“People have been imagining that the climate is changing, exaggerating every weather event, getting widespread press coverage, and blaming it on man – for as long as there have been newspapers.”
–Tony Heller
Climate Change Insanity Never Changes
AUSTRALIA’s highly variable climate is influenced by the broad patterns in the oceans around it and the atmosphere above it. These patterns are considered the “dominant climate and weather drivers“ according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.
ENSO (El Niño–Southern Oscillation) is one of Australia and the planet’s key climate drivers, influencing extremes including devastating bushfires, “droughts and flooding rains“.
ENSO swings between three key phases – La Niña (negative), neutral (inactive) and El Niño (positive).
EL NIÑO
Australian Climate Influences (El Niño) | BoM
LA NIÑA
Australian Climate Influences (La Niña) | BoM
*
INDIAN OCEAN DIPOLE (IOD)
WHILE El Niño and La Niña occur in the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean Dipole oscillates in the waters of the Indian Ocean, influencing climate and weather patterns of Australia and the entire planet.
Indian Ocean climate influences (IOD) | BoM
Indian Ocean Dipole
Sustained changes in the difference between sea surface temperatures of the tropical western and eastern Indian Ocean are known as the Indian Ocean Dipole or IOD. The IOD is one of the key drivers of Australia’s climate and can have a significant impact on agriculture. This is because events generally coincide with the winter crop growing season. The IOD has three phases: neutral, positive and negative. Events usually start around May or June, peak between August and October and then rapidly decay when the monsoon arrives in the southern hemisphere around the end of spring.
Sea surface temperatures
Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures impact rainfall and temperature patterns over Australia. Warmer than average sea surface temperatures can provide more moisture for frontal systems and lows crossing Australia.
Indian Ocean climate influences (IOD) | BoM
*
POSITIVE IOD – IMPLICATIONS FOR DROUGHT and BUSHFIRES
WHILE most of the mainstream media, and ClimateChange™️ activists have juvenilely blamed trace gas Carbon Dioxide for Australia’s devastating bushfires, little to nothing has been said about ENSO and in particular the IOD.
IT doesn’t take Einstein to workout why ClimateChange™️ activists, the CO2 theory-obsessed fake news mainstream media and the extended climate-ambulance-chasing family choose to omit natural climate drivers from their doomsday rhetoric.
HOWEVER, policy makers, industry and the public must be made aware of Mother Nature’s dominant and natural climate drivers so that public funds are not misallocated and importantly so that we can identify the warning signs of drought and other extremes using ENSO and IOD to predict and prepare for future and inevitable catastrophes.
STRONG POSITIVE IOD = DROUGHT = BUSHFIRES
Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) – Positive Phase | BOM
*
2019 RECORD DROUGHT
2019 saw the lowest rainfall on record for Australia and in particular Eastern and South Eastern Australia where the devastating bushfires occurred. This coincided with “one of the strongest positive IOD events to impact Australia in recent history”, according to the BoM.
IOD Time Series | BoM
*
BoM goes on to state that “the IOD’s legacy of widespread warm and dry conditions during the second half of 2019 primed the Australian landscape for bushfire weather and heatwaves this summer.”
IN this case, it seems undeniable that ‘correlation does equal causation’.
australia-NSW-rainfall-1900-2019
Australian Rainfall Deciles 2019 | BoM
*
DATA-over-theory guy Willis Eschenbach from “the word’s most viewed climate and science website” – Watts Up With That? exposes who really are the “deniers” when in comes to identifying naturally occurring cycles of drought and rainfall patterns that influence Australia’s weather, climate and bushfires …
Australia Fires … And Misfires
Willis Eschenbach / January 4, 2020
I kept hearing so much about the Australian bushfires being the result of or driven by “climate change” or “global warming” that I thought I’d take a look at just what’s happened to the rainfall there. Here are a hundred and nineteen years of Australian rainfall.
Climate change and variability: Tracker: Australian timeseries graphs | BoM
Here’s the curious part. The earth has been undergoing a mild warming pretty steadily since 1970, about the last half-century.
But although the last couple years have been dry, the last half-century in Australia has been wetter than the previous half-century. Not dryer. Wetter. And a lot wetter.
In fact, anyone under about sixty years old has never experienced dry Australia.
Now, I mentioned this and showed this graph on Twitter, where I post as @weschenbach, and someone said something like “Well, Australia’s a big area to average. Maybe it’s wetter in the middle and less so on the coast.”
That seemed unlikely. I mean the moisture is coming in from the ocean and so the coasts are generally wetter than the outback … plus with overall more rain, the middle would have to be pretty wet.
But I’m a man for data over theory, so I went back to the same source listed above, and I got the rainfall records for New South Wales where the fires are. Here are those results.
australia-NSW-rainfall-1900-2019
And once again, yes, the last few years have surely been dry in NSW … but again, that’s weather. And once again, the recent half-century has been much wetter than the first half of the 20th century. Not dryer. Wetter.
Finally, forest management experts have been warning the Australian government over and over again for years that neglecting forest management and giving up on fire hazard reduction burns was piling up fuel in the bush, and that it was only a matter of time and a dry year before catastrophe struck … here’s a particularly strong warning from 2015, and it is far from the only one.
But nooo … misguided green activists wouldn’t hear of that. They protested the fire hazard reduction burns.
aussie-greens
Hilariously, the Australian Broadcasting Commission has deleted their article on the activists’ protest because it doesn’t fit the “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!” narrative … bunch’a deceptive left-wing idiots who don’t know that the intarwebs never forget.
And when you add the incredibly high fuel load in the oily flammable eucalyptus forest to the fact that more than a dozen arsonists have been arrested for starting many of the fires, it should come as no surprise to anyone that these fires have been devastating, destructive, fatal, and horrible …
It should come as no surprise because they were warned. Clearly. Repeatedly.
