Climate change tougher than Sydney roofs

Great!

The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) called on the Federal and State governments to toughen the Building Code of Australia and address the problem of "brittle buildings".

It seems research conducted by Professor Alan Jeary, a structural design specialist from the University of Western Sydney's school of engineering, concludes that roofs tiles will not withstand the onslaught of a summer storm season. Sydney's present roofing materials - up to 75 per cent ceramic tile and 10 per cent slate - were easily damaged by relatively minor hail storms.

In the past 20 years, Sydney has been hit by five significant hailstorms, which have caused more than $6 billion damage. Climate change research indicates that the problems could get much worse.

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Summer will be an erratic El Nino and La Nina sandwich

clipped from www.smh.com.au After the coldest winter in a decade, weather experts are warning Sydney to expect an erratic summer. Veteran weatherman and director of Weatherwatch Don White said people should expect the mercury to soar and sink this year, with temperatures in the Pacific Ocean indicating that the region is in a flux between El Nino and La Nina events. "We should be looking for the above average temperatures [throughout spring and summer] but that might include some quite hot spells and some quite cold spells," he said. Sydney is expecting a warmer than usual spring, with temperatures again expecting to break 30 degrees by the weekend. Bureau of Meteorology climate officer Mike de Salis said the mercury plunged most in August. The average maximum temperature was 17.3 degrees, more than half a degree lower than the average and the coldest monthly average since 1989. The average maximum temperature throughout the three winter months was the lowest since 1998.

Hurrican Gustav to test Obama/Biden, McCain/Palin

The damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina also ruined Bush. A point clearly not lost on all presidential candidates as they prepare to respond to the 'certain political fallout' claimed for Gustav:

Republican White House hopeful John McCain and running-mate Sarah Palin will Sunday ditch their pre-convention plans and visit people in Mississippi bracing for deadly Hurricane Gustav.

The visit comes as the fearsome category four storm's approach overshadowed the buildup to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota on Monday, and stirred memories of the botched response to Hurricane Katrina exactly three years ago.

Katrina is still affecting the GOP.

Earlier, in an interview to be broadcast on Fox News Sunday, McCain suggested he might go as far as suspending the convention, if the storm turned into a huge human tragedy on the par with Katrina.

"It wouldn't be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a national disaster.

"So we're monitoring it from day-to-day and I'm saying a few prayers, " he said.

..

Forecasters said the storm could hit top category five force as it moved toward the US Gulf Coast for a direct hit Monday or Tuesday. In any case, "Gustav is forecast to remain a major hurricane through landfall along the northern Gulf coast," the US National Hurricane Center said.

Obama is keeping weather eye out as well.

Will the fallout involve a discussion on the US's response to combating global warming?

Mother of all storms bearing down on New Orleans

Remember Hurricane Katrina, hitting New Orleans this time to the day three years ago?

Mayor Ray Nagin hopes so, invoking her name by omission.

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin has ordered the city emptied tomorrow in the face of "the storm of the century", warning anyone that stays behind that they are on their own.

"I am announcing today mandatory evacuation of New Orleans starting 8am Sunday (2300 Sunday AEST) on the West bank," Nagin said at a press conference. "We want everybody... we want 100 per cent evacuation. If you decide to stay, you are on your own."

"This is the mother of all storms," Nagin said. "This storm is so powerful and growing more powerful every day that I'm not sure we've seen anything like it."

Nagin estimated that less than half of the city's population has left despite days of dire warnings.

"This is the real deal," Nagin said. "Riding this storm out would be one of the biggest mistakes you could make in your life."

Nagin said police, fire and other emergency personnel are being pulled from the city to safer areas. A "skeleton crew" of fewer than 50 city workers will be left behind, according to officials.

Hurricane Gustav is on course to crash ashore near New Orleans. Nagin told anyone planning to stay behind to "make sure you have an axe because you will be busting your way out to get on your roof with waters surrounding you."

Gustav has left around 85 people dead in Caribbean nations.

