15 November 2016, Climate News Network, Record losses as global warming worsens. While governments continue to negotiate on climate change, meteorological scientists warn that the global warming situation is rapidly deteriorating. As summers get hotter, seas get warmer and extreme wind and rainstorms inflict ever-greater loss of human life and property, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) is trying to develop and early warning system for vulnerable countries and regions. In a report yesterday to governments at the UN’s COP22 climate talks in Marrakesh, Morocco, the WMO said that 2016 was almost certain to be the warmest year on record, and detailed the “considerable socio-economic losses in all regions of the world” that has resulted. The deadliest event so far in 2016 has been Hurricane Matthew, which was Haiti’s worst humanitarian disaster since the 2010 earthquake, killing 546 people and injuring 438. Petteri Taalas, the WMO secretary-general, said: “Another year, another record. The high temperatures we saw in 2015 are set to be beaten in 2016. Continued global warming “The extra heat from the powerful El Niño event has disappeared, but the heat from global warming will continue.” “In parts of Arctic Russia, temperatures were 6°C to 7°C above the long-term average. Many other Arctic and sub-Arctic regions in Russia, Alaska and northwest Canada were at least 3°C above average. We are used to measuring temperature records in fractions of a degree, and so this is different. “Because of climate change, the occurrence and impact of extreme events has risen. ‘Once in a generation’ heatwaves and flooding are becoming more regular. Sea level rise has increased exposure to storm surges associated with tropical cyclones.” Read More here
Tag Archives: Extreme Events
11 November 2016, The Conversation, Firestorms: the bushfire/thunderstorm hybrids we urgently need to understand. Fire has been a driving force across Australia for millennia. Indeed, the health of many of our ecosystems is intrinsically dependent on fire. But bushfires are also one of our most frequent natural hazards, with a total cost estimated at A$340 million per year. In the past decade or so, extreme bushfires in southeastern Australia have burned more than a million hectares, claiming more than 200 lives and over 4,000 homes. Similar losses in other major urban areas have prompted questions about whether we are seeing a shift towards a significantly more hazardous fire regime, characterised by increasing fire frequency and intensity, and the development of catastrophic “firestorms”. While these extreme bushfires account for only a very small percentage of fire events, they are responsible for the lion’s share of bushfire-related losses. In contrast to typical bushfires, which spread across the landscape as well-defined burning fronts with smoke plumes perhaps a few kilometres high, extreme bushfires exhibit deep and widespread flaming and produce smoke plumes that can extend 10-15km into the atmosphere. At these altitudes, bushfire plumes can actually develop into thunderstorms (hence the term “firestorm”). As such, extreme bushfires become much more difficult for emergency services to handle, making them all but impossible to suppress and their spread difficult to predict. Read More here
8 November 2016, The Conversation, Natural disasters are affecting some of Australia’s most disadvantaged communities. Bushfires have been the most common natural disaster in New South Wales over the past decade, according to our study published today in Nature’s Scientific Reports. Our study, the first of its kind, looked at disaster declarations in local government areas (LGAs). We found 207 disasters affected the state between 2004 and 2014. Bushfires were the most common, responsible for 108 disaster declarations, followed by storms (55) and floods (44). By looking at where disasters were declared, we found a “hotspot” in northern New South Wales, which includes some of the state’s most disadvantaged communities. This suggests that to help communities prepare for disasters, we need to address underlying causes of disadvantage. There’s nothing natural about a disaster Disasters are a regular part of life for communities across the globe. So far in 2016, disasters have cost US$71 billion and claimed some 6,000 lives. Globally, the number and cost of disasters is rising. Australia has a long history of natural disasters, from catastrophic bushfires to flooding rains. Many people are asking whether such disasters are becoming more frequent, and what we can do to better prevent and prepare for them. Despite the way we talk about them, fires, floods and storms are not inherently natural disasters. Though they may threaten social systems or the environment, they are more accurately classified as natural hazards. A disaster occurs when a natural hazard overwhelms a social system’s capacity to cope and respond. Instead, disasters require many agencies and a coordinated response. Many factors such as vulnerability, resilience and population density influence a how a community copes with hazards.Read More here
31 October 2016, The Conversation, Unnatural disasters: how we can spot climate’s role in specific extreme events. These days, after an extreme weather event like a cyclone, bushfire, or major storm, it’s common to find people asking: was it climate change? We also often hear people saying it is impossible to attribute any single weather event to climate change, as former prime minister Tony Abbott and the then environment minister Greg Hunt said after the bushfires in New South Wales in 2013. While this may have been true in the 1990s, the science of attributing individual extreme events to global warming has advanced significantly since then. It is now possible to link aspects of extreme events to climate change. However, as I describe in an article co-written by Susan Hassol, Simon Torok and Patrick Luganda and published today in the World Meteorologcal Organization’s Bulletin, how we communicate these findings has not kept pace with the rapidly evolving science. As a result, there is widespread confusion about the links between climate change and extreme weather. Evolving science The science of attributing individual extreme weather events to climate change dates back to 2003, when a discussion article in Nature raised the question of liability for damages from extreme events. The idea was that if you could attribute a specific event to rising greenhouse gas emissions, you could potentially hold someone to account. This was soon followed by a 2004 study of the 2003 European heatwave, which caused more than 35,000 deaths. This analysis found that climate change had more than doubled the risk of such extreme heat. Read More here