Now, I live in the fire zone in California, and so I have great sympathy and compassion for those who are in the path of the fires in Australia. And our fire problem here is inter alia for the same reason—abysmal forest management practices driven by Green activists with hearts of gold and brains of oatmeal.
But those blaming it on climate change? Look, if the CO2 emissions in Australia went to zero, it might make the earth cooler by about 0.05°C by the year 2050 … call me crazy, but I don’t see Australians giving up on air travel as being a very effective fire-fighting strategy.
My best regards to everyone on a lovely clear night,
w.
Australia Fires … And Misfires | Watts Up With That?
IN the heated and divisive days of CO2-centric catastrophism that we currently inhabit, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, has a fundamental responsibility as the nation’s premier, government meteorological and ‘scientific’ body to douse the flames of ‘man-made’ Climate Change hysteria by publicly explaining to policy makers, the public and to the mainstream media that completely natural and cyclical climate events are “the main climate drivers” of climate and weather extremes in Australia.
AGAIN, policy makers, industry and the public must be made aware of Mother Nature’s dominant and natural climate drivers so that public funds are not misallocated and importantly so that we can identify the warning signs of drought and other extremes using ENSO and IOD to predict and prepare for future and inevitable catastrophes.
THEY would also do well to quell the apocalyptic fantasies being instilled by ClimateChange™️ activists and teachers into our most vulnerable – our children – leading to all manner of psychological disorders and outbreaks of genuine fear and distress …
The poor children were absolutely terrified. “We are gonna die! I don’t want to die!” screamed one little child during a propaganda session on “climate” forced on 2nd and 3rd graders at a public school in Toronto.
BACK in 1923, when scientists behaved like scientists, the BoM, then known as the Commonwealth Meteorological Office prided itself on existing “as a corrective to scare mongering and shameless prophecy.”
“It is fortunate for the community’s peace of mind that theCommonwealth Meteorological Officeexists as a corrective to scare mongering and shameless prophecy.” – Mr. E. Bromley
11 Aug 1923 – NOT A RECORD WINTER – Trove
BOY, are we praying for a return to the measured days of 1923, well before ClimateChange™️ hysteria trumped reason and dissenters called to be lynched!
BOM notes that ENSO is “the dominant climate / weather driver”. And they would be correct. To think that windmills and solar panels, or handing over billions of our hard-earned money to the U.N., or shutting down one more coal-fired power station can effect ENSO is at best unscientific, at worst, insanity writ large.
IF the climate activists and their media sycophants were serious about ’emissions’ and their effect on climate and weather, they would be glueing themselves to the pavement, outside the embassies of China instead of de-industrialising Australia and sending jobs and ’emissions’ back to…China.
THE fact that they are not, proves without a doubt that ClimateChange™️ has absolutely nothing to do with the ‘environment’ or “Saving the Planet”, rather, everything to do with an unhealthy lust for power, control and the advancement of deadly socialism.
DON’T take my word for it, you only have to read Greta Thunberg’s the UN’s very own words on exactly what the “Climate Crisis” is really all about …
“the climate crisis is not just about the environment.It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will.Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it.We need to dismantle them all.” – Why We Strike Again by Greta Thunberg
WE are yet to be told what system would replace capitalism. However, one does not have to read far into the history of the environmental movement to work out which form of actual “oppression” they would prefer.
*
CONCLUSION
MANY complex climate and weather factors lead to catastrophic bushfires. In my opinion, mankind does play a huge roll in the fires. Arson, the criminal build-up of dry fuel loads and poor forest management have greatly exacerbated Australia’s latest bushfire ‘crisis’.
WHILE Australia is set to have a Royal Commission following this season’s devastating bushfires that burnt over ten million hectares, levelled ~2000 homes and killed ~30, don’t expect to see the ENSO, IOD, arson or fuel-load management playing a lead roll. The climate ambulance chasers will use the enquiry – the 58th since 1939 – to push their ruinous deindustrialisationClimateChange™️ agenda.
AS the excellent Viv Forbes predicts, the RC will merely …
“provide a grandstand for the Climate Rebellion Mob who will get starring roles on ABC/Fairfax. Big business will probably promote a carbon tax to fight bushfires while foresters and land owners will hardly be heard.”
Government by Enquiry | Saltbush Club
IF the coverage and commentary we’ve seen from the mainstream media, CO2 theory-obsessed politicians and Hollywood elites is anything to go by, then Forbes would be spot-on. A sad indictment on the 24/7 news cycle and social media times that we currently inhabit where the press and influencers instinctively default to blaming ‘man-made climate change’ for every and any weather event regardless of the actual science, underlying data or reference to history.
ACTIVISM at its most lazy and dangerous that will only lead to further loss of life, destruction of infrastructure and the decimation of plants and wildlife when the inevitable bushfires return.
Heaviest snow in years expected over WA’s Stirling Ranges this weekend as cold blast hits – ABC News
SNOWFALLwill become “A very rare and exciting event…
Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Dr David Viner – Senior scientist, climatic research unit (CRU)
“Good bye winter. Never again snow?” – Spiegel (2000)
“Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms” – IPCC (2001)
“End of Snow?” – NYTimes (2014)
***
WEATHER is, of course, not climate.
WE are keenly reminded of this fact by our global warming climate change hysterical friends ‘if’ a significant snow event or cold blast is reported on the media.
THOUGH, do keep in mind the “End-Of-World” prophecies declared by our same friends every time a two-day heat wave (in summer) is reported, on repeat, throughout the mainstream media.
THE rules are simple – cold equals weather, hot equals climate!
*
SKIING in Australia takes place in the high country of the states of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, as well as in the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra), during the southern hemisphere winter. The season varies between ski fields and years, starting from mid June and ending mid October. The past three years have seen extended seasons across most higher altitude resorts.
