Climate Catastrophes Downunder

A friend alerted me to the Australian weather experience over the festive season.  There were floods, bushfires and also hail storms.

South Australia is currently experiencing the hottest start to the year in more than a century.  A hot air mass which can sear vegetation is moving across the state.  In fact, the air is so hot they have cut the electricity to various towns.  Temperatures have hovered around 40 degrees Celsius. That’s 104 degrees Fahrenheit.  But New Year's Day it was even hotter, a record for 112 years at 41.3 degrees Celsius.

And I was alerted to another significant weather event by Don White of The Land newspaper.  For the first time ever, the 30 day running mean of the Southern Oscillation Index (“SOI”) is well over 20+ in December for two years in a row.  

The SOI is calculated from the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin.  Other than 2010 (and now 2011), the previous Decembers it has been 20+ were in 1889, 1917, 1950, and 1975.

Whilst in Darwin, in the Northern Territory, overnight, 32mm of rain fell in one hour. And there is flooding outside the city of such magnitude that it is pushing cars off the road. The Daly River region is in full flood. 

Yet in the Hunter region (outside Sydney), Upper Hunter has experienced its coldest December in 50 years. 

The Bureau of Meteorology reports that 2011 was Australia's third wettest year on the records.  699mm fell, 200mm above the long term average.  And the country experienced its first cooler than average year since 2001. 

The hail storm in Melbourne on Christmas day damaged more than 10,000 cars.  The Insurance Council of Australia declared the event a catastrophe.  The Melbourne storms become the eighth catastrophe declared by the general insurance industry in 2011, with insurable losses through catastrophes likely to exceed $4.5 billion, compared with $2.144 billion in 2010.

And full climate change events haven’t really started yet, as this blog explains.  So far, it is just a taste of things to come.