In 2005, New Orleans was hammered by Hurricane Katrina which caused widespread flooding and left tens of thousands of people homeless.

While there is temporal symmetry with Hurricane Katrina there have been fewer hurricanes this year, or hurricane season is late.

How about those freaks who are staying?

Frequent Extreme Weather Events scenario for 20 years

Federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke has likened a scientific study into links between climate change and drought to the final chapters of a disaster novel.

We live in strange times.

Mr Burke on Sunday released a joint assessment by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, which found that what are now considered to be one in 25 year climate events could become as frequent as once every one to two years.

In particular, the study found exceptionally high temperatures would occur almost yearly, while low rainfall would almost double in frequency from current figures.

The report found about 50 per cent of the rainfall decrease in south-western Australia since the 1950s was likely due to greenhouse gases.

The reports are inputs into agricultural policy development. It's gratifying to see a Government allow science to inform policy development, at last.

"While this is a scientific report, parts of these high level projections read more like a disaster novel than a scientific report," Mr Burke told reporters.

"What's clear is that the cycle of drought is going to be more regular and deeper than ever."

Mr Burke said events of extreme temperature, which currently occurred once every 20 to 25 years, were forecast to happen once every one to two years coming up to 2030.

The area of Australia declared to be in drought would double and the likelihood of drought would also double, Mr Burke said.

"What this means is that in terms of government policy, we now know what would happen if we did nothing," he said.

"If we fail to review drought policy, if we were to continue the neglect and pretend that the climate wasn't changing we would be leaving our farmers out to dry well and truly."

The CSIRO report is the first in the federal government's three stage review of drought policy with the scientific findings to be fed into an analysis of social policy and economic review being undertaken by the Productivity Commission.

The release of the report follows the announcement for drought figures in NSW, which put 65 per cent of the state in drought, an increase of more than two per cent on last month.

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change, drought, Australia

Sell all your re-insurance stock

Extreme weather is here to stay:

SOMETHING strange is happening to our weather.

Sydney has endured the most sodden school holidays in living memory, including the longest unbroken spell of April drizzle for 77 years, a month after some state capitals sweated through the worst continuous period of baking heat ever recorded. And unseasonably early snow fell in the mountains at the weekend.

"The weather's been anything but normal over the last six months," said Dave Williams, a senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology. "I've been in this game for 20 years, and I can't recall a longer period of sustained weather patterns, of various kinds."

The article explains that this has more to do with La Nina and a 'blocking' high pressure system, but...

"This has less to do with global warming and more to do with the natural kinks and dips you see in weather patterns each year," said Professor Matthew England, co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW.

"The extremes of heat are an example of the sort of weather we can expect to see a lot more often in the next 50 years, because the evidence is indisputable that the weather is getting warmer."

Personally, I don't think the reference to global warming belongs in that story.

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Thirteen die in the Land of The Hot Rising Sun

clipped from www.physorg.com A man takes rest on the grass at a park in Tokyo, 01 August. The temperature hit a record high in Japan on Thursday, with the extreme summer heat killing at least 13 people across the nation this week, officials said. The temperature hit a record high in Japan on Thursday, with the extreme summer heat killing at least 13 people across the nation this week, officials said. The mercury shot up to a record 40.9 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit) in Tajimi city in the central prefecture of Gifu on Thursday afternoon, according to the weather agency. In one of the latest deaths, an 88-year-old man was found unconscious in his bed Thursday morning and rushed to a hospital where he died, Yamasaki said. "He had a heart illness but heat stroke is suspected to have caused the death," he said.

Royal Society: Hurricanes doubled over century

The dearly held tenants that the global warming denialists cling onto so tenaciously are disappearing faster than the Arctic ice-shelf.