WHILE most of the regular season since then has been ‘regular’, the latter half has been anything but, with the past two weeks seeing record snow dumps.
OFFICIAL MEASUREMENTS
SNOWY Hydro have been measuring weekly natural snow depths at three locations the Snowy Mountains of NSW since the 1950’s. Their highest measuring site is at Spencers Creek (1,830m elevation) near Charlotte Pass.
THE latest readings have been impressive. Record-breaking, in fact …
ACCORDING to Elders weather:
The natural snow depth at Spencers Creek was 202.7cm this week. This is the earliest date for a depth of two metres to be measured at Spencers Creek in 15 years.
It’s also an increase of 77.5cm from last week and, impressively, the third weekly increase of more than 70cm so far this season. This is a new record for Spencers Creek. Prior to 2019, there had only ever been two weekly depth increases 70cm or more in any one season, with data available back to 1954.
While there have been some long periods without any significant snow this season, when it has snowed, it’s been exceptional in a historical context.
Elders Weather
*
WITH more snow on the way this weekend for Australia’s ski fields, natural snow depth could reach its deepest level in two decades …
Deep snow at Australia’s ski fields | The Weekly Times
*
“SETTLED” SNOW SCIENCE?
WITH ‘unexpected’ snow over the past four years boosting historical averages across Australia’s ski fields, the big question still remains: Is Australia’s premier science body, the CSIRO, and the Ski industry willing to retract their ‘end of snow’ predictions?
A 2003 CSIRO report, part-funded by the ski industry, found that resorts could lose a quarter of their snow by 2020 …
CSIRO Research Publications Repository – Climate change impacts on snow in Victoria
By 2020, the average annual duration of snow-cover decreases by between five and 48 days; maximum snow depths are reduced and tend to occur earlier in the year; and the total area covered in snow shrinks by 10-40%
CSIRO Research Publications Repository – Climate change impacts on snow in Victoria
*
THE “97% Consensus Of Experts” AGREED, TOO!
IN 2000, climate expert Dr David Viner of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) assured us that :
Snowfall will become “A very rare and exciting event… Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Dr David Viner – Senior scientist, climatic research unit (CRU)
SNOWFALL Will Become “A Very Rare And Exciting Event…” | Climatism
*
IN 2001, the UN IPCC predicted diminished snowfalls as human CO2 increased, claiming that “milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms” due to the activities of mankindpersonkind…
IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
THEY also forecast “warmer winters and fewer cold spells, because of climate change…”
warmer-winters-ipcc
*
THE SCIENCE WAS “SETTLED”
2000 : a prediction from Professor Mojib Latif of Germany’s GEOMAR Heimholtz Centre for Ocean Research…
“Winters with strong frosts and lots of snow like we had 20 years ago will no longer exist at our latitudes.” – Professor Mojib Latif
2000 : Spiegel…
“Good bye winter. Never again snow?”
2004 : Mark Lynas told us…
“Snow has become so rare that when it does fall – often just for a few hours – everything grinds to a halt. In early 2003 a ‘mighty’ five-centimetre snowfall in southeast England caused such severe traffic jams that many motorists had to stay in their cars overnight. Today’s kids are missing out . . . Many of these changes are already underway, but have been accelerating over the last two decades. Termites have already moved into southern England. Garden centres are beginning to stock exotic sub-tropical species, which only a few years ago would have been killed off by winter…” – Mark Lynas
2005 : Christopher Krull, Black Forest Tourism Association / Spiegel…
Planning for a snowless future: “Our study is already showing that that there will be a much worse situation in 20 years.”
2005 : George Monbiot on climate change and snow…
Winter is no longer the great grey longing of my childhood. The freezes this country suffered in 1982 and 1963 are – unless the Gulf Stream stops – unlikely to recur. Our summers will be long and warm. Across most of the upper northern hemisphere, climate change, so far, has been kind to us…
2006 : Daniela Jacob of Max Planck Institute for Meterology, Hamburg …
“Yesterday’s snow… Because temperatures in the Alps are rising quickly, there will be more precipitation in many places. But because it will rain more often than it snows, this will be bad news for tourists. For many ski lifts this means the end of business.”
Less Snow and Drier Summers in German Forecast | Germany| News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond | DW | 30.04.2006
2006 : The Independent‘s somber editorial admonished us that the lack of snow was evidence of a “dangerous seasonal disorder”…
The countryside is looking rather peculiar this winter. It seems we have a number of unexpected guests for Christmas. Dragonflies, bumblebees and red admiral butterflies, which would normally be killed off by the frost, can still be seen in some parts of the country . . . Some might be tempted to welcome this late blossoming of the natural world as a delightful diversion from the bleakness of this time of year. But these fluctuations should be cause for concern because it is overwhelmingly likely that they are a consequence of global warming . . . all this is also evidence that global warming is occurring at a faster rate than many imagined…
2007 : BBC “One Planet Special”…
“It Seems the Winters of Our Youth are Unlikely to Return” presenter Richard Hollingham … speaks to climate scientists to get their views. Their conclusion? In the words of the BBC, they all give “predictions of warmer winters, for UK & the Northern Hemisphere”.
2007 : Schleswig Holstein NABU…
“Ice, snow, and frost will disappear, i.e. milder winters” … “Unusually warm winters without snow and ice are now being viewed by many as signs of climate change.”
2007 : Western Mail (Wales Online) … article, entititled “Snowless Winters Forecast for Wales as World Warms Up” quotes one of the global warming movement’s key figures, Sir John Houghton, former head of the IPCC and former head of the UK Met Office…
Former head of the Met Office Sir John Houghton, who is one of the UK’s leading authorities on climate change, said all the indicators suggest snowy winters will become increasingly rare He said, “Snowlines are going up in altitude all over the world. The idea that we will get less snow is absolutely in line with what we expect from global warming.”
