Australia's Hottest Summer on Record...

H

HiEquity

...was the one we just had.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-...hottest-summer-on-record/4547746?WT.svl=news2

Key Points:
- Hottest summer on record across all weather stations, even if you take the extreme heat wave in the first half of January out of the readings
- Previous record was 97/98
- And the last six months have been hotter than any six months before
- 14 of 112 weather stations broke their maximum temperature records in just this year alone
- "Now we're setting daytime and night-time records around Australia at a very (much) more frequent rate than we were in the past and they outnumber cold records by five to one in some instances."
- It was hot on both sides of the country, where usually if it's hot on one side it's cooler on the other side
- Rainfall overall was below average, despite a number of well documented extreme weather (flood) events
- This all occurred despite there being no El Nino event in place, which is usually a key factor in increasing summer temperatures
 
For those interested in the source document, here it is:

http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20130301.shtml

This summer follows a pattern of extremely hot summers in various parts of the world over the past few years.

While the final numbers for the Southern Hemisphere summer will not be confirmed until mid-March, it was the hottest December on record for land areas of the Southern Hemisphere, followed by the hottest January. Large parts of southern Africa recorded their hottest January on record.

Hotter temperatures were also recorded in large parts of Argentina, Chile and Brazil, while temperatures in parts of Patagonia were more than 4°C above normal in January.
Click to expand...

Funny, I thought this was pretty big news but despite it being on the BoM and ABC websites for some hours, I can't find any mention of it yet on a News Ltd website...
 
What a load of rubbish.

One of the coolest summers I and friends and family and anyone around here have experienced apart from a couple weeks of heat wave (which everyone knows is part of summer) and also shaping up as one of the wettest.

We've never had so many consecutive summers like the last few where we have had so much wind from the East and South where, believe it or not, makes it COOLER...!!

As far as Im concerned it's simple climate change as per normal cycles.

These records....how bloody accurate are they and going back hundreds of years, thousands...? Ridiculous.

0.9 degree temps warming over the last 30 years.....gee we better move to Jupiter where it's cooler.

And if it turns around (which it will) and gets cooler, it will still be all our fault and must have a tax to fix it.

As far as one side of the nation to the other, WA has had a scorcher, we in our part of the East had a cool summer.

I hope they continue to be cool to tell the truth as I hate that terrible dry heat we usually get up here. But the last at least 6-7 years have been glorious apart from those couple weeks you get with heat wave and then it's over.

Im still a sceptic when I see headlines like this.

Edit: Just about to go out and have put on a singlet with a warm shirt and jeans, when normally I'd be wearing shorts and tee. It's freezing up here today with all the rain and wind from the south.
 
Last edited:
i thought summer was meant to be hot.....?

maybe we need a tax for disincentivising people from being closer to the sun at this stage in the planet's orbit.
 
How do they compensate for big city heat islands? I notice some of the records were set in Sydney and Hobart. Gee's, concrete and bitumin would store and reflect heat more than grass and crops.

I live not far from 'The Fence'. It wasn't a record hot summer here, no way. And from Australia day to today it was exceptionally wet and cool. I've had 280 mills in those 5 or 6 weeks.

How was it possible that Sydneys top in January was a massive 45.8 degrees? Thats more than 3 degrees hotter than in the north western town me and 'The Fence' live not far from, 200 ks from the coast?.,,???. OK, what about a hot place? I know. Moree. It doesn't get any hotter than there does it? Moree recorded 42.7, it's hottest day this summer, and that was not a record either, just like here.

Morees top was 3 degrees cooler than Sydneys? What the hell is going on with that?



Do city heat islands get compensated for? I have no idea?
Has someone compared just rural temperatures, and left out city ones? Surely that is the only way to compare historic temps?
Maybe they do? Once again I have no idea?


See ya's.
 
HiEquity said:
Hi TC

The Bureau explains their complete methodology and how they compensate for issues such as heat islands starting here: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/

...and within their published reports. It's pretty comprehensive.
Click to expand...



I couldn't get much out of that as far as city heat islands go. I looked hard too.



