with regard Australia perfectly.
This is from satellite detection and carefully massaged into a temperature reading by honourable people using the same consistent process over the record period. It is not something cobbled together by the BoM and fiddled to fit their anti-Australian agenda.
“Makes my point with regard Australia perfectly.”
It has nothing to do with your point, which was that
“The warming that is occurring in Australia is due to increased minimums rather then higher highs.”. UAH publishes no such data; it is meaningless for troposphere. You could only make such a claim from surface data. So what was your claim based on? Anything?
According to UAH, 2022 Dec + 2023 (Jan, Feb) was the 34th warmest summer in 45 years.
Slight warming trend in summer, (0.0099C/yr) …. (probably insignificant)
… nearly three times the warming trend in winter. (0.0264C/yr)
Seems Rick is correct.. winter warming a lot faster than summer.
Australia experiences warmest temperatures in February per the chart I attached above. UAH across Australia shows February is cooling.
Australia experiences coolest temperature in August also on the chart above. UAH shows August temperatures are increasing.
Observed warming across Australia is due to narrowing of the range with warmer minimums up and cooler maximums down not as much as the minimus have increased.
You are using the much mangled and fiddled carp that BoM produces. I am using satellite data that has not been mangled through the BoM homogeniser.
To repeat the point I am making – the warmest month, February, has cooled over the past 43 years while the coolest month, August, has warmed over the past 43 years. I cannot be any clearer than that.
UAH during the satellite era has used a consistent process. Through the same period, BoM have gradually shifted measuring stations to airports and closed down their other rural stations. The old LIG thermometers have been replaced with fast acting thermocouples that pick up every engine blast from the airplanes using the runway beside the weather stations. The cities where the bulk of the BoM measurements are made have grown up and expanded out dramatically over the satellite era with more buildings taking ever increasing energy. .
But it wasn’t what you said:
“The warming that is occurring in Australia is due to increased minimums rather then higher highs.”
The point is that UAH cannot measure the highs and lows. You can only do it down here.
Again the total lack of comprehension.
Winter (COOL TEMPERATURES)
is warming nearly 3 times as fast as summer (HOT TEMPERATURES)
why is such a simple concept so difficult for your addled mind to comprehend.
Rick is absolutely correct.
As always, numbers picked out of the air, and totally wrong. Winter warming at 0.196 C/decade, summer at 0.139C/decade. Summer is warming not much slower than global all month.
The word is THAN, Nick, or your line makes an entirely different point.
Rick, can you do the same thing using January and July..
Down here we usually consider DJF as summer, and JJA as winter, which is what I used further down for my Winter v summer trend calcs.
Nice hockey stick, Stokes.
How much of it is Fake Data?
Not “fake data” now but it was corrupt data back before 1910 certainly.
And probably beyond as …..
“So did the different ways of exposing the thermometers seriously bias the 19th-century observations, relative to modern readings? The answer is yes, and we have Charles Todd (of overland telegraph fame) to thank for answering this question.
In 1887, Todd set up what must be one of the longest-running scientific experiments ever, when he installed thermometers in a Stevenson Screen and on a Glaisher Stand at Adelaide Observatory (as seen in the illustration here). Observations were taken in both exposures until 1948.
The results of this 61-year experiment show that summer daytime temperatures measured using the Glaisher Stand are, on average, 1C warmer than in the Stevenson Screen. And this was at a well-maintained station – if a Glaisher Stand is not used properly, direct sunshine can fall on the thermometers, dramatically increasing the warm bias (and this was probably what happened at some stations, given that we know equipment was not always well maintained).”
And now the BOM switches measurement sites without any long-term comparison tracking, yet still claims new temperature “records” based on the new temperature data from the new warmer sites. And the Stevenson screens have been replaced with newer screens with again, no long-term comparisons to make sure that the new measurements are comparable to the old measurements. On top of all this, the BOM has also changed the measurement devices, again without any long-term comparisons.
I used to work in the cookroom of a cannery. It was about 105 F (40 C) at floor level, and hotter on top of a continuous can cooker. And very humid, from venting steam.
Pizza shop in front of gas ovens, for me. I don’t think the owner had a thermometer in the building.
My basic rule was to pay attention to how often I needed to pee, and what color it was. If it was more than an hour, or anything other than pale straw, I was getting dehydrated.
The thermometer was you.
A gorgeous late August 26ºC here today in the Hunter Valley.
A blessed change from all the dreary overcast of the last few weeks, months.
… but the are forecasting 22ºC tomorrow, and only 18ºC on Tuesday. (6ºC overnight) 🙁
It is called WEATHER. !
And of course they try to blame the warmer than usual 2023/24 on.. guess what… CO2…
… deliberately ignoring the large release of energy from HT and the 2023 El Nino.
It really is farcical that intelligent people would do this just to seem virtuous and to get paid from the climate trough.
This is fairly normal weather for late Winter/early Spring. You get fluctuations with a couple of warm days, then a few colder days (as the last couple have been), with the balance of warm to cold gradually shifting to the warmer side as you get later in Spring.