2007 :Die Zeit…
“First the snow disappears, and then winter.”
2008 : Another prediction…
A study of snowfall spanning 60 years has indicated that the Alps’s entire winter sports industry could grind to a halt through lack of snow…. In some years the amount that fell was 60 per cent lower than was typical in the early 1980s, said Christoph Marty, from the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos, who analysed the records. ”I don’t believe we will see the kind of snow conditions we have experienced in past decades,” he said.
2012 :
John Clarkson (@JohnClarksonGSM) | Twitter
Enjoy snow now . . . by 2020, it’ll be gone | The Australian
2014: the global warming theory-obsessed New York Times touted “The End of Snow?”…
“The truth is, it is too late for all of that. Greening the ski industry is commendable, but it isn’t nearly enough. Nothing besides a national policy shift on how we create and consume energy will keep our mountains white in the winter — and slow global warming to a safe level.
This is no longer a scientific debate. It is scientific fact. The greatest fear of most climate scientists is continued complacency that leads to a series of natural climatic feedbacks…”
(Climatism bolds)
The End of Snow? – The New York Times
2017 : The Age’s resident global warming catastrophist Peter Hannam signalled the end of snow…
Snowy retreat: Climate change puts Australia’s ski industry on a downhill slope | The AGE
Australia’s ski resorts face the prospect of a long downhill run as a warming climate reduces snow depth, cover and duration. The industry’s ability to create artificial snow will also be challenged, scientists say.
Snowy retreat: Climate change puts Australia’s ski industry on a downhill slope | The AGE
*
U-TURN!
NOW, of course, climate ‘scientists’ are trying to dig themselves out of snow that’s kept falling …
Looking back at 65 years’ worth of statistics, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips noted that since 1948, winter temperatures in the prairie regions have increased by an average of four degrees Celsius… Ironically, warmer weather can mean greater snowfall. “As we warm up, we may see more moisture, we may see more moist air masses, and therefore we could very well see more snow rather than less snow, because the air masses are going to be more moist and so therefore you’re going to be able to wring out more snow than you would be if it was dry air,” Phillips said.
*
UNFORTUNATELY for CO2-centric climatologists like David Phillips, attempting to ‘dig’ themselves out of their “end of snow” dud-predictions, you need cold air to make snow!
VETERAN Boston meteorologist Barry Burbank explains …
“Interestingly, some scientists have stated that increasing snow is consistent with climate change because warmer air holds more moisture, more water vapor and this can result in more storms with heavy precipitation. The trick, of course, is having sufficient cold air to produce that snow. But note that 93% of the years with more than 60″ of snow in Boston were colder than average years. The reality is cooling, not warming, increases snowfall.”
Will The Snowiest Decade Continue? – CBS Boston
***
CONCLUSION
LISTEN to what the ‘experts’ promised you back then. Because, if they got it wrong then, how can you trust what they are foretelling today or tomorrow? The answer is you cannot, because they have no idea what long-range conditions Mother Nature is going to serve up in such a “chaotic” and complex system as our climate.
AND, most importantly, does the CSIRO and “97% of all climate experts” still stand by their ‘end of snow’ predictions? Or is their alarmist sophistry simply more global warming climate change fear-mongering based on CO2-centric ideology, eco-religious dogma and overheated UN IPCC and CSIRO climate computer models that do not accord with observed reality?
IN parting, keep in mind how the Climate Change theory-obsessed mainstream media sells you snow in the era of Global Warming theory-madness …
“FAR from this year being the record, the hottest summer was actually back in 1900. This summer only ranks 5th, behind 2017, 1902 and 2006.
THE summers of 1884 and 1901 are also close behind.
IN fact, the spate of hot summers recently look little different to those of the early 1900s.”
Walgett 1880 to 2019
EXCELLENT investigative work, again, by Mr. Paul Homewood.
THE precise job that the mainstream media should and must be doing in order to keep a check on government and its institutions.
BUT, just as our top ‘scientific’ organisations have been captured by environmental elites, so too have the majority-Leftist mainstream media.
AND, for the mainstream media – keeping “truth to power” in the area of the ‘environment’ would mean sanitising their man-made global warming narrative that they’ve invested so much political capital, ideology and personal ego into for decades. Not gonna happen!
ERGO, tough times indeed for “truth to power” to exist in the fashionable age of climate change virtue-signalling, driven by politics, propaganda, bureaucratic pseudoscience and trillions of dollars of taxpayers hard-earned.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
This made news a couple of weeks ago, but I have been waiting for full details from the BOM:
Australia has experienced its hottest summer on record, according to the nation’s Bureau of Meteorology.
Hundreds of individual heat records were shattered across the country over the past three months.
The warm weather, 2.14C above the long-term average, caused bushfires, blackouts and a rise in hospital admissions.
Wildlife also suffered, with reports of mass deaths of wild horses, native bats and fish.
“The real standout was just how widespread and prolonged each heatwave was – almost everywhere was affected,” climatologist Blair Trewin told the BBC.
Temperatures had exceeded the previous hottest summer in 2012-13 by nearly 1C, he added – “a very large margin for a national record”.
THE Murray River (Australia’s longest) was dry for six months in 1902.
TO whom it may concern,
CC: Josh Frydenberg (Australian Minister for the Environment & Energy)
Last year I contacted you in regards to updating 7 years of missing tropical cyclone data on the BoM record.
August 16, 2017
Dear BoM,
I have been a keen observer of weather and climate for well over a climate point (42 years)!