Lets compare some more places then, but small towns, so less likely to be effected by concrete and bitumin and airconditioners and millions of people, and on the coast like Sydney, up and down from Sydney.

Yamba.......... Highest temp this summer, 36.7 degrees. Record temp, 42.5. [no where near record]
Nelson Bay.... Highest temp this summer, 36.5 degrees. Record temp, 36.5. [equal record]
Merimbula..... Highest temp this summer, 44.2 degrees. Record temp, 42.0. [beat old record]

This all proves nothing though does it? Not even sure why I bothered.


See ya's.
 
Last edited:
OK to simplify it all a bit, this link is worth reading...

Particularly:
The urban heat island effect describes how urban areas can generate and store more heat than nearby rural areas due to the concentration of buildings and heat from human activities (such as air conditioners).
The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report considered the effect of urban heat on long-term global temperature records and found that the observed global land warming trend is very unlikely to be influenced significantly by increasing urbanisation. Several studies (most recently the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study) have shown that relative to the scale of observed warming, the effect of urban heating is very small.
There is no standard method for correcting such data — each site needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. One approach is to exclude urban sites, for example urban measurement sites have been removed from such data sets as the HadCRUT3 and the Bureau of Meteorology’s homogenised temperature data
Click to expand...

It's all part of the homogenisation process, as explained in the other reports. Before you ask that question:
The base assumption in this question is that unadjusted temperature records are the closest ‘ground truth’ to changes in temperature that have actually occurred. This is incorrect and there is a vast amount of literature and experience across meteorological agencies around the world that show this assertion to be false. Raw records are subject to numerous influences and biases that create errors in the data. The need to carefully standardise temperature records is well supported in the peer reviewed literature.
Land-based temperature measurements are adjusted according to mathematically-based and widely accepted statistical techniques. Land-based temperature measurements are also independently verified by satellite measurements, which are not affected by the urban heat island affect or other variables. Warming over the 20th century has been found to be robust and consistent across multiple independent data sets.
Click to expand...
 
The Fence said:
0.9 degree temps warming over the last 30 years....
Click to expand...

Correction...from the BOM website 0.9 deg increase since....wait for it....1910.

Lol...burn baby burn

The bit I don't like and trust the most is the future forecast....that's just it, a forecast and we all know how accurate weather forecasts are don't we?

Could be hotter even...but then it could be cooler...no hotter sounds much more dramatic and believable when backed up with inaccurate readings from hot city islands.
 
i look forward to food prices remaining stable or coming down as the temp rises along with CO2 in the atmosphere contributing to a hot, humid globe.

then i wont have to fly to bali to enjoy the weather, further reducing my carbon footprint.
 
HiEquity said:
...was the one we just had.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-...hottest-summer-on-record/4547746?WT.svl=news2

Key Points:
- Hottest summer on record across all weather stations, even if you take the extreme heat wave in the first half of January out of the readings
- Previous record was 97/98
- And the last six months have been hotter than any six months before
- 14 of 112 weather stations broke their maximum temperature records in just this year alone
- "Now we're setting daytime and night-time records around Australia at a very (much) more frequent rate than we were in the past and they outnumber cold records by five to one in some instances."
- It was hot on both sides of the country, where usually if it's hot on one side it's cooler on the other side
- Rainfall overall was below average, despite a number of well documented extreme weather (flood) events
- This all occurred despite there being no El Nino event in place, which is usually a key factor in increasing summer temperatures
Click to expand...
This was certainly a good summer down here. Made up for the last two that didn't really happen. I'm not sure we can all start running around screaming the GW word just yet.

I remember about 2 weeks ago that something like 6,000 flights were cancelled in the USA due to extreme snow and storms?

How 'bout we call it CC.
 
And he says this summer is likely to be a taste of what is to come in future decades.

"By about mid-century, so in about 40 years, you're actually talking about conditions like this becoming normal," he said.

"It depends on what emissions trajectory we go down, but on those mid to high scenarios, then this certainly would be a taste of things to come."
Click to expand...

