01/02/2019

U.S. Midwest Freezes, Australia Burns: This Is The Age Of Weather Extremes

New York Times - Somini Sengupta

The Lake Michigan shore in Chicago on Tuesday. Overnight temperatures in the city dipped to minus 21 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 29 Celsius, near the record low. Credit Joshua Lott for The New York Times
In Chicago, officials warned about the risk of almost instant frostbite on what could be the city’s coldest day ever. Warming centers opened around the Midwest. And schools and universities closed throughout the region as rare polar winds streamed down from the Arctic.
At the same time, on the other side of the planet, wildfires raged in Australia’s record-breaking heat. Soaring air-conditioner use overloaded electrical grids and caused widespread power failures. The authorities slowed and canceled trams to save power. Labor leaders called for laws that would require businesses to close when temperatures reached hazardous levels: nearly 116 degrees Fahrenheit, or 47 Celsius, as was the case last week in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia.
This is weather in the age of extremes. It comes on top of multiple extremes, all kinds, in all kinds of places.
“When something happens — whether it’s a cold snap, a wildfire, a hurricane, any of those things — we need to think beyond what we have seen in the past and assume there’s a high probability that it will be worse than anything we’ve ever seen,” said Crystal A. Kolden, an associate professor at the University of Idaho, who specializes in wildfires and who is currently working in Tasmania during one of the state’s worst fire seasons.
Consider these recent examples: Heat records were toppled from Norway to Algeria last year. In parts of Australia, a drought has gone on so long that a child in kindergarten will hardly have seen rain in her lifetime. And California saw its most ruinous wildfires ever in 2018, triggering a bankruptcy filing this week by the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric.

Is it climate change?
Heat and drought extremes are consistent with scientific consensus: More greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere bring a greater likelihood of abnormally high temperatures. Also, broadly speaking, scientists say, a hotter planet makes extreme weather more frequent and more intense.
The real-life numbers bear out the climate models.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher than they have been in 800,000 years, and average global temperatures have risen. The last four years have been the hottest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization, and the 20 warmest years on record have all come in the past 22 years. Ocean temperatures have broken records several straight years.
A dust storm in New South Wales this season in a photo posted to social media. Credit Bronwyn Alder, via Reuters
As for the extremely low temperatures this week in parts of the United States, they stand in sharp contrast to the trend toward warmer winters. They may also be a result of warming, strangely enough.
Emerging research suggests that a warming Arctic is causing changes in the jet stream and pushing polar air down to latitudes that are unaccustomed to them and often unprepared. Hence this week’s atypical chill over large swaths of the Northeast and Midwest.
Friederike Otto, an Oxford University climate scientist who studies how specific weather events are exacerbated by global warming, said that while not all of these extreme events can be attributed to climate change, the profound changes in the earth’s atmosphere raise “the likelihood of a large number of extreme events.”
“This means it becomes crucial to understand well where your community is vulnerable and this can be something that was not on the agenda without climate change,” she said.
Take Chicago, for instance. It woke up to the hazards of heat two decades ago, when a five-day heat wave in the summer of 1995 killed hundreds of people, particularly those who lived alone. The city developed a heat action plan. It planted thousands of trees, set up neighborhood cooling centers and created a text messaging system so residents could request that city officials check on vulnerable people.
Now comes a cold spell that a generation of Chicago residents has never experienced, with Wednesday night temperatures that dipped to minus 21 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 29 Celsius (the city’s record low is minus 27 Fahrenheit, recorded in January 1985). The city said it would send out five buses to cruise the streets as mobile warming centers for homeless people. It has issued instructions on how to warm pipes so they don’t freeze.
Extreme heat, though, is the bigger problem overall.
Heat records have been broken twice as often as cold records in the United States since the 2000s.
One recent study in the journal PLOS Medicine projected a fivefold rise in heat-related deaths for the United States by 2080. The outlook for less wealthy countries is worse; for the Philippines, researchers forecast 12 times more deaths. Extreme heat is already devastating the health and livelihoods of tens of millions of people, especially in South Asia.
Extreme heat also affects the nutritional value of many crops. Even some of our most precious indulgences, like coffee, are in danger as temperatures rise.
This year, heat has been a problem in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. In Alaska, warmer-than-usual temperatures forced the cancellation of sled dog races, while cities in New Zealand, where the weather is generally so temperate that most homes don’t have heating or air-conditioners, broke heat records.