The chaotic system of climate and “climate change” is ever fascinating. Though, today the ‘chaos’ has been replaced by an unhealthy polarization of “the science”, all too often determined by belief, politics and ideology. Sadly, dogma has trumped empirical evidence, corrupting the scientific method.
That said, I am seeking from you an updated version of the cyclone trends graph which ends at 2011. The BoM site has excellent data up to 2017 to complete the series. Is there a reason why the data has not been translated to the current graph? I would be happy to work on getting it up to date if resources are limited!
As a start, there is a written record from 2012-2015 here: http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/index.shtml
However, this record does not quite match the said graph 1969 – 2011. Methodology for what qualifies the graphed record would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Jamie Spry (Melbourne, Australia)
Graph showing the number of severe and non-severe tropical cyclones from 1970–2011 which have occurred in the Australian region. Severe tropical cyclones are those which show a minimum central pressure less than 970 hPa.
TO your credit, communication was swift and missing data promptly updated to 2016/17:
Graph showing the number of severe and non-severe tropical cyclones from 1970-2017 which have occurred in the Australian region. Severe tropical cyclones are shown here as those with a minimum central pressure less than 970 hPa.
*
I write to you today seeking access to valuable historical information you once had on your website pertaining to historical “extremes”, namely the devastating 7 year “Federation Drought” 1895-1902…
THE page is no longer available:
BOM – Australian Climate Extremes-Drought
Bureau of Meteorology – The page you requested was not found on this server
*
ORIGINAL content of Australia’s important climate change history has been thankfully saved in the WayBackMachine and sent to me by Apafarkas Agmánd:
BOM – Australian Climate Extremes (WayBackMachine)
Drought. The word evokes images of barren fields, dying stock, and water holes and reservoirs drying to cracked mud. Shrivelled hopes, failed crops, and often economic ruin are its trademarks.
Drought is also part and parcel of life in Australia, particularly in the marginal areas away from the better-watered coasts and ranges. Of all the climatic phenomena to afflict Australia, drought is probably the most economically costly: major droughts such as that of 1982/83 can have a major impact on the national economy. Moreover, apart from crop failure and stock losses, droughts set the scene for other disastrous phenomena, such as fires, dust-storms, and general land degradation.
Denuded earth and dry watercourses during drought near Gunnedah, in the normally well-watered Namoi Valley region of New South Wales (photo courtesy of the NSW Dept of Land and Water Conservation).
Why is Australia drought prone?
Australia is prone to drought because of its geography. Our continent sits more or less astride the latitudes of the subtropical high pressure belt, an area of sinking, dry, stable air and usually clear skies. The far north and south of the country come under the influence of reasonably regular rain-bearing disturbances for at least part of the year, and the east coast is watered reasonably well by moisture from the Tasman and Coral Seas. However over most of the country rainfall is not only low, but highly erratic.
Many, but by no means all, droughts over eastern and northern Australia accompany the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon, which typically lasts about a year, as in 1982/83. Droughts in the western areas and over much of the interior normally have different causes. Nevertheless, on some occasions (such as 1914 and 1994) El Niño-related droughts may extend across virtually the entire country. On such occasions, the economic and livestock losses are exacerbated
Hand-feeding sheep in western New South Wales during the extended drought in Queensland and New South Wales during the 1990s
(photo c/o the Fairfax Photo Library).
Long-term droughts
Over much of the country, droughts can extend over several years, relieved only by brief, transitory rains. Indeed, probably the most damaging type of drought is when one or two very dry years follow several years of generally below-average rainfall. The “Federation drought” of the late 1890s through 1902 is an example, as is the more recent 1991-95 drought in Queensland, northern New South Wales and parts of central Australia. Over still longer time-scales, Australia’s rainfall history features several periods of a decade or longer that seem to have been distinctly “drought prone”. For instance, the mid to late 1920s and the 1930s were a period of generally low rainfall over most of the country, continuing through most of the 1940s over the eastern states. A similar dry spell occurred in the 1960s over central and eastern Australia. During these low rainfall periods, not every year is dry; it is just that rainfall in most years is below the long-term average, and there are often runs of years with recurrent drought. Thus in the late 1930s-40s major droughts occurred over eastern Australia in 1937-38, 1940-41, and 1943-45.
The 1990s saw formal Government acknowledgement that drought is part of the natural variability of the Australian climate, with drought relief for farmers and agricultural communities being restricted to times of so-called “exceptional circumstances”. In other words, the agricultural sector was expected to cope with the occasional drought, and relief would be available only for droughts of unusual length or severity.
BOM – Australian Climate Extremes (WayBackMachine)
*
AS Eastern Australia suffers through another awful drought, it is important that the public is educated into the causes of long-term drought such that appropriate action can be taken, as noted by the Australian Government in the 1990’s, “The 1990s saw formal Government acknowledgement that drought is part of the natural variability of the Australian climate, with drought relief for farmers and agricultural communities being restricted to times of so-called “exceptional circumstances”.
EDUCATION and understanding of the “land of sweeping plains,/Of ragged mountain ranges,/Of droughts and flooding rains.”[2] helps to eliminate spurious claims of human-induced climate change as the cause of drought, all-too-often used by the mainstream media to push a political agenda or ideology.
SUCH wistful activism encouraging a misallocation of funds in a vain attempt to “stop” climate change with precious public money awarded to wind farm, solar panel corporations and power companies, rather than fund drought mitigation schemes (dams) and to aid farmers through tedious times that will always occur naturally, regardless of Australia or the world’s carbon dioxide output.
The cold fronts are expected to continue through the weekend, meaning more snow could be on the way. Picture: Getty. | 9NEWS
THE “Global Warming” that Northern Hemisphere climate alarmists have been in an apoplectic seizure about, has reached Australia with devastating results…
H/t Pure Climate Skeptic
Via 9NEWS :
Parts of Australia recording lowest winter temperatures and most snow in years
By Ben Domensino Weatherzone • Weatherzone meterologist
Australians have been shivering across the country this winter, but a cold air mass combined with clear skies and light winds caused the mercury to really plummet last night.