#1 not only did we have a cool summer here - very few days over 40,

#2 we had the same climate experts say the same thing about rain - expect less rain from now on.

One quote from one of the doomsday climate experts was "we'll need to MAKE water from now on" (Flannery I think).

Why we ended up with desal plants we don't need :rolleyes:.
 
Last edited:
....and yet despite all of the fear mongering and links and data and reports and all the robust scientific data which is all peer reviewed by other scientists who all rely on Govt funding to keep their jobs....

....the people of Australia simply don't buy it. The more the scientists jump up and down the more the ordinary man and woman in the street ignores them.

Trying to squeeze subjects like climate and the Earth into miniscule things like 100 years (10^2) so they can be comprehended and compared by human life spans it a ridiculous notion. Lets look at data from 10^4 years ago.....10^5 years ago.....10^6 years ago.....10^7 years ago.....10^8 years ago.....10^9 years ago.....

Ahhhh, 10^9 and multiples thereof, now we are getting into the climate and Earth type realm.....but hang on, the human mind cannot possibly comprehend or compare, and therefore cannot use, the data....which doesn't exist.

What happened in 1997 and in the 15 years subsequently ?? Seriously, the Earth cannot possibly even recognise such an miniscule amount of time. Good for humans no doubt - but hopeessly inadequate on an earth timeline and scale.

These scientists may be good at crunching data and analysing minutae from the very very very recent past, but they are absolutely lousy at convincing ordinary folk. It's that transition from "this is what has happened in the very very very past" to "this is what we predict in the future" where it all falls down. The day to day stuff they get hopelessly wrong, on a basis that can only be described as very often. When they start predicting about 50 or 100 years in the future, all credibility goes to custard.

The fear mongering tactic hasn't and isn't working....but those who love to be alarmed insist on pumping out more and more dire predictions, in the vain hope that they will scare people into doing something. It still ain't working.

I won't encourage those who wish to instil fear to try another tactic. The more alarmist the claims, and everyone knows there have been some absolute whoppers, the more the public will reject it.

The epic failure of any of the world's substantial countries (Australia isn't included - we are just not even in the room, let alone invited to sit at the table) at the Copenhagen meeting to commit to any form of economic commitment to address these fears of the unknown is now a fact.

Despite this, our Labor Fed. Govt pushed ahead regardless. The PM who did lost his head...in part....over it, and the lies and deception around this subject will soon see another PM lose her head over it.
 
weg said:
One quote from one of the doomsday climate experts was "we'll need to MAKE water from now" (Flannery I think).

Why we ended up with desal plants we don't need :rolleyes:.
Click to expand...


In 2007, Flannery predicted global warming would so dry our continent that desalination plants were needed to save three of our biggest cities from disaster.

As he put it: "Over the past 50 years, southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming ...

"In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months."



How did Flannery come up with his ridiculous 20% rainfall claim? What info was he looking at?

Rainfall records from my farm from 1938 show that if anything it's getting wetter.

What do official BOM charts show?

rain_aus_0112_8546_zps883628a5.png


Australias rainfall. This chart shows exactly what my farm records do. That it's getting wetter, not dryer. My farm records show that we had a dry 40's, and 60's. The 50's, 70's and 90's were wet, and the naughties about average. Similar to this chart.

I'm in a wet summer, dry winter area though, so am under influence from the northern rainfall zone. Admittedly, even the weather bureau says it's getting wetter in the north, and dryer in the south. So lets bring up just the chart from southern Australia.

rain_saus_0112_26118_zpsac6c1e02.png


There is absolutely no falling rainfall trend there. So how did Flannery come up with his 20% less rain claim? This clown has been getting paid hundreds of grand a year in his job, and he is a total fraud. I'll bet his main job was to scare the public into thinking we were all soon going to be living in a dry waterless dustbowl if we didn't all act soon. He is a joke!


See ya's.
 
From HE's quoted link above:

Land-based temperature measurements are adjusted according to mathematically-based and widely accepted statistical techniques.

