Climate change may render Iceland uninhabitable in a century

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Climate change may render Iceland uninhabitable in a century

2 March 2026

Sometime over the next 100 years, human-driven warming could disrupt a vital ocean current that carries heat northward from the tropics. After this breach, most of the world would keep getting hotter — but northern Europe would cool substantially, with Iceland at the center of a deep freeze. Climate modeling shows Icelandic winter extremes plunging to an unprecedented minus-50 degrees Fahrenheit.

It is possible the scenario will not come to pass, but authorities in the North Atlantic Ocean nation are taking no chances, having deemed the prospect a national security risk.

How anyone can claim climate change is a hoax, or non-existent, when it had the potential to result in an entire country literally freezing over is beyond me.

Heatwaves impact daytime spending habits of Australian consumers

6 February 2026

Luke Cooper writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

Researchers found on days when maximum temperatures were 35C or higher, which the Bureau of Meteorology classifies as a “hot day”, a $5.4 million collapse in daily daytime consumer spending was recorded.

However, on a recent excessively warm day, consumer spending increased by five percent from six o’clock in the evening until about five hours later. That makes sense as people stay in their hopefully cooler homes, until it is a little more comfortable to go out later in the day.

The impact of climate change is indeed far reaching.

Much of Australia presently in the grip of a heatwave

8 January 2026

Most Australia states, with the reported exception of Queensland, are in the grip of a heatwave. Temperatures in our part of the world, the NSW Central Coast, are expected to reach the high thirties, Celsius, on Saturday. That’ll be a little too warm at our place here, which doesn’t have AC.

We’ll go into Sydney, where ironically Saturday’s high is (presently) forecast to peak at forty-two degrees, Celsius. However we will have AC there.

We remain hopeful the southerly buster will come through not too late in the day though. This is a wind change from the south (bringing chilled Antarctic air northwards), and can see temperatures drop by up to twenty-degrees over the course of fifteen to twenty minutes.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, a heatwave occurs in Australia when the maximum and minimum temperatures are unusually hot over three days. We’re only one day into this, and already feeling the pinch. Accumulating heat will make Friday uncomfortable, to say nothing of Saturday.

It’s going to be a difficult time for a lot of people, with bush fires in some places making matters worse. Do whatever you can to stay cool over the next few days.

Climate change making El Nino and La Nina harder to forecast

16 September 2025

Tom Saunders, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

Thanks to climate change and a rapid warming trend in our oceans, the historical record and current analysis of the two Pacific phases has become contaminated. El Niño, the warm episode, is being falsely observed, while the cool state, La Niña, is at risk of going undetected.

The two well-known climate patterns have a significant influence on weather, either making Australian summers dryer and warmer, or wetter and not quite so warm. Of course the impact of both systems is not limited to Australia, but across the Pacific ocean, and beyond. It seemed like it was only a matter of time before climate change began to have impact on these weather patterns.

Weather ‘bomb’ threatens east coast of Australia this week

30 June 2025

Tom Saunders, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

When a low-pressure system transforms from non-existence to a formidable storm just a day later, meteorologists label it a “bomb cyclone”, or a system that has experienced “bombogenesis”. The expression “bomb” is due to the explosive speed of development, however its usage is restricted only to systems where the reduction in pressure exceeds a specific rate based on latitude.

A low-pressure weather system forecast to form off the east coast of Australia, near NSW, in coming days, might — when it runs into another system near Queensland that’s moving south — form a so-called “bomb cyclone”. A “bomb” occurs when a low-pressure system experiences a drop in pressure of between fourteen to eighteen hectopascals (hPa) in less than twenty-four hours.

This week’s weather system may see a pressure fall of between twenty-two to twenty-four hPa in the course of a day. That’s a lot it seems, it’s not a good thing, and the result might be the aforementioned “bomb cyclone”. This could lead to heavy rain, gale force winds, and damaging surf.