A slow-moving high pressure system will continue to cause notably cold mornings across much of central, southern and eastern Australia during the next three days, leading to widespread frost and fog each morning until Sunday.
Some southern parts of the Northern Territory and a few places in southwest Queensland had their coldest morning in three to seven years.
Temperatures across Australia have been plummeting as the brunt of winter sweeps across the country in the form of multiple cold fronts. Picture: Getty.
After a night of steady cooling, the temperature in Queensland town of Thargomindah dropped to a low of 0.2 degrees just before 7am today – the site’s coldest morning since 2012.
Nearby, Ballera Gas Field’s 1.6 degrees was also its lowest temperature in seven years.
Across the border, it was the coldest morning in three years for the Northern Territory’s Jervois, which recorded a low of -0.2 degrees and Daly Waters felt a chilly 3.9 degrees.
The low temperatures have created ideal conditions for snowfall, with many parts in the Australian alps receiving more snow than recent years. Picture: Getty.
This morning’s frosty start comes a day after some areas of NSW registered their lowest temperature in more than a decade yesterday.
A low of -2.6 degrees at Fowlers Gap was its coldest start since 2006.
The cold temperatures has also seen the natural snow depth in Australia’s alps getting close to one metre in some areas.
Snowy Hydro reported a natural snow depth of 94.7cm at Spencers Creek on today, which is a 19cm increase from last week and a new high point for 2018.
In parts, the natural depth of snow that has fallen is beginning to reach around a metre deep. Picture: Getty.
Based on historical records stretching back to the 1950s, the average snow depth at Spencers Creek in the middle of July is around one metre.
The earliest date that a measurement above one metre has been recorded at Spencers Creek was 148.8cm on May 9th 1960.
At the other end of the scale however, the 2006 and 1982 snow seasons didn’t feature any readings above one metre at the site.
The peak snow depth in Australia’s alps typically occurs in late August or early September, although it can vary quite a bit from year to year.
The cold fronts are expected to continue through the weekend, meaning more snow could be on the way. Picture: Getty.
The peak depth during 2017 was in late September and in 2016 it didn’t happen until October.
Looking ahead, a pool of cold air will cause light snow showers in the alps tomorrow, before dry weather returns on the weekend.
A pair of cold fronts are also likely to bring follow-up snowfalls at the start of next week, possible nudging the natural base above one metre for the first time this season.
DON’T expect to read why Australia is experiencing record cold temps and record snow in recent years from those ‘in the know’ like BoM, CSIRO or any other Government ‘science’ department.
THEY are only interested in hot temperatures to promote “The Hottest Year Evahhh“ meme and guarantee more of your hard-earned money keeps flowing to their global warming climate change cause through skyrocketing green-energy costs and carbon taxes (NEG).
AS well, COLD = WEATHER and HOT = CLIMATE!
•••
UPDATE (16 July 2018)
Via 9NEWS :
Coldest morning in 60 years for parts of the east coast
A cold snap has delivered some of the chilliest temperatures in decades to parts of Australia’s east coast, with more frosty mornings to come.
Both Parkes and Cowra in New South Wales have set new all-time coldest minimum temperature records today with the mercury dropping to -6.6 and -5.8 degrees respectively. Both sites opened back in 1958.
Winter wonderland in the Sunshine State- Queensland’s southeast woke to very chilly minimums. (9NEWS)
READ the *cold* records blown away here…
Cold weather Australia Brisbane Sydney Melbourne | 9NEWS
•••
UPDATE (16 July 2018)
HERALD SUN’S Andrew Bolt with more analysis on the RECORD COLD slamming Australia and the Arctic!…
RECORD COLD IN AUSTRALIA
But when it’s record cold, the news reports don’t mention global warming:
A cold snap has delivered some of the chilliest temperatures in decades to parts of Australia’s east coast, with more frosty mornings to come.
Both Parkes and Cowra in New South Wales have set new all-time coldest minimum temperature records today with the mercury dropping to -6.6 and -5.8 degrees respectively. Both sites opened back in 1958.
Dubbo’s low of -6.0 degrees was its coldest night in 78 years while Lithgow’s -9.3 degrees was the coldest it has been since 1972.
As I’ve said repeatedly, we have far more to worry about should the planet cool instead:
Sanderlings, red knots and ruddy turnstones failed to breed this year along the Arctic island’s east coast due to record snow cover
AUSTRALIA’S billion-dollar-a-year taxpayer funded public broadcaster, the ABC, is never shy pushing their CO2-centric global warming climate change agenda wherever and whenever possible.
THIS particular weather report that had to inconveniently divulge extreme cold temps that have kicked off Australia’s colder than average start to winter would make even infamous NAZI propagandist Joseph Goebbels blush!
Andrew Bolt with the rub…
Global warming has stalled, and the ABC’s weatherman must report “bitterly cold” weather in NSW and likely record low June temperatures for Broken Hill.
So he breaks off to sternly lecture any backsliders:
“Global warming doesn’t mean that cold temperatures won’t be recorded but rather that record heat temperatures will be far more common.”
Watch!
*
“SCIENCE” UPDATE
ABC Weatherman Graham Creed @WeathermanABC again…
“Now on a quick side note, though, Global warming doesn’t mean that cold temperatures won’t be recorded, rather, record heat temperatures will be far more common and widespread.”
THIS statement is yet another ABC global warming climate change falsehood!
