07/10/2017

Australians Endured ‘Exceptional Heat’ During September

NEWS.com.au - Benedict Brook and AAP

 IT’S not often you see brown on the weather map, but it’s not often you get weather like this either. The Bureau of Meteorology says it’s really not good.

New climate study warns of 50 degree days

IT WAS almost two weeks ago, but you may remember Friday September 22. Weather-wise it has now gone down in history.
The 22nd was the hottest-ever September day, with more than a fifth of the country setting new highs.
The mean maximum temperature on September 22 was 33.47C — more than six degrees warmer than the month’s average, the Bureau of Meteorology said in a special climate statement published on Thursday.
A map of climate anomalies on 22 September 2017. Areas coloured red or brown is at least 8C above the average temperature. Picture: Bureau of Meteorology special climate statement. Source:Supplied
It broke the previous record set on the last day of September in 1998 of 33.39C and was the warmest since records began in 1911.
The Bureau said the heat during September was “exceptional” and much of it was caused by a high-pressure system centred over New South Wales and the Tasman Sea that kept large parts of eastern and northern Australia mostly cloud free.
Low rainfall and parched soil led the sunny weather to rapidly heat the land surface and overlying air.
NSW on September 23 showing the maximum temperature difference from the long-term average. Picture: Bureau of Meteorology special climate statement maps. Source:Supplied
NSW and Queensland experienced their hottest September days on record the following week, while South Australia, Victoria and the Northern Territory each had days in their top 10 warmest for September.
“More than 20 per cent of Australia by area recorded its hottest September day on record during 22-29 September,” the Bureau said.
NSW as a whole experienced its hottest September day on record on September 23, with a mean maximum temperature of 35.81C — more than 1.5C above the previous mark and nearly 15C warmer than the long-term average.
The Bureau noted that spring has warmed by around one degree since 1910 across Australia, consistent with what’s been observed around the world. “Studies undertaken by the Bureau and other scientific institutions have shown that climate change has contributed to the severity and frequency of recent heat events, including spring warmth,” it said.

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A Lack Of Action On Climate Change Is Putting People's Lives At Risk

The Guardian - *

In the 2014 Melbourne heatwave, 167 people died. Emergency departments can’t deal with this problem alone
‘What we also know from the heatwaves we have seen in Australia thus far is that we can expect a very significant impact on our public health system.’ Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images
A new study warning Australia’s major cities are likely to reach highs of 50C by 2040 – even if the world meets its target of limiting warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels – is yet more evidence that without immediate and urgent action we are facing a looming public health crisis during heatwaves and other extreme weather events.
The study follows recent unseasonable heat across New South Wales, with Sydney experiencing its hottest ever September day, as well as the doubling of record-breaking summer temperatures in Australia in the past 50 years. This new normal has hospital health professionals particularly bracing for the coming summer.
Public Australian emergency departments are tough places to both work and be a patient. They are hectic, often overwhelmed, not infrequently threatening environments that are emotionally demanding for everyone. And, with ever increasing demand and an ageing population, along with a politically-sensitive health budget, the emergency department is increasingly the public face of a stressed health system.
Every day, sometime around 11am, the ambulances roll in. This is when we see the presentation rate suddenly increase, commonly bringing a new patient every three to four minutes, a rate that will continue until 10-11pm every evening. Generally during this 11 to 12 hour period we see two-thirds of our presentations. This is the time that the department heaves.
During this period, on any given day, the resuscitation area will be full. A delirious elderly patient with septicaemia will be lying alongside someone with chest pain who may be next to a psychotic methamphetamine-intoxicated patient screaming abuse as they are restrained by security and clinical staff, while a full resuscitation of an out of hospital cardiac arrest or a major trauma takes place in a nearby bay.
Monitor alarms will be going off continuously, the sounds broken by an ambulance priority-one call coming through, while medical and nursing staff will be moving from one patient to the next as quickly as possible, trying to keep on top of the deteriorating patients around them. And soon enough ambulances will be banking up outside the front door as the department exceeds its capacity to deal with the influx, kept from being on the road responding to emergencies as they wait to offload their patients.
While all this is going on, the inpatient units are being pushed to discharge as many patients, as early as possible in the day, to make capacity for the admissions that will come, both as emergency and elective surgical patients. All of this has to happen, has to work to an optimal level to deal with the demand of any usual day in our public health system.
Are we going to take the health of our population and our ecosystem seriously ...?
Now let us add to this day three of a heatwave (defined as three or more days of high maximum temperatures). With climate change causing a gradual increase in average temperatures, we know that heatwaves are more frequent and of increasing severity.
What we also know from the heatwaves we have seen in Australia thus far is that we can expect a very significant impact on our public health system. Increases of up to 25% for ambulance emergency call outs; up to 60% increase in emergency department resuscitation cases, often in the elderly and vulnerable members of our society; an overall increase in presentations to our already overstretched emergency departments; and an increase in overall deaths ranging from 13% to 24%. In the 2014 Melbourne heatwave, that equated to 167 excess deaths.
One hundred and sixty seven deaths. If that had been a fire, or explosion, or heaven forbid a terrorist attack, it would be a national disaster that would be in the public eye for days. Yet it will happen reliably with every major heatwave event, and we barely bat an eyelid.
These issues are discussed in an article in the current edition of the Medical Journal of Australia, which I co-authored with former Australian of the Year, Professor Fiona Stanley, and public health physician, Dr Marion Carey.
And it is not just these direct consequences that are significant. There is always a huge demand on public hospital beds, many hospitals running at or beyond a level of occupancy that allows for efficient systems. What this means is that even without additional burdens such as heatwaves, it is a constant struggle to create capacity for those who need admission. Events such as heatwaves only exacerbate this pressure, resulting in reduced access for all patients, not just those affected by heat-related illness.
So, with the prospect of increasing extreme weather along with the so many other challenges of climate change we have some serious questions to address.
Are we going to take the health of our population and our ecosystem seriously and do everything we can to mitigate the inevitable increase in ambient temperature? How do we minimise the completely unacceptable mortality rates that we are already seeing, and what do we do to invest in our health systems to cope with what will be an ever increasing burden?
These are challenges that require immediate, mid and long-term solutions, challenges that we need to see taken seriously by the government of the day.

