Penrith in Sydney's west has reached a top of 47.3
degrees Celsius, the highest temperature recorded by a weather station
in the Sydney metropolitan area in 79 years.
The temperature hit 47.3C at Penrith just after 3:00pm on Sunday.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) early Sundaysaid it
had confirmed preliminary data and declared it was the highest
temperature ever recorded by a weather station in the Sydney
metropolitan area.
However, the NSW BOM tweeted just after 4:00pm
that they had missed a temperature in the north-western Sydney suburb of
Richmond, at a now closed recording station.
The 1939 high was 47.8C.
A weak south-easterly change forecast to come through later on Sunday offering some relief to the coast.
"That may just trickle into the western suburbs this evening, however
the west is still expected to remain very hot for the rest of the day,"
said Andrew Haigh from BOM.
"Tomorrow will be another hot day in the west, a little bit less so than today in the east."
Total
fire bans and severe fire danger warnings were issued by the NSW Rural
Fire Service for the Hunter and Greater Sydney, with the bans continuing
into the start of the working week.
Sydney's heatwave caused
problems at the Sydney International tennis, with fifth seed Kristina
Mladenovic retiring after being badly affected by the heat.
Bahar and Amir Kashefi were still smiling despite the heat scorching their wedding day.
"I'm
sweating, my bridesmaid is sweating. The wind was not too bad around
here but otherwise it was scorching hot," the bride said.
"I think I am going to cut the wedding short, go straight back to the hotel and jump in the pool."
Mission Australia's homeless transport service Missionbeat were out in force to keep people cool.
They
organised for two heat-affected homeless people to get to the hospital
and transferred several others to refuges and hostels.
Animals at
Taronga Zoo on Sydney's north shore were fed a variety of iced foods to
keep them cool, with Fergus the Hippo feasting on some carrot ice
blocks.
One of the world's top scientific research ships is heading to Antarctica with 30 scientists from 11 countries on board to investigate climate and sea changes.
The JOIDES Resolution. Source: IODP
The 140m-long JOIDES Resolution is in New Zealand waters for about 18 months for a series of expeditions.
It has just finished
investigating the Hikurangi subduction zone east of Gisborne and headed
off for Antarctica on Sunday with a new group of scientists on board.
It operates under the 23-nation International Ocean Discovery Programme.
Voyage leader, Rob McKay of
Victoria University of Wellington, said the aim of the latest expedition
was to understand how the ocean and the ice sheets interacted.
"We want to find out what
happens when you put warm water next to the ice sheets. How quickly do
they melt? And what's the impact of that melt on the oceans?"
By drilling down up to 1km
beneath the seafloor, the team will be able to get a glimpse into
"greenhouse worlds" that existed 20 million years ago when carbon
dioxide levels were similar to those currently in the atmosphere.
Antarctica acts as a giant heat-sink that helps regulate the temperature of the planet.
"If you change that, you're
changing a major part of the global climate system. We're trying to
understand what happened the last time that was changed."
If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
was to melt, as it has in the past, Dr McKay says the global sea level
would rise about three metres.
The impact from the collapse of
the much larger Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet would be even more
dramatic, as it contains enough ice to cause an estimated 20m rise in
global sea levels.
"The consequences of that for
coastal living, globally, are obvious, but we're also trying to
understand the implications for the biosphere in the Southern Ocean.
This is one of the largest biological habitats on the planet and we
don't know how it will respond to these changes."
When the JOIDES Resolution
returns from the Ross Sea in early March, it will stop at Lyttelton
again and pick up a fresh crew of scientists and head back to the East
Coast for a further probe of the Hikurangi subduction zone.
The area has slow-slip events -
small bursts of movement on the fault lasting from weeks to months
instead of seconds to minutes as in conventional large earthquakes.
They are poorly understood and scientists want to know what causes them and what relationship they have with large earthquakes.
Two reports released on the same day, from the same government department with two very different sets of findings.
The
Turnbull government's climate change policy review would have you
believe we are well on our way to reaching our international
commitment of a 26-28 per cent reduction by 2030.
