17/01/2020

2019 Capped Off The World’s Hottest Decade In Recorded History

Washington Post - Brady Dennis | Andrew Freedman | John Muyskens

It also marked the second-warmest year ever. “What happens in the future is really up to us," said one scientist.
Source: NASA’s Goddard's Global Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP)
The past decade was the hottest ever recorded on the planet, driven by an acceleration of temperature increases in the past five years, according to new data released Wednesday by the U.S. government.
The findings, released jointly by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), detail a troubling trajectory: 2019 was the second-hottest year on record, trailing only 2016. The past five years each rank among the five hottest since record-keeping began. And 19 of the hottest 20 years have occurred during the past two decades.
The warming trend also bears the unmistakable fingerprint of humans, who continue to emit tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, scientists say.
“No individual hot year — or hot day or hot season, for that matter — is by itself evidence for climate change. But this hot year is just one of many hot years in this decade,” said Kate Marvel, a research scientist at NASA and Columbia University. “The planet is statistically, detectably warmer than before the Industrial Revolution. We know why. We know what it means. And we can do something about it.”
According to NOAA, the globe is warming at a faster rate than it had been just a few decades ago. The annual global average surface temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.07 degrees Celsius (0.13 Fahrenheit) per decade since 1880, NOAA found. However, since 1981, that rate has more than doubled.
That trend has shown few signs of changing. “Every decade since the 1960s has been warmer than the decade previously — and not by a small amount,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which keeps the temperature data, told reporters Wednesday.
Leaders from nations around the world have vowed to try to limit the Earth’s warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, in an effort to head off catastrophic sea level rise, ever-deadlier extreme weather events and other climate-related catastrophes. But hitting that ambitious target would require a rapid, transformational shift away from fossil fuels that has yet to materialize.
Instead, global greenhouse gas emissions hit a record high in 2019, even as they fell slightly in the United States, and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now sits at the highest level in human history — a level probably not seen on the planet for 3 million years.
The 2019 figures from NASA and NOAA match similar data released by Berkeley Earth, an independent group that analyzes temperature data. The U.K. Met Office also rated 2019 among the top 3 warmest years. The findings also are in line with data released last week by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a science initiative of the European Union. The World Meteorological Organization confirmed the analyses.
In fact, Berkeley Earth researchers said, no place on Earth experienced a record cold annual average during 2019. But 36 countries — from Belize to Botswana, from Slovakia to South Africa — experienced their hottest year since instrumental records began. Those same researchers estimated that more warming lies ahead, and that a 95 percent chance exists that 2020 will become one of the five hottest years.
For 10% of the planet, 2019 was the hottest year on record
Source: Berkeley Earth
Wednesday’s figures offer the latest evidence of the globe’s inexorable temperature rise, particularly in recent decades. But the warming over the past century — and the impacts of climate change — have affected different parts of the world in vastly different ways.
A recent Washington Post analysis found numerous locations around the globe that already have warmed by at least 2 degrees Celsius over the past century. That’s a number that scientists and policymakers have identified as a red line if the planet is to avoid catastrophic and irreversible consequences.
Some entire countries, including Switzerland and Kazakhstan, have already warmed by 2 degrees Celsius, and other hot spots exist around the world, particularly in the fast-warming Arctic. Scientists say extreme warming is helping to fuel wildfires from Australia to California, melt permafrost from Alaska to Siberia and fuel more intense storms and floods. It is also altering marine ecosystems from Canada to South America to the African coast, threatening wildlife and the livelihoods of those who depend on the sea.
Temperature change, 2019 compared with 1880-1899
Source: Berkeley Earth