It really hasn’t been particularly warm in this part of Australia (South East Victoria) for the last 5 years. In 2019 we had some pretty nasty bush fires and Summer temperatures reached their usual mid 40s C, but since then I can’t remember a single total fire ban day in my region, the summers have been cool and wet (causing problems in various vegetables) and the winters fairly cold, though this year has been a little less cold than previous years.
The climate alarmists are, unsurprisingly, alarmed by pretty much any change in the weather, declaring it to be some “new normal” catastrophe from which we are all doomed. It’s pretty boring.
They are meant to be doing a “burn-off” in some local bushland tomorrow..
But the forecast is for 25knot winds, so I doubt it will happen.
Depends on “intent”.
Cliff Mass says “Vote Yes for Washington State Initiative 2117”
that will remove WA State’s “Carbon Fee”. And lower gasoline
prices by about 50¢ per gallon. (Some question that number.)
Very nice Eric. The solution is so simple, fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators and build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators. Problem solved.
Reminds me of alarmists telling me (in Canada) how I should be upset that it’s NOT -20C in January.
I’ll take -5C Canadian winters indefinitely, thank you.
Anyone who thinks their weather is unbearable being 1C hotter than 40 years ago, I’ll be happy to put in a word for you with Nunavut/North West Territories immigration. It can hit -60C (~-80F) with the windchill in January. You and your kin will be safe from climate change there for a few thousand years, at least.
Here we go again. Another few gems of invented wisdom from the clucky dumb Mum set of east Australian academics, you know them, the ones who cry from the damage they imagine CO2 does to the globe.
““It did feel quite cold to us because a lot of our other winters have been warm in the last 20 or so years,” Professor Perkins-Kirkpatrick said.
“The human experience, we generally only remember weather events or seasonal events up to eight years ago.’
Evidence, Sarah, show us the evidence for your statement. Hen tell us why you want to spread such material to others.
Here are 128 graphs showing one way to display that not very much at all has happened to heatwaves in the written records since they began in 8 of Australia’s main cities for this type of study.
It will not help the climate crisis if you add in 2023 and what we have of 2024. The heatwaves vary little in properties from year to year.
Confront this, Sarah P-K and child. Read the data, do your own calculations, then tell us what you fear from such a bland set of numbers.
Geoff S
https://www.geoffstuff.com/eightheatwave2022.xlsx
(Professor Perkins-Kirkptrick).
Polar bears the Great Barrier Reef and now the poor beleaguered snow gum. Please save the snow gum.
The Australian snow gum is a very beautiful tree in a tortured way and I would be very sorry to see it go extinct.
However I am heartened by the fact that their habitat is between around 700 m and the tree line at around 2000 m, both of course dependent on location that varies from SE Queensland to Tasmania even Mount Gambier in SA.
The highest mountain in Australia is Mt Kosciuszko at 2228 m, named by Polish explorer Edmund Strzelecki ‘in honour of Polish-Lithuanian and American freedom fighter General Tadeusz Kościuszko’ (Wiki) and is above the tree line.
Reductions in heating costs but then many will find the cost of using humidifiers and air conditioning onerous. The social bonus of a hot climate cannot be underestimated. In the US you might retire to the southern states and enjoy predictable warmth. In Great Britain people retire to their houses. A small country with a more or less uniform temperature, but you would still need the artificial sun of domestic heating and the threat thar your home is your expensive prison. In recognition of this entrapment, the British Government had what was called a Cold Weather Payment that dispensed up to £300 to pensioners in a one off payment to help towards domestic fuel bills. Britain’s new leftist government has cancelled that award. While many richer pensioners might decamp to Mediterranean countries for their retirement, the government were concerned that the well to do who stayed put would get this easy money, despite there being a general cost of living crises added to by costs associated with green energy usage.An energy commentator in the UK, Paul Homewood wrote this:
“The government itself cannot deny how obscenely expensive all of the renewable energy subsidised under Renewable Obligations (RO) continues to be. This scheme was introduced by the previous Labour Government. According to the Office of Budget Responsibility (yes there is such a Quango in Britain), it will add £7.9 billion to energy bills this year. The RO scheme was replaced for new projects in 2016 by Contracts for Difference (CfDs), but wind and solar farms already qualified under RO continue to receive subsidies, which, to make matters worse, automatically increase year-on-year.
When indirect renewable subsidies, such as providing standby capacity and grid balancing, are added on. The average household is paying over £500 pa for the privalege of having renewable energy.
For all of this, of course, we have the state’s 2008 Climate Change Act to thank, the biggest act of national self harm ever inflicted on the UK.”
Trapped at home, old and or infirm, you do not stand a chance, it may be a warmth or food issue for many. They have put the word ‘old’ in a sentence, a life sentence..
Yes, we are having a very warm first day of Spring here in Brisbane. The magpies are in nesting mode, which means they include my garden as their territory. Since my cat thinks its her territory, this has led to disagreements. So far, I have been unable to negotiate a compromise.
Clearly, we are all very doomed indeed.