*Dr Mark Monaghan is an emergency physician and a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia

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Time To Shine: Solar Power Is Fastest-Growing Source Of New Energy

The Guardian - 

Renewables accounted for two-thirds of new power added to world’s grids last year, says International Energy Agency
A rooftop covered with solar panels at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. The US is still the second fastest-growing market for renewables despite Donald Trump’s pledge to revive coal. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP
Solar power was the fastest-growing source of new energy worldwide last year, outstripping the growth in all other forms of power generation for the first time and leading experts to hail a “new era”.
Renewable energy accounted for two-thirds of new power added to the world’s grids in 2016, the International Energy Agency said, but the group found solar was the technology that shone brightest.
New solar capacity even overtook the net growth in coal, previously the biggest new source of power generation. The shift was driven by falling prices and government policies, particularly in China, which accounted for almost half the solar panels installed.
The Paris-based IEA predicted that solar would dominate future growth, with global capacity in five years’ time expected to be greater than the current combined total power capacity of India and Japan.
Dr Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, said: “What we are witnessing is the birth of a new era in solar photovoltaics [PV]. We expect that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology up to 2022.”
The authority, which is funded by 28 member governments, admitted it had previously underestimated the speed at which green energy was growing.
The amount of renewable energy capacity forecast globally in 2022 has been revised upwards on last year’s forecast, driven by the IEA expecting a third more solar in China and India.
Wind turbines and solar panels in Yancheng, Jiangsu province of China. The China is the world’s fastest-growing market for renewables. Photograph: VCG via Getty Images
While China dominates the expansion of renewables, the US is still the second fastest-growing market despite Donald Trump’s pledge to revive coal and the uncertainties he has brought at a federal level.
Paolo Frankl, head of the renewable energy division at the IEA, said that solar and wind subsidies and other fundamentals meant the president’s impact would probably be limited.
However, that could change if there were reforms that retrospectively hit the subsidies or if the US International Trade Commission imposes tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels. “There is a risk, but at the moment our forecast remains strong,” said Frankl.
India is set for a solar boom over the next five years, as bottlenecks such as integrating solar farms with the grid are overcome. The country’s renewable energy capacity is forecast to double by 2022, overtaking the EU on growth.
The picture for the UK is a “mixed message,” said Frankl. The IEA has revised downward its forecast for the amount of green energy to be built in the UK between 2017 and 2022, with offshore windfarms expected to account for most of the growth.
Despite the recent opening of the UK’s first subsidy-free solar farm, the prospects for British solar are fairly gloomy: the amount of solar forecast to be installed by 2022 is a fifth of the amount installed over the last five years.
The report found that renewables are becoming increasingly comparable to fossil fuels on price, with wind and solar projects setting record low prices in government auctions.
“Renewables may well become even cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives [over the next five years]. However, be careful because this does not automatically mean they are competitive and investment will flow. That depends on the risk of investment and whether remuneration flows make a project bankable or not,” said Frankl.
The growth in renewable power will be twice as large as gas and coal combined over the next five years, the IEA said. While that will take renewables’ share of electricity generation from 24% last year to 30% in 2022, coal will still be the biggest source of power.
The increasing scale of wind and solar power, and their intermittent nature at a local level, means that integrating them with power grids has become critical, the IEA said. Countries will need to bring forward policies that make grids more flexible, such as batteries and managing demand at peak times, it suggested.
One energy expert said that the IEA report was, if anything, underestimating the speed of renewables’ growth and the impact of them becoming so cheap.
Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at Australia-based analysts IEEFA, said: “2016 was another record high year of renewable installs and unexpectedly large renewable energy cost deflation, again highlighting the IEA’s continued underestimation of both these two trends driving the increasingly global market transformation.”

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