A Closer Look at the Polar Vortex’s
Dangerously Cold Winds
On Tuesday, Wellington, the capital, soared past 87 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest since record-keeping began in 1927, and Hamilton topped 91 degrees, the highest since record-keeping began in 1940.
Bob Henson, a meteorologist at Weather Underground, a forecasting service, said that in preparing for how climate change affects the weather, “we have to be prepared for a wider range of possibilities.”
Some preparation is connected to resiliency. Mayors promise to make their cities more resilient to climate change after one disaster or another. Scientists experiment with crop seeds that are more resilient to the vagaries of extreme heat and drought.
Dr. Kolden, the fire specialist, noted that as a species, we pride ourselves on being resilient. But that human trait can also have a downside. It’s why, often, even when officials tell us to evacuate from a fire zone or a flood plain, we don’t. We think we’ll make it, because we’ve made it before. Or that the forecasters are wrong.
“In our DNA, we’ve got this extreme resilience baked in,” Dr. Kolden said. “That ends up being our downfall when it comes to the changing conditions.”

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Tale Of Two Hemispheres: World Watching Australia’s Record Heat

NEWS.com.au - Emma Reynolds | AP

 Australia is seeing record-breaking temperatures while the US is frozen solid. What the hell is going on? One map has revealed the scary truth.
Temperatures across the US hit 40 degrees below zero

