Weird winter weather points to yet more unstable weather

Showing all posts tagged: climate change

Weird winter weather points to yet more unstable weather

5 September 2024

Mick Tsikas, writing for The Conversation:

The severe weather rounds out a weird winter across Australia. The nation’s hottest ever winter temperature was recorded when Yampi Sound in Western Australia reached 41.6C on Tuesday. Elsewhere across Australia, winter temperatures have been way above average.

41.6°C? It doesn’t even get that hot in summer, at least where we are on the east coast of Australia. Well, hardly ever. There have been one or two days when highs have pushed into the forties, but that’s usually at the height of summer, and still, is rare.

There’s been some strong winds recently. But the trade winds are common around this time of year, particularly August. The warm weather experienced in parts of Australia last week — in what was still winter — is definitely unusual though. I looked up the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), and found the value had been neutral in second half of August. The SAM is a metric of how close cold weather fronts come to the southern part of the Australian landmass.

A negative SAM value means they reach quite some way inland. Cold fronts bring rain and cooler weather. With SAM values being neutral or positive though, these fronts have not been coming through, which may partly explain why it was so warm. But I think climate change, of course, is the remainder, or most, of the reason.

On one day, temperatures almost reached 30°C during this late winter heatwave, in our part of the world. I truly dread to think what summer will bring…

Is climate change increasing the strength of Australian red wine?

9 July 2024

Apparently red wines made in Australia — and quite possibly elsewhere, I imagine — have been increasing in alcoholic strength over recent decades. This seems like a mystery of the times, because the go-to culprit, global warming, may not be responsible. Rather, the way grapes are grown, and changes in fermenting methods — which apparently includes a slight decrease in the amount of water going into the mix — may be playing a part.

In the past, water was most commonly “added” to wine in the form of ice-blocks, in the times before refrigeration. Small — quite small, I believe — quantities of water, were always included in the winemaking process, but that’s been cut back more recently as well. So there we have it, some red wines contain more alcohol, but no one seems one-hundred percent sure why. I’m not the biggest wine-drinker though, so I doubt I’ll be investigating this matter much more.

RELATED CONTENT

climate change, trends

September temperatures gobsmackingly bananas say climate scientist

6 October 2023

American climate scientist Zeke Hausfather has described global temperatures in September 2023 as gobsmackingly bananas.

This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist — absolutely gobsmackingly bananas. JRA-55 beat the prior monthly record by over 0.5C, and was around 1.8C warmer than preindustrial levels.

See also the daily temperature anomalies heatmap for 2023, where September, to use Hausfather’s words again, “stands out like a sore thumb.”

RELATED CONTENT

climate change, environment

Poison ivy to bloom, become more toxic, thanks to global warming

22 September 2023

Poison ivy, a noxious plant often found in North America, and parts of Asia, could become more common place as global warming creates an environment conducive to its growth.

Poison ivy is poised to be one of the big winners in this global, human-caused phenomenon. Scientists expect the dreaded three-leafed vine will take full advantage of warmer temperatures and rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to grow faster and bigger — and become even more toxic.

Once air conditioning was not needed during summers in Cairo, Egypt

20 September 2023

American journalist and cartoonist Malaka Gharib used to visit her father in Cairo, Egypt, during the summer school holidays, in the mid-nineties. It was hot, as anyone who’s been to Egypt in June or July (yours truly) could tell you.

Like many Egyptians though, her father’s home did not then have air conditioning. It was certainly warm, but somehow everyone managed. Thirty years later, Gharib wonders how Cairo residents get by when climate change is slowly pushing up temperatures, in a comic strip she drew.

While the use of air conditioning has become more widespread in Cairo, experts warn it alone is not a long term solution to the ever warmer summers parts of Egypt are presently experiencing. In some cases their operation can exasperate the problem, by placing stress on the power grid, and upping local temperatures through the heat the units themselves expend.

Better building design will make air conditioning more environmentally friendly

5 September 2023

Ways are being sought to reduce the harmful environmental impact of air conditioning (AC) systems, which remain essential for health and well-being, starting with how buildings are designed and constructed in the first place:

“We need to design our buildings in a way that consumes less energy. We need to insulate them better. We need to ventilate them better,” explained Ankit Kalanki, a manager at Third Derivative, a climate tech accelerator co-founded by the sustainability research organization RMI. “These strategies are very important. We can reduce the air conditioning demand in the first place, but we cannot eliminate that.”

RELATED CONTENT

climate change, environment, health

You and the Universe, a new book by Stephen Hawking for children

8 August 2023

A children’s book titled You and the Universe, written by late British physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, will be published in March 2024:

The new book is based upon a 2018 partnership Hawking’s family had with the European Space Agency, along with the Greek composer Vangelis (“Blade Runner”, “Chariots of Fire”, “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage”.) The message used words adapted from Hawking’s book for adults, “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” (Bantam, 2018), set to music by Vangelis.

The book is co-written by Hawking’s daughter, Lucy, and illustrated by Li Xin. You and the Universe asks readers to imagine themselves as time travellers heading towards the future, and to work together to ensure the future will be a place free of the ravages of climate change.

Rising humidity levels are making heatwaves unbearable

31 July 2023

Heatwaves, which have been experienced in a number of regions in the northern hemisphere in recent weeks, are being aggravated by increased levels of humidity, which is being precipitated by climate change. While it might be thought higher temperatures would cause moisture to evaporate, warmer air is capable of holding more water vapour than cooler air.

Sea surface temperatures have been steadily climbing globally, as the oceans absorb something like 90 percent of the excess heat that humans are adding to the atmosphere. But since March, global sea surface temperatures have been skyrocketing above the norm. The North Atlantic, in particular, remains super hot, loading Europe’s air with extra humidity.

Parts of the east coast of Australia saw higher levels of humidity last week, which had the effect of “taking the bite” out of otherwise relatively cooler temperatures. That’s about the only instance when high humidity has an upside. Those sorts of humidity levels will be far from welcome come summer.

Global boiling replaces global warming as world swelters through July

28 July 2023

The world has sweated through its hottest three weeks on record, as heatwaves continue to ravage parts of the northern hemisphere. Possibly the last time temperatures were this warm was one hundred thousand years ago.

Typically these records, which track the average air temperature across the entire world, are broken by hundredths of a degree. But the temperature for the first 23 days of July averaged 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 Fahrenheit), well above the previous record of 16.63 degrees Celsius (61.93 Fahrenheit) set in July 2019, according to the report.

I’m dreading the upcoming Australian summer. As I type, the forecast high today is 23° Celsius, in this part of the world the July (middle of winter) average is meant to be closer to about 16° Celsius.

Monday 3 July 2023, hottest recorded day in the world

7 July 2023

Temperatures on Monday reached an average of 17.01 Celsius, up from the previous high of 16.92 Celsius, recorded in August 2016. This as parts of the United States, China, and Africa, have sweltered through oppressive heatwaves in recent weeks.

RELATED CONTENT

climate change, environment

« older posts