“The evidence isn’t just in surface temperature,” Benjamin Santer, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said of the human-fueled warming trend. “It’s Arctic sea ice. It’s atmospheric water vapor increases. It’s changes in glaciers in Alaska. It’s changes in the Greenland Ice Sheet. It’s all of the above."
The past year alone featured a litany of disasters that scientists say were worsened by climate change — disasters they argue are only more likely in the future unless global emissions begin to fall sharply.
During a tragic and terrifying December in Australia, with bush fires proliferating amid heat and drought, the country shattered its record for the hottest-ever day. On Dec. 18, the national average high temperature was a blistering 107.4 degrees (41.9 Celsius). Europe recorded its hottest year ever, and a sizzling heat wave in July saw temperature records crumble. Paris, for example, registered a sweltering 108.7 degrees July 25, shattering a record set in 1947.
Alaska also had its hottest year on record in 2019. It included an alarming lack of ice cover during the winter in the Bering and Chukchi Seas, and in the summer the temperature at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport hit 90 degrees for the first time.
Hurricanes such as Dorian devastated the Bahamas and other areas after rapidly intensifying, which some studies show is linked to warming seas and air  temperatures. A pair of powerful cyclones hit Mozambique in rapid succession, killing hundreds of people, destroying homes and causing devastating floods.
The year also brought signs that the natural systems that serve to store huge quantities of carbon dioxide and methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, may be faltering as temperatures increase.
In December, a federal report indicated that melting permafrost throughout Arctic may already be a net source of atmospheric carbon, a shift that could accelerate global warming. Raging fires in the Amazon now threaten to turn the world’s most productive rainforest into a drier, less carbon-rich savanna.
Reports from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last year detailed how climate change is already threatening food and water supplies, increasing the threat of droughts and floods, killing coral reefs, supercharging monster storms, fueling deadly marine heat waves and contributing to record losses of sea ice.
A new study this week also found that 2019 was the warmest on record for the world’s oceans, with all of the top five hottest years coming since 2015. The oceans have long absorbed the vast majority — about 93 percent — of the extra heat humans are adding to the climate through greenhouse gas emissions.
Still, even as millions of protesters have taken to the streets to demand action, world leaders have so far shown little ability to move as fast as scientists say is necessary to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
In a bleak report last fall, the United Nations warned that the world had squandered so much time mustering the willpower to combat climate change that drastic, unprecedented cuts in emissions are now the only way to avoid an ever-intensifying cascade of consequences. The U.N. report said global temperatures are on pace to rise as much as 3.2 degrees Celsius (5.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, and that emissions must begin falling by 7.6 percent each year beginning 2020 to meet the most ambitious goals of the Paris climate accord.
So far, many countries have failed to live up to the promises they made as part of the 2015 global agreement, including some of the world’s largest emitters. More than 100 countries have vowed to submit more ambitious plans to fight climate change the end of 2020, but they collectively represent only about 15 percent of global emissions. The Trump administration plans to exit the international accord later this year.
Zeke Hausfather, a climate researcher for Berkeley Earth, said that despite the clear warming trend, humans still have an opportunity to shape what lies ahead.
“We don’t have any sign yet of global warming slowing down, but we also don’t have any sign of global emissions slowing down,” he said. “What happens in the future depends a lot on our emissions of greenhouse gases as a society. If we continue emitting at current levels, we will continue warming at about the same rate.
“What happens in the future is really up to us."

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2019 Was A Record Year For Ocean Temperatures, Data Show