While Australia battles record-smashing heat, interminable drought and deadly bushfires, the United States is in the grip of a polar vortex, with temperatures plunging to their lowest in history.
After Adelaide’s mercury soared to an unprecedented 46.6C last week, toppling a heat record from 1939, seven people have died in freezing temperatures and heavy snow across America’s Midwest.
A nine-year-old died in a crash on the icy roads and a 75-year-old man was hit by a snow plough as authorities warned of the danger of “instant frostbite”, with Chicago set to be colder than Antarctica, Alaska and the North Pole tonight.
Schools, offices and colleges were closed across the region with temperatures on the city’s Lake Michigan plunging to an icy -29C on Wednesday local time, and set to break its -32C record early on Thursday.
Australia is sweltering in record-breaking temperatures as it battles drought and bushfires. Source: Supplied
Meanwhile on Lake Michigan in Chicago, temperatures dropped to -29C. Picture: Joshua Lott / AFP Source: AFP
A cyclist passes through heavy frost in Nokomis parkway, south west Minneapolis, as temperatures plunged in the Minnesota area. Picture: Kerem Yucel / AFP Source: AFP
Bushfires rages through Judbury in South West Tasmania, where properties have been destroyed. Picture: Luke Bowden Source: News Corp Australia
Australians, of course, have the opposite problem, with power failures causing misery in Victoria as air-conditioning use soars and households evacuating as bushfires rage across Tasmania.
Twelve bushfire warnings are in place for the state and the Huon Highway that connects Hobart to southern Tasmania is partially closed.
In the US, blizzard-like conditions across the Midwest saw 1000 flights cancelled in the Chicago area alone, the postal service cancelling its operations, and rail tracks set alight to keep trains moving.
Snow plough drivers in Wisconsin were struggling to deal with record snowfall, with Sturgeon Bay blanketed under 32.5cm — more than double its 1949 record — and Manitowoc seeing a 26.7cm snowfall, breaking a 1918 record of 18cm.
There is worse to come, with a blast of Arctic wind racing through Maryland on Wednesday and Baltimore City Health Commissioner Mary Beth Haller calling the temperatures “dangerously cold”.
Icicles form outside a bridal shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota with seven dead in the Midwest polar vortex. Picture: Stephen Maturen / AFP Source: AFP
The arctic chill in the Midwest and Northeast has seen temperatures plummet to -29C. Pictured Evanston, Ilinois. Picture: AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh Source: AP
Adelaide broke the record for the world’s hottest city at 46.6C. Source: Supplied
Rain accumulation figures show almost 500m around Cairns. Picture: Windy. Source: Supplied
Wind chill in northern Illinois could fall to a -48C, which the US National Weather Service called potentially “life threatening”, advising people not to drive or even leave their homes unless necessary.
Weather Prediction Center meteorologist Brian Hurley said Minnesota temperatures could hit -34C with a wind chill of -51C. “That’s quite dangerous,” he said. “You’re talking about frostbite and hypothermia issues very quickly, like in a matter of minutes, maybe seconds.”
Donald Trump caused controversy when he seized the opportunity to question how climate change could really be warming the planet if the weather was so abnormally cold. “What the hell is going on with global warming?” he joked. “Please come back fast!”
IMAGE
The backlash was instant, with Americans demanding how their President — who controversially pulled out of the Paris accord to reduce emissions in 2017 — could deny the widespread scientific consensus.
But experts explained that the chilly conditions were a result of the same problem, with the warming Arctic triggering changes in the jet stream and pushing polar air down to lower latitudes than usual, including the Midwest and Northeast of the US.
A University of Maine Climate Change Institute map showing how different global temperatures were compared to a baseline from 1979 to 2000 — around the whole world. Source: Supplied
Map Reveals Global Problem
It’s unusually cold in parts of the US, but global temperatures are still warmer on average.
One map proves that Trump is wrong and that global temperatures are on the rise.
Analysis from the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute shows the world on January 29 was 0.3C warmer on average compared to the baseline, Vox reported.
Worryingly, these extreme weather events could be becoming increasingly common.
Recent research shows that the frequency of winter polar-vortex events has increased over the past four decades, perhaps because of climate change, Business Insider reported.
Temperatures are rising fast twice as fast in the Arctic as the rest of the planet, which means there is less disparity in temperature between the North Pole and continents at lower latitudes.
That is affecting air pressure levels which weakens the jet stream.
A meandering jet stream can disrupt the natural flow of the polar vortex, leading to what we see today.
A Graphic News map explaining the polar vortex and get stream activity. Source: Supplied
The US is looking to Australia to provide context for its big freeze, with the New York Times reporting on the extreme heat, bushfires, business closures and power shortages gripping the country. Australia’s drought “has gone on so long that a child in kindergarten will hardly have seen rain in her lifetime”, wrote the newspaper, noting that temperate New Zealand had also broken heat records.
“Warming centres” for homeless people have opened in the bitterly cold American Midwest, with buses driving the streets in the hope of preventing more deaths as the big freeze sets in. It comes just months after California was ravaged by its most destructive wildfires.
And the problem is global, of course. The past four years have been the hottest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organisation, and ocean temperatures have broken records for several straight years.