The latest one to crumble is the notion that global warming does not increase the number and frequency of hurricanes.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk A new analysis of Atlantic hurricanes says their numbers have doubled over the last century. This new study, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London, looks at the frequency of these storms from 1900 to the present and it says about twice as many form each year now compared to 100 years ago. The authors say that man-made climate change, which has increased the temperature of the sea surface, is the major factor behind the increase in numbers. "Over the period we've had natural variability in the frequency of storms, which has contributed less than 50% of the actual increase in our view," said Dr Greg Holland from the United States National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, who authored the report. "Approximately 60%, and possibly even 70% of what we are seeing in the last decade can be attributed directly to greenhouse warming," he said. Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Research to show UK flooding is from global warming

I have just read about the fact that, for the first time, computer modelling has been able to detect a "human fingerprint" on the increased rainfall that Britain is seeing. They compare climate simulations run with and without anthropogenic GHG inputs, and the difference that shows up is our "human fingerprint". It has been seen in temperature predictions, but the research that will be published this week will be the first time the human fingerprint is said to have been detected in rainfall predictions. It is essential to note that what is happening now — and increasing trend to heavier rainfall patterns over Britain — is what is claimed to have been predicted by the research.

If this turns out to be substantial research maybe it will stop professional denialists like Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair carrying on like school kids with a fart cushion every time a cold snap ensues.

clipped from environment.independent.co.uk It's official: the heavier rainfall in Britain is being caused by climate change, a major new scientific study will reveal this week... More intense rainstorms across parts of the northern hemisphere are being generated by man-made global warming, the study has established for the first time ­ an effect which has long been predicted but never before proved. The new study, carried out jointly by several national climate research institutes using their supercomputer climate models, including the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office, does not prove that any one event, including the rain of the past few days in Britain, is climate-change related. But it certainly supports the idea, by showing that in recent decades rainfall has increased over several areas of the world, including the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, and linking this directly, for the first time, to global warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Britain's great flood a reminder of more to come

An unusual meteorological event is responsible for this summer's weather in the UK, not global warming. A shift to the south in the position of the jet stream brought a heatwave to eastern Europe and storms normally found in higher latitudes to England.

But global warming is expected to cause more and more flooding in the UK into the near future.

"Extreme rainfall events are likely to get more extreme and it will lead to flooding," he says. "Although it is hard to predict exactly where the floods will occur on a local scale, people need to start thinking about whether we are ready for more of these."

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Floods are scary things. And they are due to get a lot scarier. Climate scientists predict that by the end of the century storms like those that have swept across England this summer will hit Britain far more frequently. National average rainfall will increase by around 20 per cent, and much of that will fall in extreme, torrential downpours bringing a month's worth of rain in a single day. The reason is that, as the climate warms, the atmosphere above our heads will be able to hold more and more moisture which, when it is eventually released as rain, means much heavier rain, explains Peter Stott, a climate scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Change.

Potential extent of flooding by 2080: Click to enlarge

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World Wide Weird Weather #2

Didn't England experience similar flooding a month or so ago? Weird.

clipped from www.smh.com.au THOUSANDSs of people awoke in makeshift shelters in southern and central England after abandoning their cars on flooded highways or leaving trains disrupted by torrential rains. At Bampton in the west of Oxfordshire more than 300 homes flooded and 1200 left without power. Helen Rossington of MeteoGroup UK said: "Average rainfall for the whole of July is about 35 millimetres. But some places have had as much as 85 millimetres in a few hours." RAF troops from Kinloss, in Scotland, helped evacuate 60 people from Sedgeberrow in Worcestershire who were stranded after the River Isbourne burst its banks. Many motorists were stranded in the south-western areas of Worcester and Gloucester. Some were forced to remain in their vehicles overnight and others chose to abandon their cars. In Gloucestershire, around 2000 people spent last night in emergency shelters after being forced from their cars or homes due to the flooding. Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Extreme weather: Global warming or El Niño-La Niña baton change?