New York Times - Kendra Pierre-Louis

Credit...Alexis Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Last year was the warmest year on record for the world’s oceans, part of a long-term warming trend, according to a study released Monday.
“If you look at the ocean heat content, 2019 is by far the hottest, 2018 is second, 2017 is third, 2015 is fourth, and then 2016 is fifth,” said Kevin E. Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and an author on the study
The study, published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, follows an announcement last week by European scientists that Earth’s surface temperatures in 2019 were the second-hottest on record.
Since the middle of last century, the oceans have absorbed roughly 93 percent of the excess heat caused by greenhouse gases from human activities such as burning coal for electricity. That has shielded the land from some of the worst effects of rising emissions.
“Ocean heat content is, in many ways, our best measure of the effect of climate change on the earth,” said Zeke Hausfather, the director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute in California, who was not involved in this study. Surface temperature measurements are more variable from year to year because they are affected by things like volcanic eruptions and El Niño events, cyclical weather patterns that pump energy and moisture into the atmosphere.
While 2016 was the fifth-hottest year on record for the oceans, it was the hottest year on record in terms of surface temperatures. There was a significant El Niño that year, Dr. Trenberth said, which moved the heat from the ocean into the atmosphere.
“And so, the global mean surface temperature is actually higher in 2016, but the ocean temperature is a little bit lower,” Dr. Trenberth said.
Measuring the ocean’s temperature has long been a challenge for scientists. Thermometers on land around the world have tracked temperatures for more than a century, but the ocean temperature record is spottier.
Argo, a global network of 3,000 drifting floats equipped with sensors that measure temperature and depth, was implemented in 2007 and created a comprehensive temperature data record. Before that, researchers had to rely on an ad hoc system of ocean temperature measurements. Many of these were taken from the sides of ships and excluded Antarctic waters until the late 1950s.
For the new study, Dr. Trenberth and his colleagues overcame some of the gaps in the historical ocean temperature record by exploiting an understanding of how a temperature reading in one area relates to ocean temperatures across the ocean overall gleaned from data from the Argo system. The new method allowed them to take the limited temperature observations from the pre-Argo era and extrapolate them into a broader understanding of past ocean temperature.
“What we find is that we can do a global reconstruction back to 1958,” Dr. Trenberth said. That year was when systematic temperature observations began in Antarctica, creating enough temperature points for the extrapolation to be feasible.
The past 10 years have been the warmest 10 on record for global ocean temperatures. The increase between 2018 and 2019 was the largest single-year increase since the early 2000s, according to Dr. Hausfather.
Increasing ocean temperatures have harmed marine life and contributed to mass coral reef bleaching, the loss of critical ecosystems, and threatened livelihoods like fishing as species have moved in search of cooler waters.
But the impacts of warming oceans don’t remain at sea.
“The heavy rains in Jakarta just recently resulted, in part, from very warm sea temperatures in that region,” said Dr. Trenberth, who also drew connections between warming ocean temperatures to weather over Australia. The recent drought there has helped to propel what many are calling the worst wildfire season in the nation’s history.
“These sea temperatures influence regional weather patterns and sometimes even global weather patterns,” Dr. Trenberth said.

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Climate Change Protest At Bank 'Necessary And Proportional': Swiss Judge

