5 Different Papers Link Record 2013 Australian Heatwaves To Anthropogenic Climate Breakdown
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Australia has left behind its climate of generations past and moved into an era where extreme heat waves and warm winter months, such as those of 2013, are more likely to occur, researchers concluded. “They’ve left behind the climate that they used to have,” said NOAA research meteorologist Thomas Knutson. Last year’s intense heat was perhaps most noticeable during summer, when temperatures of 120 degrees were recorded in some places. But the differences between recorded and average temperatures were greatest during the Austral winter and fall. Never in more than a century of record-keeping has the average Australian temperature reached last year’s level.
The high temperatures and frequent heat waves were the combined result of natural variation and human influence on the climate. Low rainfall that contributed to the hot conditions does not appear to have been caused by climate change, one of the research teams concluded. That natural phenomenon combined with unnatural climate change-juiced heat, however, leading to extraordinary temperatures. Heat waves killed hundreds of people, delayed play and injured players at Melbourne’s Australian Open, and caused 100,000 bats to spectacularly tumble from their perches, dead.
“We now have some very solid, quantitative work that says, ‘Hey, wait a minute, climate change is implicated in these things,’” said Australian National University professor Will Steffen, who was a climate commissioner until the new federal government terminated the nation’s climate advisory group. The former government agency has since reconstituted itself as an independent nonprofit.
Steffen said he hopes the findings from Monday’s papers reach the desk of Australian prime minister Tony Abbott. Abbott promptly repealed the country’s carbon tax after gaining power and he is a conspicuous critic of efforts by other world governments to fight climate change. Australia is one of the world’s highest per-capita contributors to greenhouse gas pollution. “This myth that there’s no link between climate change and extreme weather events is just that — it’s a myth,” said Steffen, who was not directly involved with any of the new studies. “We now have much better evidence of that than we had just three years ago in Australia.”
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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/studies-show-how-climate-change-is-baking-australia-18102