14/10/2020

(AU) Australia's Summer Forecast – Intense Heatwaves And More Cyclones

 - Josh Dutton

NSW and Victorian residents are going to have to brace for sweltering summer weather with more intense heat waves forecast.

The Bureau of Meteorology released its severe weather outlook for the rest of October until April on Monday.

The bureau last month said Australia will experience La Niña in the coming months. BOM manager of Climate Operations Dr Andrew Watkins said it means we’ve got warmer ocean water near Australia with cooler water off the south.


Much of Australia is in with a good chance of exceeding the median minimum temperature in December. Source: BOM

It tends to favour rainfall and cloudiness, he said. And while there will be fewer days of extreme heat in southern states, they will be more intense this summer.

The severe weather outlook forecasts longer heat waves for South Australia, Victoria and NSW.

Meteorologist Diana Eadie said Australia “is warming”.

“Extreme heat days are more likely than compared to the past due to the impacts of climate change,” she said.

“This summer, rain and increased humidity, thanks to La Niña, means we face a reduced number of extreme heat days compared to recent years.

“But while heatwaves may not be as severe in southern areas, they may last longer and be more humid both of which can increase the risk to human health.”

Victoria could see longer heatwaves over the next few months. Source: BOM

Hot temperatures for late October

By BoM’s definition, a heatwave occurs when maximum and or minimum temperatures “are unusually hot over a three-day period” in a specific location.

According to BoM’s climate outlook maps, most of Australia, if temperatures do exceed the average, most of the searing heat will occur between December and February.

However, the two weeks from October 19 through to November 1 promise to be hot too with southern NSW, South East Queensland, Darwin, Canberra, Melbourne and Perth all a 60-80 per cent chance of exceeding the median minimum temperature.

For Darwin and Hobart, it’s at 70-80 per cent.

A man paddle-boards at Glebe's Blackwattle Bay in Sydney last summer as smoke haze fills the air. Source: AAP


Cyclones and flooding await

The La Niña event also brings more cyclones. In fact, in 2011 when Australia experienced La Niña South East Queensland was pummelled by flooding.
BoM believes eastern Australia and parts of the north will experience more rain over the coming months. It could lead to more mosquitoes too.
Climatologist Greg Browning said past years have seen less cyclones but the upcoming weeks and months will buck that trend.

"On average Australia sees nine to 11 tropical cyclones each year, with four crossing the coast. With La Niña this year we are expecting to see slightly more tropical cyclones than average, and the first one may arrive earlier than normal," Mr Browning said.

"Every northern wet season has had at least one tropical cyclone cross the Australian coast, so we can never be complacent. We know that cyclones can develop at any time throughout the tropical cyclone season, which runs from November to April.

"This means that communities right across northern Australia need to be prepared now, and stay informed from the very start of the tropical cyclone season in October, right through until April."

Residents look on after the Balonne river floods in St George in Queensland's southwest in February. Source: AAP

The Northern Territory could be hit with an earlier onset of monsoons while Queensland could see more cyclones bringing widespread flooding.

While spring through to summer is normally a dry period for South Australia it’s also likely to see more rain than usual while Tasmania, NSW, northern WA and the ACT could also see widespread flooding.

North Queensland might see an earlier start to the wet season too.

November through to January looks to be the wettest period though with parts of NSW’s north across the Queensland border to the Sunshine Coast, according to BOM’s climate outlook.

A man soaks up the heat at Sydney's Coogee Beach. Source: Getty Images


October 19 through to November 1 has parts of northern NSW, South East Queensland and Darwin at about 65-70 per cent chance of surpassing median rainfall.

November could be a wet month for Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Adelaide too with a 65-75 per cent chance of exceeding median rainfall.

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'An Uninhabitable Hell': UN Says Climate Change 'Doubled The Rate' Of Disasters

Sydney Morning Herald - Olivia Rudgard

Climate change is largely responsible for a doubling in the number of natural disasters since 2000, the United Nations said Monday, as it warned that the Earth was becoming uninhabitable for millions of humans.