Reuters - Emma Farge

Supporters of twelve activists celebrate after the non guilty verdict of the District Court of Lausanne for their tennis sit-in protest inside a branch of Credit Suisse bank in 2018 in Renens, Switzerland January 13, 2020. REUTERS/Emma Farge
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuters) - The imminent danger posed by climate change means activists were not guilty of trespassing when they occupied a Swiss bank and played tennis to demand an end to funding of fossil fuel projects, a judge ruled on Monday.
Wearing whites and wigs, a group of young people staged the tennis sit-in at the Lausanne branch of Credit Suisse in November 2018 to highlight their campaign and urge Swiss maestro Roger Federer to end his sponsorship deal with the bank.
The activists were charged with trespassing and fined 21,600 Swiss francs ($22,200), but in their appeal hearing on Monday Judge Philippe Colelough said they had acted proportionately and waived the fine.
The activists had argued they were in the bank in the face of an “imminent danger” - and the judge agreed.
“Because of the insufficient measures taken to date in Switzerland, whether they be economic or political, the average warming will not diminish nor even stabilize, it will increase,” he said, pointing to the country’s melting glaciers.
“In view of this, the tribunal considers that the imminence of danger is established,” the judge said. “The act for which they were incriminated was a necessary and proportional means to achieve the goal they sought.”
The packed court room in Renens, Lausanne, reacted with whoops of excitement and a standing ovation.
“I didn’t think it was possible,” said one of the accused, Beate Thalmann, in tears of joy. “If Switzerland did this, then maybe we have a chance.”
Pressure is rising on Switzerland’s financial sector to divest from fossil fuels and thousands of students have marched through Swiss cities in recent months demanding action on climate change.
The country, which is warming at twice the global average due to the heat-trapping effect of its mountains, has an target to cut net carbon emissions to zero by 2050 but activists say that the country’s biggest impact is via the financial center.
Credit Suisse, which had filed charges against the activists, said last week, when they launched the appeal after refusing to pay the fine, it respected their cause but deemed their actions unacceptable. The state will pay the fine instead.
The bank said in December said it would stop financing the development of new coal-fired power plants.
Federer, who was also criticized by teen climate activist Greta Thunberg over the sponsorship, said at the weekend: “I appreciate reminders of my responsibility as a private individual, as an athlete and as an entrepreneur, and I’m committed to using this privileged position to dialogue on important issues with my sponsors.”
“I take the impacts and threat of climate change very seriously, particularly as my family and I arrive in Australia amidst devastation from the bushfires,” the 38-year-old, preparing for the Australian Open, said in a statement.
A spokeswoman added on Monday that his dialogue with Credit Suisse on its climate change impact had already begun, without giving details.

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16/01/2020

James Murdoch Criticises Father's News Outlets For Climate Crisis Denial

The Guardian - 

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Fox cited for ‘frustrating’ coverage of Australian bushfires
James and Kathryn Murdoch have issued a statement criticising Rupert Murdoch’s firms for ‘ongoing denial’ on the climate crisis. Photograph: Joel Ryan/Invision/AP
Rupert Murdoch’s son has strongly criticised his family’s news outlets for downplaying the impact of the climate crisis, as bushfires continue to burn in Australia.
James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn, issued a rare joint statement directly criticising his father’s businesses for their “ongoing denial” on the issue, which has been reflected in the family’s newspapers repeatedly casting doubt on the link between the climate emergency and the bushfires.
“Kathryn and James’s views on climate are well-established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well-known,” a spokesperson for the couple said, confirming a report in the Daily Beast. “They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary.”
James Murdoch was most recently the chief executive of the family’s 21st Century Fox entertainment business, leaving when it merged with Disney. He is making media investments through his own Lupa Systems company but continues to sit on the board of the family’s newspaper business, News Corp, which also owns the Times and the Sun.
The bushfires have focused attention on the likes of Andrew Bolt, a political commentator for News Corp’s Australian newspapers who is known for promoting the views of climate science deniers, and for his own attacks on “alarmists” and his derision of climate change science.
He also has a programme on the Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia, where he has criticised the “constant stream of propaganda” on the public broadcaster ABC about the role of the climate crisis in the bushfires.
“Politicians who should do better are out there feeding the fear and misinformation,” he said in a recent broadcast criticising politicians who said carbon emissions needed to be cut to avoid future fires. “As if that would stop a fire. You’d have to be a child like Greta Thunberg to believe that fairytale.”
US viewers have also heard commentary from Fox News presenters such as Laura Ingraham, who has said that “celebrities in the media have been pressing the narrative that the wildfires in Australia are caused by climate change”, before introducing guests who cast doubt on this interpretation.
James Murdoch’s criticism sheds light on the family’s internal rifts, amid speculation over his 88-year-old father’s succession plans. James’s older brother Lachlan is still actively involved in the family businesses as the US-based chairman and chief executive of the slimmed-down Fox Corporation, which owns Fox News.
Last year, Rupert Murdoch told shareholders “there are no climate change deniers” around his company and said his business was early to commit to “science-based targets to limit climate change” and was working to reduce its climate emissions.
However, he has been publicly critical about the “alarmist” approach to the issue. In 2015, he used his Twitter account to describe himself as a “climate change sceptic not a denier”.
Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and News Corp have all separately donated millions of dollars to bushfire recovery efforts in recent days, although the Daily Beast claimed the donations were made after it requested comment about James Murdoch’s statement.
James Murdoch has a long history of advocacy on environmental issues, inviting the former US vice-president Al Gore to present a version of his An Inconvenient Truth slideshow to Fox executives in 2006. At the time he was the heir apparent to the media empire and had been trusted with running BSkyB in London, where he would push environmental issues to the fore, working on ways to reduce the power used by Sky’s set-top boxes and insisting on using hybrid taxis long before such things were standard corporate behaviour.
Since stepping back from day-to-day roles with the family business at the end of 2018, the multibillionaire has made clear he feels uncomfortable about much of Fox News’ output and was unsuccessful in an attempt to cash-in his stock completely and make a clean break with the company – an effort that failed after Lachlan declined to buy him out.
Kathryn Murdoch has already set out the couple’s vision, telling the New York Times last year that she was increasingly focused on the issue of global heating: “There hasn’t been a Republican answer on climate change. There’s just been denial and walking away from the problem. There needs to be one.”
She said she was particularly moved to act after seeing Al Gore’s speech at the Fox event in 2006: “I decided to switch everything I was doing. I wanted to be able to look my children in the eye and say ‘I did everything I could.’”