Adjusted to do what? Standardise...? OK..then next sentance says:

Land-based temperature measurements are also independently verified by satellite measurements, which are not affected by the urban heat island affect or other variables.

So, on one hand they "adjust" measurements to standardise them then check with satellite measuring from a safe distance away from those things that they adjusted for and they call this verifying the 2 sets of measurements...???

Then they conclude with:
Warming over the 20th century has been found to be robust and consistent across multiple independent data sets.

Yeah sure it has, zero point nine of one degree warmer over the 20th century. makes you wonder why they standardised the temps making them smaller...?

Anyway, the 21st century is here and it's been cooler & wetter than normal.

Yay, relief from drought and heat.

Not climate change, just climate, it's not perfectly predictable and not perfectly following any strict rules and patterns getting down to the nth degree.

Sure we pollute and we know it and are acting accordingly by cleaning things up and developing new technology in a sustainable way. We dont need to be scared out of our wits and beaten with the big stick to do this.

Im a total environmentalist and try my hardest to be responsible and dont like seeing waste and pollution at all, but there is limits on time and ability to clean the world up and taking the big stick out is not the solution.

Like Dazz says, the more they do this the more sceptical people become and resist. That is not "working together" that is bullying the masses who are trying to make that difference into paying over and above what they really need to do and that is to just do their own bit and it will all come together.
 
Last edited:
The other thing about water as a scare tactic is this; we little folk are doing our darndest to save water at home; saving shower water in buckets for the garden, I half-fill one saucepan and clean it, then empty the first saucepan's dirty water with detergent into the second one to clean it, and so on - we all do it....

But, ya wanna see just how much one hospital uses in water on a daily basis - more than a whole suburban street. They have to use it for health and disease requirements.

So, it's absolutely a waste of time to be bangin' on to us that we need to try and save water; it's literally a drop in a bucket on a domestic level.
 
All I know is it's bloody wet around here. Going to be the mouldiest start to the year for some time! Been a pretty cool summer as well. The wet season is normally around easter here but it has come in late Jan. Cane toad littlies everywhere! Hope it aint still raining until after easter - otherwise there will be some records challenged including number of cane toad births!
 
INVSTOR said:
I quite like Bindi's thoughts on global warming. http://m.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/why-bindi-took-on-hillary-clinton-over-an-essay/1731099/
Click to expand...
I agree.

But every time I bring up this issue (overpopulation) I get howled down with "there is loads of land in Australia - we could easily take another 100mill of people", or "who are you to decide on the population level?" etc.

Well; I don't decide it - it's just my opinion, and for those who believe in some sort of God, he/she/it will eventually decide the level, and when that happens; it'll be very very ugly.

But, we're already doing it ourselves - being that God - and we don't even realise it; deforestiation for more grazing land, over-fishing of oceans, famine due to a mixture of overpopulation and corruption and war, massively over-processed food (health issues related to diet and exercise) etc.

It's glib, but we are actually heading towards that fictitious life in the movie; "Wall-E" where all the massively obese humans have to head into space to escape the rubbish dump which is earth and live on a space station for eternity...art imitating future life?

What folk don't realise is that population growth isn't steady; it's become exponential.

And we help it along; we can now give babies to those who would normally never be able to - and in plural, folk can have babies into their '50's now, whereas to be almost at the end of your life at 60 was almost the norm.

We can save folk's lives who 20 years ago would have died from their ailments; we can keep more folk on the planet for longer and longer - no matter what their state of health is..

If everyone only replaced themselves we'd be fine (two kids per marriage), but a good number of cultures and societies are pumping out double themselves and more, and then those offspring do the same or similar, and so on.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

topcropper
Speculating? 2010 floods?
2
Replies
36
Views
5K
topcropper
topcropper
redwing
State Of The States
Replies
0
Views
1K
redwing
redwing
A
Safe as (average) houses
Replies
0
Views
767
andrew_de_a
A
topcropper
Climate Change, Agriculture, and other stuff.
2
Replies
24
Views
2K
pursefattener
P
Ruby
The Player Interview
Replies
0
Views
11K
Ruby
Ruby
Back
Top