Extreme heat and drought is devastating the health and livelihoods of tens of millions of people, especially in South Asia, and destroying crops.
A PLOS Medicine study projected a fivefold rise in heat-related deaths for the US by 2080 and 12 times more in the Philippines.
Power was cut off in hot and stormy Melbourne. Picture: Alex Coppel Source: News Corp Australia
A crew clears snow outside of US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. Picture: STEPHEN MATUREN / AFP) Source: AFP
Hottest In 80 Years
The Bureau of Meteorology reported that Adelaide’s West Terrace recorded its highest temperature in 80 years on January 25 at 3.36pm, breaking its 46.1C record by 0.5C and earning Adelaide the title of the hottest city on the planet.
The Advertiser reported 28 suburbs and towns surpassed historic maximums, including Port Augusta, where the barometer reached a scorching 49.5C — the fourth-highest temperature recorded in SA — and Tarcoola, which broke its record for the second time in nine days, with 49.1C.
Weather watchers from the Higgins Storm Chasing group told their 780,000 Facebook followers that conditions today were like a “blast furnace” and compared the heat to Black Saturday in 2009, when 173 people died in bushfires
SA Health chief medical officer Paddy Phillips said the heatwave will be worse than last week’s, when some parts of the state recorded four days above 40C. “In last week’s heatwave, we saw 69 people present to hospitals across the state with heat-related conditions and 31 of those were admitted,” he said.
South Australia’s energy network was pushed to the brink last Thursday and Melbourne reached a peak of 42C, with thousands of Victorians left without power after the state’s third generator shut down.
Smoke billows from a wildfire south of Huonville in southern Tasmania. Picture: AAP Image/Rob Blakers Source: AAP
Residents in south and central parts of Tasmania were told to leave their homes, with temperatures in the high 30s and wind gusts of up to 90km/h fanning 50 fires already burning across the state. At least 64,000 hectares of land has been burned.
“The best thing people can do in these conditions is leave early,” the Tasmania Fire Service warned on Thursday. “A fire under the expected conditions can move very quickly with the potential for embers starting fires up to 20km ahead.
“Even those whose homes are well prepared to defend against fire will find their property is not defendable in these conditions.”
Authorities are fighting to keep pace with the extreme weather, with winds grounding waterbombing aircraft and ground crews stepping in. Several fires have the potential to destroy communities, with properties lost and a fire southwest of Hobart burning since December 28.
The state fire service urged Tasmanians to use water sparingly and turn off taps and hoses if evacuating properties as the water mains could be under threat.
Steam hovers above Lake Michigan as ‘instant frostbite’ warnings were issued, flights grounded and schools and businesses closed. Picture: Joshua Lott / AFP Source: AFP
In Victoria, more than 2000 flying foxes were found dead with more of the creatures taken into care suffering heat stress. The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning confirmed on Tuesday that about 1400 of the native species were found dead near Bairnsdale on the state’s southeast coast, with another 900 dead at a Gippsland colony near Maffra, reported AAP.
In Northern Australia, the problem is torrential rain, with hundreds of millimetres expected on top of the hundreds already endured.
A slow-moving monsoonal trough dumped more than 350mm of rain on the area around Proserpine, north of Mackay, in just 24 hours. It’s the same weather system that dropped almost 500mm on the Daintree River in 24 hours late last week.
A cool change over the past few days has brought brief relief for many Australians, but forecasters warned of “dangerous conditions” as bushfires are whipped up by blustery winds — and temperatures are set to soar once again into the weekend.
Temperatures may top 40C in NSW’s southern inland and by Sunday scorching temperatures will be returning in Melbourne where it will be 38C.
Perth will see highs of 37C heading into a sunny weekend and Darwin will reach 31C with possible storms.
Cairns could see getting on for 500mm of rain over the next week, with up to 150mm falling on Friday alone. The Bruce Highway remains cut in multiple places after the heavy rain that caused the Daintree River’s record-breaking flood pushed south dumping more heavy rain and stranding four campers, reported AAP.
The two women, aged 29 and 26, and two men, 31 and 28, became stranded while camping at Tabletop Station at Hervey Range. Rescue helicopters from Townsville were unable to reach the group because of the weather, with a mustering helicopter from Charters Towers called in to ferry the four to safety.
This January could be the warmest on record, and the record for the hottest Australian summer since records began could also be snatched.
“We’ve just come off the back of the hottest December on record. In this latest heat spell we had four days that were in the top 10 hottest Australian days on record and the hottest night on record,” said Sky News Weather channel meteorologist Rob Sharpe
“We’ve had some serious heat and it has not really broken up. This next hot spell will take us through to the end of month so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the hottest January ever. And if that happens it could be the hottest summer on record.”
However, the bubbling up of a monsoon could change things, particularly as January comes to a close. A tropical cyclone developing off the north coast is likely to bring rain into initially northern and central Western Australia. As this area is the engine of heat that often ends up in the southeast, it may bring down the highs.
“That could bring rain across a good proportion of the country and will break up that heat and bring a little bit of cooling,” Mr Sharpe said.

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