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Opinion: The Climate Crisis – Sport Is Both Victim And Sinner

Deutsche Welle (DW) - Joscha Weber, DW Sports editor

At the Australian Open, a player struggles to breathe because of air pollution while Greta Thunberg challenges Roger Federer. Sport must face up to its responsibilities with regards to the climate, writes Joscha Weber.

Dalila Jakupovic is gasping for breath. After a rally, the Slovenian bends over in pain during a qualifying match for the Australian Open against the Swiss Stefanie Vögele. Jakupovic's struggles can be clearly heard through the microphones on the edge of the court.
Then it gets worse. She has to kneel down, hold her hand in front of her pained face and crouch, curled up on the blue floor of Court 3. Coaches and organizers rush to help, but there is little they can do except talk and calm her down. Finally the umpire announces that Jakupovic cannot continue. "Game, set and match Stefanie Vögele." It is the first retirement at the Australian Open due to the poor air quality caused by the country's devastating bush fires.
The climate crisis has reached international sport. Beyond a few appeals for donations, PR campaigns and the interjections of a few climate activists, the sporting world has done little more than take note of the issue.
But it is logical that the consequences of climate change and the discussion about the sustainable use of resources are now also affecting sports - after all, top athletes are not only victims of the climate crisis, as they are now in Melbourne, but are also partly responsible for it.
Athletes jet to competitions, PR appointments or training camps around the world. Big cars are part of the lifestyle of many sports icons. And now some are having to justify their sponsors. Climate activist Greta Thunberg has told tennis star Roger Federer to "wake up" via a retweet, because his sponsor Credit Suisse is financing industrial firms that rely on fossil fuels.
Athletes are heroes - but with special responsibilities
Federer has probably never thought much about this connection before, and many professional athletes will feel the same way. But that is exactly what is about to change. All over the world, young people in particular are demanding a more thoughtful approach to the environment, from everyone.
The world of top-class sport is now particularly exposed, even if its stars are otherwise celebrated as heroes. A high degree of integrity is expected of those heroes and if one of them errs through doping or cheating, the outcry is great. The same may now be the case for the environment. The public sometimes expects more from great sports stars than politicians.
The great popularity of sportsmen and women brings astronomically high salaries and advertising revenues. The price for this is the burden of always having to behave in a correct, socially desirable manner.
Sport can, sport must do more for the climate. If athletes travel to their competitions as often as possible in a climate-friendly way, many of their fans will imitate this. When sporting events with their huge numbers of visitors do without plastic cups, use energy from renewable sources or support climate-friendly local transport, this has a noticeable effect.