Three quarters of a billion more people were affected by catastrophic events of nature over the past two decades than in the 20 years before, the UN's office for disaster risk reduction said.

Calling humanity "wilfully destructive", it said the data was a wake-up call to governments that had failed to take the threat of climate change seriously or to prepare for more natural disasters.

A helicopter prepares to drop water at a wildfire in Yucaipa, California, in September. The UN says the number of natural disasters has doubled this century. Credit:AP



"It is baffling that we willingly and knowingly continue to sow the seeds of our own destruction, despite the science and evidence that we are turning our home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people," the authors said.

The report found that there were 7,348 major recorded disaster events between 2000 and 2019, compared with 4,212 between 1980 and 1999.

Climate-related disasters explained the bulk of the rise, increasing from 3,656 to 6,681. Floods and storms were the most common events. The incidence of flooding more than doubled, from 1,389 to 3,254.

A boy uses half of a fiber tank to navigate a flooded street after heavy monsoon rains, in Karachi, Pakistan, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020. Credit: AP

Mami Mizutori, the UN's representative for disaster risk reduction, said that NGOs and emergency services were "fighting an uphill battle against an ever-rising tide of extreme weather events".

She added: "The odds are being stacked against us when we fail to act on science and early warnings to invest in prevention, climate-change adaptation and disaster-risk reduction," she said.

Asia was the worst-hit continent and China the worst-affected country, followed by the US. Overall, more than 4 billion people were affected by disasters, a rise from 3.25 billion.

Though mobile phone technology and improved weather forecasting limited the lives lost to natural disasters, as the death toll grew from 1.19 million to 1.23 million over the past 20 years, the economic impact grew significantly, with agriculture in particular disrupted.

While they were less common, geophysical disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis were the most deadly, with the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which killed 226,400, recorded as the largest single event by death toll, followed by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

2020 was not included in the data, but has so far seen one of the most active fire and hurricane seasons the US has ever experienced, as well as significant flooding across Asia.

Climate scientists warned that a warmer climate makes hurricanes and severe storms more likely, and promotes the conditions that allow forest fires to start and spread.

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More Than 7,000 Extreme Weather Events Recorded Since 2000, Says UN

The Guardian - Reuters

Sharp rise in number of droughts, floods and wildfires has claimed 1.23 million lives and affected 4.2 billion people

Wildfires in California last month. The US recorded 467 disaster events from 2000 to 2019, second only to China with 577. Photograph: Gene Blevins/Reuters

Extreme weather events have increased dramatically in the past 20 years, taking a heavy human and economic toll worldwide, and are likely to wreak further havoc, the UN has said.

Heatwaves and droughts will pose the greatest threat in the next decade, as temperatures continue to rise due to heat-trapping gases, experts said.

China (577) and the US (467) recorded the highest number of disaster events from 2000 to 2019, followed by India (321), the Philippines (304) and Indonesia (278), the UN said in a report issued on Monday, the day before the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction. Eight of the top 10 countries are in Asia.

Globally, 7,348 major disaster events were recorded, claiming 1.23 million lives, affecting 4.2 billion people and causing $2.97tn (£2.3tn) in economic losses during the two-decade period.

Drought, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires and extreme temperature fluctuations were among the events causing major damage.

“The good news is that more lives have been saved, but the bad news is that more people are being affected by the expanding climate emergency,” said Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary general’s special representative for disaster risk reduction. She called for governments to invest in early warning systems and implement disaster risk reduction strategies.

Debarati Guha-Sapir of the centre for research on the epidemiology of disasters at the University of Louvain, Belgium, which provided data for the report, said: “If this level of growth in extreme weather events continues over the next 20 years, the future of mankind looks very bleak indeed.

“Heatwaves are going to be our biggest challenge in the next 10 years, especially in the poor countries,” she said.

Last month was the world’s hottest September on record, with unusually high temperatures recorded off Siberia, in the Middle East, and in parts of South America and Australia, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said.

Global temperatures will continue to warm over the next five years, and may even temporarily rise to more than 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels, the World Meteorological Organization said in July. Scientists have set 1.5C as the ceiling for avoiding catastrophic climate change.

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