According to GCHN and ACORN-SAT data – the official data sets used by Bureau of Meteorology – annual maximum temps are ‘declining’ as CO2 increases…
However, according to GHCN and ACORN-SAT (‘adjusted’ data), the Australian temperature anomaly is, yes, increasing, but this is due to nighttime temps increasing faster than daytime temps are declining…
“CLIMATE alarmism is a gigantic fraud: it only survives by suppressing dissent and by spending tens of billions of dollars of public money every year on pseudo-scientific propaganda.” – Leo Goldstein
EXCESSIVE or exaggerated alarm about a real or imagined threat is fundamental in driving the human CO2-induced global warming climate change narrative.
THE most popular climatic and weather-related events, as marketed by the Climate Crisis Industry, fall well within the bounds of natural variability. So, in order for such events to make the headlines, attract taxpayer funding for ‘research’, and advance the misanthropic, man-made climate change agenda, they must be accompanied by inflated language, an urgent tone, imagery of doom, and in many cases, fraudulent data.
IN this series we take an objective/sceptical look at ten of the more popular metrics used by warming alarmists to push the CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) narrative, testing the veracity of the all-too-often wild and alarmist claims associated with each…
#1. DROUGHT
DROUGHT related mainstream media disaster-porn taps into human emotions with the aim of coercing the casual observer into a belief that mankind’s minuscule addition of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is the root cause of catastrophic climate change disasters…
Pic source: East Africa Drought and Famine | World Vision
Drought and Heat, Worsened by Humans, Help Fuel California Fires | NBC
The Man-Made California Drought – House Committee on Natural Resources
“WHIPLASH” – new emotive climate-speak!
Man-Made Climate Change Will Give California Whiplash Between Drought, Floods
BLAME Donald Trump
Opinion | As Donald Trump Denies Climate Change, These Kids Die of It – The New York Times
*
WHAT THE ‘SCIENCE’ SAYS
Little change in global drought over the past 60 years | Nature
“SO even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems…”
– Dr Tim Flannery
“This planet is on course for a catastrophe.
The existence of Life itself is at stake.”
– Dr Tim Flannery
Climate Council
***
TIM FLANNERY, former Climate Commissioner of Australia from 2011-2013 earned $180,000 per year for a three-day working week to make predictions and decisions that affected billions upon billions of dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money.
AFTER being rightly sacked by the Abbott government in 2013, Flannery began his own go-fund-me version of the Climate Commission, the Climate Council, which continues the propagandised rollout of catastrophic climate predictions and unreliable-energy pipe dreams.
NEVER far from the government teat, Flannery is regularly wheeled out by Australia’s government run media monolith their ABC, appearing as resident climate ‘expert’ whenever a catastrophic weather event hits the news cycle, or simply to inject a dose of hysteria into the conversation when climate alarm is waning.
TONIGHT, Flannery appears on Q&A, the ABC’s TV panel discussion program…
Coming up | Q&A | ABC TV
TO understand why the ABC and Q&A are so ‘impressed’ by the former ‘Australian of the year’, let’s take a brief look at Flannery’s impressive career of climate predictions and prognostications…
TIM FLANNERY – Curriculum Vitae
*
FLOODS and DROUGHT
In 2004 Flannery said:
“I think there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis. It’s whole primary production is in dire straits and the eastern states are only 30 years behind.”
We are “one of the most physically vulnerable people on the Earth,” and “southern Australia is going to be impacted very severely and very detrimentally by global climate change.” We are going to experience “conditions not seen in 40 million years.”
In 2007 he said:
“…That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we’re going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation.”
“The one-in-1000-years drought is, in fact, Australia’s manifestation of the global fingerprint of drought caused by climate change.”
In May 2007 he warned that:
“Brisbane and Adelaide – home to a combined total of three million people – could run out of water by year’s end;”
and that the country was facing
“the most extreme and the most dangerous situation arising from climate change facing any country in the world right now.”
In June 2007 he said:
“Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming. Similar losses have been experienced in eastern Australia, and although the science is less certain it is probable that global warming is behind these losses too. But by far the most dangerous trend is the decline in the flow of Australian rivers: it has fallen by around 70 per cent in recent decades, so dams no longer fill even when it does rain …
In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months.”
In 2008 he warned again that:
“The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009.”
AND then the rains came, as they always do in the land of “droughts and flooding rains“…
BY December 2008 Adelaide’s reservoirs were 75% full, Perth’s 40%, Sydney’s 63%, and Brisbane’s reservoir’s were 46% full.
BY 2009 dams for Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney were filled to overflowing.
PRESENTLY Adelaide’s reservoirs are 57%, Perth’s 39%, Melbourne’s 64%, Sydney’s 77%, and Brisbane’s reservoir’s are 83% full.
CYCLONES
In 2015 Flannery said:
“Sadly we’re more likely to see them more frequently in the future.”.
Reality check:
A year later, not one severe cyclone was recorded, continuing the downward trend in severity and frequency of tropical cyclones, despite rising CO2/temps…
Graph showing the number of severe and non-severe tropical cyclones from 1970-2017 which have occurred in the Australian region. Severe tropical cyclones are shown here as those with a minimum central pressure less than 970 hPa.
Nature journal confirms:
“Studies project a decrease in the frequency of tropical cyclones towards the end of the 21st century in the southwest Pacific, southern Indian, and Australian regions.”
Australian tropical cyclone activity lower than at any time over the past 550–1,500 years | Nature
MINIMUM Arctic sea-ice extent has been trending up over the past decade, and is most definitely not “ice-free”! The EXACT opposite of what Flannery, the press and ‘97% experts’ have been telling you :
Ocean and Ice Services | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut | September Minimum Extent
ARCTIC SEA-ICE VOLUME (September 2018)
2.0 – 3.0 meter-thick sea-ice covered most of the Arctic basin during the 2018 summer minimum :
DMI Modelled ice thickness | Sep 20, 2018
ARCTIC minimum sea-ice volume has been increasing since 2007 :
@KiryeNet キリエ on Twitter : “The Arctic has been refreezing for 12 years…minimum sea ice volume has been rising since 2007”
THE “Hottest Year Ever” meme is just one in a long line of marketing techniques used by Climate Crisis Inc. to make you believe the world is burning up.