Protecting athletes better
And the organizers of sporting events must do more to protect athletes. Many sports take place in the open air and some athletes are already criticizing the Australian Open for the fact the Grand Slam is even going ahead despite the considerable air pollution caused by the fires.
So far there is no sign that major sporting events will be canceled due to the bushfires in Australia, neither the Australian Open in Melbourne nor the Tour Down Under cycling race around Adelaide. The financial pressure is apparently so great that the events are being held despite the worrying circumstances. As almost always in sports, the show must go on.

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(AU) 'Dystopian Future': Climate Change To Force Review Of Military's Role

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

Climate change poses "a major security challenge for Australia" that experts warn has the potential to rapidly stretch the capability of the military, as demonstrated by the current bushfire emergency.
Michael Thomas, a retired army major, said "rising emissions will result in a more unstable and insecure world that will have far-reaching human, national and international security consequences", in an article published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute on Tuesday.
No longer over the horizon: climate change is already creating challenges for Australia's military, including the current bushfire season. Credit: ADF/AP

"The bushfire crisis that’s unfolding across Australia provides some insight into what that dystopian world will look like," he said.
Major Thomas, who published a 2017 book on the security risks of climate change, said the fires that caused at least 27 deaths and burnt millions of hectares revealed the limits of Australia's forces to cope with traditional threats abroad and concurrent new ones at home.
"Climate change is talked about as a 'threat multiplier' but it's actually a 'burden multiplier'", he told the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
The Morrison government copped criticism for waiting until earlier this month to deploy 3000 dedicated reserve troops to assist with the bushfire relief despite major fires burning in some states since September.
It also dispatched the navy to assist in the evacuation of people stranded in Victoria's East Gippsland.
Major Thomas said "the bushfire crisis may be the moment that opens genuine but critically honest policy debate on climate change in Australia".
ADF Reservists preparing at Holsworthy Army Barracks in south-west Sydney earlier this month for deployment to respond to the unprecedented bushfires across the country. Credit: James Alcock
Rising sea levels and more intense storms not only threaten the stability of domestic and foreign communities, they also undermine the capability of Australia's own military to respond.
The type, location and frequencies of challenges for armed forces everywhere were already changing, with flow-on consequences for the equipment, training and structures they need, Major Thomas said.
"What was meant to be tomorrow’s security problem has been catapulted into the here and now," he said.
Major Thomas pointed to Australia's participation with South Pacific partners in 2018 in the Boe Declaration on Regional Security as a recognition by the government that defence forces have "a unique and important role" to play in a warming world.
However, while countries such as New Zealand had followed up with a defense assessment later that year and an implementation plan last month, the Australian government had made little public about the military's readiness to respond to climate change.
Major Thomas, who served in the military for 20 years, said the lack of a bipartisan political consensus in Australia - unlike in its partner across the Tasman - meant Australia's defense forces were largely absent from the public debate.
"The [ADF's] voice has been lost in the Australian debate," he said.
The government has committed some $70 billion for new submarines and joint strike fighters. In light of the emerging threats, Major Thomas said it should reconsider buying more landing craft - such as those used at Mallacoota in Victoria - or building a reserve fire-fighting or other disaster-relief capacity.
A spokesperson for Defence said the 2016 Defence White Paper identified climate change "as one of the causes of state fragility, a key driver of our security environment to 2035".
"Defence factors climate change considerations into our strategic planning for defence capabilities, estate, personnel and equipment, as well as related operational responses and preparedness," the spokesperson said.