The government's energy policy explained Here's what you need to know about the national energy guarantee - the government's newest energy policy.
Only problem is we are not.
Omitted from the final public
presentation are spreadsheets the department quietly released on a
separate database a week before Christmas that shows Australia will be
at least 140 million tonnes above its target by 2030 at the current rate
of growth.
There has been an extraordinary 7600 per cent increase in small scale solar power. Photo: PA
While the policy review states: "we have a record of meeting and
beating our emissions reduction targets and are on track to meet our
2030 target," the department's emissions report admits clearly:
"Australia's emissions have risen in the past three years."
The
rise has come on the back of the expansion of the liquefied natural
gas sector. The report says that will be offset in the future by "flat
electricity demand, the renewable energy target and the announced
closures of coal power stations".
Under the government's national energy guarantee, the electricity sector
– Australia's largest emitter –must achieve a proportionate decrease
in emissions to meet our Paris obligations.
Slice 26 per cent of electricity emissions off the total target and the
economy is still cumulatively 600 million tonnes short of meeting its
2030 benchmark.
Minister for Environment and Energy Josh Frydenberg. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
That means the transport, agriculture and waste sector have to
somehow find more savings than an entire sector that is weaning itself
off the biggest polluter of all: coal-fired power.
It will only
reach its target if the closure of Liddell power station goes ahead
despite the Turnbull government's best attempts to prevent it.
Australia's emissions projections as contained within the policy review. Photo: Climate Change Policy Review
Fuel efficiency standards, electric cars and the extraordinary 7600
per cent increase in small-scale solar power driven by consumers over
the past decade will help, but they wont be enough.
As the
department's report says: "The key drivers of emissions to 2030 are
increases in transport activity linked to population and economic growth
and increases in herd numbers in agriculture linked to international
demand."
Which means the economy needs to slow down or rural
voters and the Nationals are likely to be gearing up for a fight over
farming.
Given the choice between the two, it's likely a government of either stripe will take the third option.
Throw Paris out the window when it comes to crunch time.
An
independent analysis commissioned by the Greens suggests the size of
the abatement is now so great that it would require us to take all cars
off the road or cows off farms, not in a decade, but tomorrow.
The laughable proposition underscores the size of the task in the decade to come.
The
first step in addressing that gap is admitting that it exists. Which
why the deliberate omission of a chart in a review that clearly shows
Australia sailing way above its targets in the climate change policy
reviews is so striking.
The department and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg
consulted no less than 270 stakeholders and received 357 submissions
but the government's obfuscation in omitting the offending chart from
its final policy review is remarkable.
By pretending it doesn't exist, it has given themselves room to move.
Into
that space falls the government's concessions
to "stakeholders", aka big business, which have been carefully worded to
essentially allows companies to increase their emissions if their
production does.
"One option would be to broaden access to
baseline increases, so all facilities have an up-to date baseline that
reflects their individual circumstances," the policy review states.
"In
addition, baselines could be regularly updated to reflect actual
production. This would see baselines increase with production,
supporting business growth. If production falls, the baseline would
automatically fall in proportion."
The concessions typify the government's unshakeable faith in the market to deliver cleaner, cheaper outcomes.
Undoubtedly,
consumers are becoming more energy conscious, the rapid increase in the
uptake of household solar systems from 22,000 in 2008 to 1.7 million in
2017 and the expected growth of electric vehicles to 15 per cent of all
new cars by 2030 are both examples, but without another major
technological revolution it is difficult to see how consumers will drive
all the gains needed on their own accord.
Tellingly, the only
factors not accounted for in the projections beyond the national energy
guarantee, as estimated above, are the ministerial forum on light
vehicle emissions and "the work of the Council of Australian
Governments".
Neither have achieved much so far, and the size of
the total task is now so great that it risks becoming in policy what it
always was in name, a target – to be missed when the final shot is
taken.
Penrith in Sydney's west has reached a top of 47.3
degrees Celsius, the highest temperature recorded by a weather station
in the Sydney metropolitan area in 79 years.