HOW much of these claims are scientific, versus, pure-propaganda designed to heighten alarm on a publicly waning issue – catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW)? A *theory* whose veracity is becoming increasingly questioned by contradictory science, real-world observations and growing public and media awareness of the disturbing trend of temperature data manipulation by our most ‘trusted’ scientific agencies.
THE brilliant Paul Driessen nails it in a foreword to an excellent post on WUWT by Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris – “Overheated claims on temperature records“
Overheated claims on global temperature records
Guest Blogger / February 18, 2018
Foreword by Paul Dreissen
Over and over, we are confronted with claims that last month or last year was “the warmest on record.” Each claim is accompanied by dire warnings that the alleged new records portend “unprecedented” chaos for wildlife, humans and planet.
Virtually never do these scary press releases mention:
That the supposed change is mere hundredths of a degree higher than previous measurements.
Never do they admit that the margin of error in these measurements is far greater than the supposed increase.
Never do they suggest that a little more warmth would be infinitely better than a colder world, with less arable land and shorter growing seasons.
And most certainly, never do they admit to the massive deficiencies in the system that supposedly tracks Earth’s temperature … and
Always blames any increases on humans and fossil fuels.
This article by Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris points out all these highly relevant but often (deliberately) ignored realities.
(Climatism bullets/bolds)
READ the excellent Ball / Harris article here…
•••
PLEASE Tip The Climatism Jar To Help Keep The Good Fight Alive! TQ…
AS the old saying goes “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants“. One man who has been tireless and paid-less (sic) in the pursuit of exposing the blatant and unequivocal global temperature data fraud, executed by taxpayer funded government scientific agencies worldwide, has been Tony Heller aka Steve Goddard.
THERE are literally thousands upon thousands of mind-blowing examples of temperature data manipulation/fraud carried out in-plain-sight by climate activist agencies namely – NOAA, NASA, BoM, Met Office UK – who happen to be the literal gate-keepers of global temperature. They do this simply to make you believe that the climate is warming catastrophically thanks to your carbon dioxide (energy) emissions.
THE blink giff included in this post is really all one needs to know about how climate scientists literally “change the data to fit the theory” – a quote linked to Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs in his ‘Tactics and Ethics’ (1923) though often associated with Albert Einstein as a non-literal quip.
OTHER than driving the climate scare and maintaining taxpayer funding to the tune of $Trillions worldwide, hysterical claims of the “hottest year, month, day ever” tell us far more about global warming climate change marketing than they do about actual ‘science’.
*
Via Tony Heller’s “The Deplorable Climate Science Blog“ :
Unambiguous Fraud In The National Climate Assessment
Posted onNovember 6, 2017bytonyheller
The National Climate Assessment claims unambiguous warming globally and in the US since 1880.
CSSR2017_FullReport.pdf
They show a very detailed graph and map which expresses the claimed warming.
All that red looks pretty scary. Red is the color of fire, and it isn’t hard to convince some people that their carbon sins will lead to hell fire.
What they aren’t telling is that their graph and map are fake. They have no idea what global temperatures were in 1880, 1900, 1920, 1940, or in fact the present, because outside of the US there is very little verifiable data.
NOAA’s current data in Africa and much of the rest of the world is still fake. They make up record temperatures in countries where they have no thermometer data.
Real temperatures Reported temperatures
By their own admission, the ocean data is also fake.
date: Wed Apr 15 14:29:03 2009
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk> subject: Re: Fwd: Re: contribution to RealClimate.org
to: Thomas Crowley <thomas.crowley@ed.ac.uk>
Tom,
The issue Ray alludes to is that in addition to the issue
of many more drifters providing measurements over the last
5-10 years, the measurements are coming in from places where
we didn’t have much ship data in the past. For much of the SH between 40 and 60S the normals are mostly made up as there is very little ship data there.
Cheers
Phil
di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2729.txt
The only location on Earth with good long term daily temperature data in the US.
All of the claims in the National Climate Assessment about global warming are unsupportable junk science, made largely with fraudulent or imaginary data. Global warming is the biggest scam in science history. It has been thoroughly corrupted by tens of billions of dollars of government money – which fake climate scientists refuse to let go of.
The only thing global and unambiguous in the National Climate Assessment, is the level of junk science and fraud it represents.
Unambiguous Fraud In The National Climate Assessment | The Deplorable Climate Science Blog
•••
Related :
Understanding The “Hottest Year Evah” | Climatism
THE Great Global Warming “Pause” | Climatism
NASA “Sea Level Rise” Fraud | Climatism
Climate Fraud | Climatism
Global Warming Is The Greatest And Most Successful Pseudoscientific Fraud In History | Climatism
THE Inconvenient Truth Is That Catastrophists Are Wrong | Climatism
NASA / NOAA Data Fraud Related :
Another View Of NASA Temperature Data Tampering | Climatism
GISS Data Tampering – Worse Than You Thought | Real Science
GISS/NOAA/CRU Climate Fraud Update | Real Science
Smoking Gun That The Temperature Record Is Fraudulent | Real Science
Man Made Global Warming Is A Complete Fraud | Real Science
NASA Massively Tampering With The US Temperature Record | Real Science
NASA’s Quest To Erase The Warm 1930′s | Climatism
Spectacularly Poor Climate Science At NASA
Data Tampering At USHCN/GISS
Thermometer Magic
EPA Throws Their Hat Into The Temperature Fraud Arena
Recent Comments