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15/01/2020

(AU) Fire Inquiry Must Look At Climate Change

AFR - Michael Pelly

It's essential that climate change be part of an inquiry into the bushfires raging across the country, says former Supreme Court judge Bernard Teague.
Black Saturday royal commissioner Bernard Teague says the impact of climate change "needs to be looked at it in greater depth".  Eamon Gallagher
The former supreme court judge who ran the Black Saturday royal commission says it is essential that climate change impact be part of an inquiry into the 2019-20 bushfires and has warned against any move to restrict its terms of reference.
Bernard Teague told The Australian Financial Review he also supported an examination of state and federal protocols for disaster relief
Other lawyers said current roadblocks on federal assistance – a likely focus of the royal commission flagged by Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the weekend – could be overcome by relying on the implied nationhood power in the constitution, which gives the Commonwealth broad authority.
Mr Teague was a judge on the Supreme Court of Victoria from 1987 to 2008 before being tapped to run the inquiry into the Black Saturday fires of February 7, 2009, in Victoria that claimed 173 lives.
He said climate change had been "small beer" for his inquiry because of apparent consensus about its continuing impact.
"We had two hours on climate change – this is 10 years ago – because we could get a stack of scientists who would take one side and not one scientist was prepared to come before our commission and be cross-examined about climate change."
He said that in 2010 "everyone was saying there's only the prospect of worse fires in the future because of climate change".
"It needs to be looked at it greater depth in light of the experience of the past 10 years, which has only shown what everyone now accepts – well almost everyone – that it has an enormous impact that we need to better understand.
"It impacts on a lot of things, like controlled burning for example."
He said the inquiry needed to have the widest possible terms of reference and suggested there were a number of recently retired judges who would be candidates.
Mr Teague said it was better to have multiple commissioners, citing his own experience: "There were so many other perspectives they would bring to bear."
He said the Morrison government should brave the potential criticism that might arise with any examination of the roles of state and federal governments.
"If a government says 'these are the problems that are arising in the present situation and these are potential ways of dealing with them',  I think the community is going to be so much better off."
One issue for any inquiry will be the activation of defence forces. Mr Morrison said on Sunday that the compulsory calling up of 3000 Army Reservists to help in the fire recovery effort had pushed the Commonwealth to the "very edge" of  "extreme constitutional territory".
Mr Morrison said he would take a proposal for a royal commission to cabinet and that it also would include building better resilience and adaption to climate events such as fire, drought, floods and cyclones.

'States need to be consulted'
Fiona McLeod, SC, senior counsel for the Commonwealth at the Black Saturday royal commission, said there was a fundamental problem.
"If you look at the way Commonwealth aid has traditionally been provided, the States have to exhaust their resources – government, commercial and community – before they can ask for help," Ms McLeod said.
Ms McLeod agreed with University of Sydney Professor Anne Twomey that there were doubts about whether such action was supported by the defence power or the external affairs power, which were used to justify using the defence forces in humanitarian and disaster aid overseas.
Both said they felt the implied nationhood power under section 61 of the Constitution would support any deployment for disaster relief, but Professor Twomey added that proper protocols for co-operation with the states were needed.
"The states have the expertise in dealing with bushfires, while the Australian Defence Forces have the expertise in the logistics and management of disaster relief, so it is imperative that systems be developed for them both to work together effectively in a crisis,'' Professor Twomey said.
"It would be counter-productive for the Commonwealth to act unilaterally in calling out the troops, if they were getting in the way of firefighters. States need to be consulted before the troops are called out, so they can fill the greatest needs when they arise."
She added the move to call out the reserves was covered by the provision in section 28 of the Defence Act which covers "civil aid, humanitarian assistance, medical or civil emergency or disaster relief".
Professor Twomey said Section 119, which says the the Commonwealth "shall protect every state against invasion", could also be given a wide application.
Mr Teague said the Black Saturday inquiry had no limitations, in contrast to the Hazelwood Mine Fire Inquiry of 2015-16, over which he also presided.
When the final report offered "matter for further consideration" the state government ordered another inquiry, which led to a recommendations on the long-term rehabilitation of power plants and the impact on human health.
He said if there had been any progress, it would be that there had not been anything like the number of lives lost in recent weeks compered to the devastation of Black Saturday.

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