At this stage it’s not known where the low pressure system will be centred. It might be closer to coast, or someway out in the Tasman Ocean. It’s distance from the east coast will determine its impact. Current modelling suggests areas in the vicinity of Sydney, to the north and the south, will see the heaviest rainfalls, together with regions inland to the northwest of Newcastle.

There is also the prospect of this weather system developing into an East Coast Low. These systems bring intense storms and prolonged rainfalls near to the regions where they are centred.

It’s calm and still as I write this on the NSW Central Coast… the proverbial calm before the storm?

Summer time forming La Nina possibly coming to Australia

8 January 2025

Tom Saunders writing for ABC News:

Your average La Niña forms in winter, peaks in late spring, then gradually weakens through summer. However, the current edition has not played by the rule book — for only the second time in 75 years, its onset has arrived in the middle of summer.

This is something I’ve been wondering about. Over the summer months especially, I keep a close eye on the ten-day weather forecast. I’m looking out for upcoming days where temperatures are expected to exceed thirty-degrees Celsius. This because we do not have air-conditioning in either of the places we stay at. So we plan we be elsewhere, where possible, on super warm days.

But, in scanning the ten day forecast for our part of the world, there is — as of when I write this — not a single day expected to reach thirty-degrees. The nearest is twenty-eight degrees. Weird, considering January is the warmest month of the year where we are. A surprise La Niña event, kind of, explains the generally lower temperatures.

To be clear though, La Niña, and El Niño weather events do not really influence temperature: they are more indicators of rainfall levels in the northern and eastern regions of Australia. Higher in the case of La Niña, lower for El Niño. But, higher rainfall usually means more cloud cover, which will in part moderate temperatures.

I’m all for not-so-warm summers. Temperatures in the high-twenties aren’t too bad. And providing the dewpoint level stays below twenty degrees, humidity levels aren’t too oppressive either. But I’m not so sure about the accompanying rains, which can result in extreme flooding in some areas.

A La Niña weather event is yet to be officially declared, while the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has moved away making such announcements (probably because people like me write blog posts like this), so we’ll have to wait and see. La Niña, and El Niño weather events however are one of sometimes several concurrent phenomena that influence weather across Australia, meaning certain sorts of weather cannot always be attributed to one particular event.

Snow and heatwaves: this is Christmas in Australia

23 December 2024

Weather that is fine and not too warm seems to the Christmas Day weather forecast for most of Australia. But the days either side will be a different matter, writes Tom Saunders for the ABC:

The tumultuous week of variability will commence with a wintry Monday for the south-east, even cold enough for brief snow on the Alps, followed just days later by a blast of hot northerly winds and potential catastrophic fire danger.

Presently, day time high temperatures on this part of the east coast are forecast to be relatively mild. With the exception of Friday when the mercury is predicted to reach thirty-six degrees Celsius. I think we’ll be spending most of that day deep in the shade somewhere.

The W3C launches the Sustainable Web Interest Group

20 November 2024

The World Wide Consortium (W3C) has the emissions created by the internet in its sights… who knew just high web caused emissions were?

The mission of the Sustainable Web Interest Group is to improve digital sustainability so that the Web works better for all people and the planet. The digital industry is responsible for 2-5% of global emissions, more than the aviation industry. If the Internet were a country it would be one of the top five polluters. The amount of water, energy, and minerals required increases annually, often putting the burden on developing economies.

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environment, technology, trends

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 the Australian winter 2024 colder than normal?

5 August 2024

It depends how you define normal. Winter this year, or certainly in July, and absolutely since the recent Sudden Stratospheric Warming event, has felt distinctly chillier. But the bad news is, no this winter, when compared to the long term average, isn’t all that much cooler than “normal”.

Despite the relatively cool conditions, most capitals have still recorded temperatures comfortably above the long-term average, and all except for Melbourne and Adelaide were colder in 2022.

2022 seems a long time ago, as I don’t recall the winter of 2022 feeling cooler than this year. The thing is though, we’ve become accustomed to warmer winters, because you know why, so when a normal winter comes along, or one that is closer to statistically normal, it feels colder.

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climate, environment, weather

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