After Australia's hottest autumn on record and the coldest June since 1950, the SMH asks Dr David Jones from the Bureau of Meteorology why there has been extreme weather.(01:38)

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Twenty three die in rain storms and floods in China

Thousands made homeless.

clipped from www.beawareofglobalwarming.org Millions suffer as storms in China kill at least 23 (Reuters) Reuters - Rain storms and floods have killed at least 23 people across southern China in recent days and made thousands homeless, Xinhua news agency said on Saturday. Original post by Yahoo! News Search Results for global warming Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Wild weather disrupting oil shipping in Oman

Cola shipping activity at Newcastle, Australia, the world's largest coal port, is being disrupted by wild storms. Sar, a port in Eastern Oman, is facing similar difficulties with the weather.

clipped from www.theoildrum.com DrumBeat: June 9, 2007 Posted by Leanan on June 9, 2007 - 9:31am Topic: Miscellaneous Port city of Sur is recovering Oman's eastern port city of Sur and adjoining areas in the Sharqiya region, which bore the brunt of tropical cyclone Gonu's fury when it struck the Sultanate soon after midnight on Wednesday, was recovering fast, key officials of the National Committee for Disaster Control (NCDC) said here yesterday. ...The Ministry of Oil and Gas said it was doing its best to produce and supply enough quantities of fuel. A shortage at petrol pumps, it added, was caused not by shortfall in output, but by tankers unable to reach filling stations because of transportation difficulties. Global Warning Climate Change Energy

NSW battered by a 1 in 30 year storm

I heard on the news that seven people have died in the same storm that has driven a coal tanker aground in Nobby's beach in Newcastle. The urgency seems to have come off that crisis, it is not breaking up, but the weather is set to get worse.

clipped from www.smh.com.au Saturday June 9, 2007 945pm AEST Weather set to get worse 7:50pm | Newcastle and Hunter Valley residents braced for more severe weather after enduring the brunt of a one-in-30-year storm. Photos: Storms lash NSW Search continues for missing father Bodies of a mother and her three children found after road collapsed beneath car. Salvage team boards beached ship

Blogger Vuivee's reaction to weather.

Sydney storms drive oil tanker aground

Well, the drought has broken. I can hear it pounding outside my window. The rain has been intense for the last three days.

clipped from www.smh.com.au Fears ship could break up Huge bulk carrier with 700 tonnes of fuel runs aground in Newcastle. Audio slideshow: Pasha Bulker aground Video: View from the shore Iemma declares natural disaster Wild weather holiday warning Environment at risk Video: Rescue under way Photos: Winds pound Sydney Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Aboriginal weathermen say drought breaking soon

There is so much we can learn about surviving this vast, dry, continent from the Aboriginal people, especially now that the climate has taken a turn for the worse.

For example, I understand that in the north they have two seasons, and up to seven distinct seasons as you travel south. Makes sense if you have experienced both locales for at least a year or so, and it brings home the awkwardness of imposing our four-seasons template we imported from Europe - that it is not really appropriate. To Aboriginal tribes in the Sydney region, for instance, September and October are known as Murrai'yunggoray, the time when the red waratah flower blooms.

It is followed by Goraymurrai, a period of warm, wet weather during which Aborigines would not camp near rivers for fear of flooding.

Strong message: In the Sydney region, Aborigines recognize the beginning of the Murrai’yunggoray season in September and October by the red blooms of the waratah flowers. Patrick Riviere/Getty Images

Anyway, the good news about the drought, according to Djabwurrung, Jeremy Clark, chief executive of the Brambuk Aboriginal Cultural Centre in the Grampian Mountains of Victoria State, who knows something about this stuff, is that it will soon be broken. Something to do with when cockatoos were flocking and the wattle bushes were flowering. A few good months of rain are predicted. The BoM, with their satellites and synoptic charts, can only give us a fifty-fifty chance, and John Howard, well he can only give us a prayer.

clipped from www.csmonitor.com For a warmer future, Australia employs Aboriginal wisdom Faced with its worst drought in history, meteorologists are plumbing the Aborigines' 40,000 years of lore. Australia faces climate change's worst drought. These days, Australians need all the help they can get. Last month, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said the country faced an "unprecedentedly dangerous" drought. But Australia isn't the only nation to recognize indigenous meteorological knowledge. Experts studying the effects of global warming in the Arctic are looking to Inuit expertise, and South American Indians' knowledge of weather patterns, such as El Niño, has long been recognized. "The Indians knew that when the ocean was warm they'd get rain from El Niño, so they'd plant potatoes," says Dr. Stern. "When it was cold, there'd be no rain, but the anchovies would be plentiful, so they'd feed on fish." In the years to come, the Bureau of Meteorology hopes to recruit more Aboriginal communities to the project.

Aboriginal wea ther forecasting is claimed to be 90% accurate by adherents. They take note of subtle changes to plants and animals get clues about the weather. "It's about reading the landscape and the environment through the activities of plants and animals," says Mr. Clark.

For example, in the Simpson Desert of central Australia, the appearance of wading birds called plovers is associated with the onset of seasonal rains.

In the humid north of the Northern Territory, the arrival of the brolga crane was traditionally seen as heralding the beginning of the monsoon season. The flowering of rough-barked gum trees indicates that winds will blow from the southeast, bringing in the dry season.

I googled up an Sydney based Aboriginal calendar: :::[Weather cycles around Sydney from the Bodkin/Andrews clan of the D'harawal People]

It's way cool.

Today, it's the 11th May, or the third last week of Bana'Murray'Yung when Lillipilli (Syzygium spp) fruit ripens. A time when it's wet, and getting colder; traditionally the time to make cloaks and journey to the coast.

More specifically, it's Marrai'gang, when the tiger quoll seeks her mate.

During the breeding season, the male Tiger Quolls emit a slow, deep growl and a loud, explosive spitting sound (like that of a cat, but enormously magnified). The female's call is not quite as loud. These nocturnal calls may have given quolls their fearsome 'tiger' reputation. They don't look so fearsome all curled up during the day. Sadly, they are a threatened species having to survive habitat fragmentation, predation on the young by introduced foxes and feral (and domestic) cats, fire, and accidental poisoning by 1080 baiting programs to control fox and wild dog populations. When 1080 baits are used, best practice management guidelines are encouraged in order to keep impacts to native species to a minimum.

Googling more information on the Sydney Aboriginal calendar reveals that in addition to the six annual seasons is an 11-year cycle which determines what the seasons will be like... all this in an eight phase cycle! I came across this report from February 15th, 2003. :::[Now for the 4000-year forecast]

To Frances Bodkin, a traditional D'harawal Aboriginal descendant, the massive flowering of the Sydney green wattle 18 months ago was a terrible meteorological warning.

According to the calendar of her ancestors, it signalled a meeting between the climate cycle Gadalung marool and the season Gadalung burara, bringing the harsh weather we are now experiencing.

Ms Bodkin, a botanical author, teacher and traditional storyteller at Mount Annan Botanic Gardens, is one of the last people in the Sydney region who inherited tens of thousands of years of weather wisdom.

[...]

In Sydney, says Ms Bodkin, there are eight phases to the 11-year cycle. They do not last for set periods but are based on subtle changes in the environment, invisible to all but the most observant.

Gadalung burara is the hottest and driest part of the cycle and is indicated by a massive blooming of Acacia decurrens. Also, gums begin to lose their leaves.

When Gadalung burara coincides with January and February - traditionally known as Gadalung marool - there will be "real trouble", Ms Bodkin says.

Unless her ancestors began burning as soon as the wattles flowered they risked fires getting into the tree crowns.

I live in Sydney; this is an awakening for me. Imagine how many us in NSW, from politicians to fire-fighters to property owners, would have liked to have known to look out for Gadalung burara coinciding with Gadalung marool?

More googling confirms that January 2003 was when Canberra had it's terrible bushfires causing insurance losses of $250 million with 2,500 individual claims. :::[Canberra burns]




How lucky are we to now have people like Frances Bodkin share their knowledge, and that of their ancestors? Here is more information. And if you have got this far, you are as hooked as me, so you can't go past the Bureau of Meteorology Indigenous Weather website.

IPCC's clarion call

Coming to an IPCC Report near you. :::[SMH: Window closing on planet's chances]

"Unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt."

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is due out tomorrow, and that is some of the wording just agreed upon between scientists and governments after last-minute objections from the US, China and Saudi Arabia over wording and graphics sparked an all night dispute.

I've been listening to the BBC coverage of the release. AGW's happening. And it's alarming. There is no other word. There is good observational data, now, to prove that the climate-models are accurately forecasting. Game over for sceptics, and game over non-renewable energy sources. Or it's game over for life as we know it. That's what they are telling us.

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Gaia warns America, "Don't get me mad"

Those who accuse global warming realists of falling for a new green religious hysteria should take note of Gaia's power to smite their arguments, and everything else in Her path.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and scientists at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have reported their findings in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters, that shed light on the much debated question of whether global warming is increasing the frequency of hurricane and cyclone activity.

Not helping the debate was the fact that hurricane and storm records were scattered shipping reports and inconsistent up until the advent of weather satellite technology in the 1960s. And after that the technology developed so quickly that consistent standards in collecting and reporting data were not maintained. :::[Newswires]

Kossin and his colleagues realized they needed to smooth out the data before exploring any interplay between warmer temperatures and hurricane activity. Working with an existing NCDC archive that holds global satellite information for the years 1983 through 2005, the researchers evened out the numbers by essentially simplifying newer satellite information to align it with older records.

"This new dataset is unlike anything that's been done before," says Kossin. "It's going to serve a purpose as being the only globally consistent dataset around. The caveat of course, is that it only goes back to 1983."

Even so, it's a good start. Once the NCDC researchers recalibrated the hurricane figures, Kossin took a fresh look at how the new numbers on hurricane strength correlate with records on warming ocean temperatures, a side effect of global warming.

What they found surprised them; it seems global warming, let that read increasing ocean surface temperatures, did and didn't corelate with increasing hurricane frequency activity during this 24 year snapshot. It did in the Atlantic, it didn't anywhere else. Or rather, they "still can't make any global statements.", but can for the Atlantic.

Sea-surface temperatures may be one reason why greenhouse gases are exacting aunique toll on the Atlantic Ocean, says Kossin. Hurricanes need temperatures of around 27 degrees Celsius (81 degrees Fahrenheit) to gather steam. On average, the Atlantic's surface is slightly colder than that but other oceans, such as the Western Pacific, are naturally much warmer.

"The average conditions in the Atlantic at any given time are just on the cusp of what it takes for a hurricane to form," says Kossin. " So it might be that imposing only a small (man-made) change in conditions, creates a much better chance of having a hurricane."

The Atlantic is also unique in that all the physical variables that converge to form hurricanes - including wind speeds, wind directions and temperatures - mysteriously feed off each other in ways that only make conditions more ripe for a storm. But scientists don't really understand why, Kossin adds.

It would seem that when Gaia made Herself in Her own image, She placed America on the shores of the Atlantic to remind them to pay their carbon-taxes, or risk her throwing the alphabet at them. Could this be Intelligent Design's missing link? Could Gaia be this Intelligent Designer?

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Jakarta flooding blamed on global warming

A deputy minister for the environment for the Indonesian government has claimed that global warming is the cause of floods that have submerged huge areas in Jakarta and its surroundings since last week have killed 50 people and displaced hundreds of thousands: :::[SMH]

"It's a natural phenomenon affected by climate change. It's been made worse by negligent behaviour," said Masnellyarty Hilman, a deputy environment minister in charge of drafting a national strategy to deal with climate change.

She said warmer seas had heated up monsoon winds that carry moisture from the ocean to the land, leading to extra heavy rain.

"According the meteorology agency, rainfall was at up to 250 millimetres on Thursday and Friday. It was an extreme phenomenon."

Indonesia is developing a strategy to deal with climate change and will submit the draft to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) this month.

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