14/12/2021

Alan Kohler: Politicians Are Failing Us On Climate Change. They Must Do This Instead

New Daily - Alan Kohler

Governments must prepare the country for the effects of climate change, writes Alan Kohler. Photo: TND

Author
Alan Kohler writes twice a week for The New Daily. He is also editor in chief of Eureka Report and finance presenter on ABC News.
The only worthwhile 2030 political emissions reduction target is the Greens’ 75 per cent, which is more or less impossible.

So the main task of government from here should be to prepare the country for the effects of global warming.

Doing something to try to prevent it is important, but secondary.

In 2009, the then Department of Climate Change prepared a “first pass” assessment of the risks to Australia’s coasts, which was the only thing the government has ever produced about climate change risks.

It needs to be updated and extended to all risks, so we all know what we’re going to be in for.

Whenever the Greens’ target is mentioned, it’s dismissed as “extreme” and “radical”, and when lined up against the LNP’s 26 to 28 per cent, Labor’s 43 per cent and everybody else’s 50 per cent, it does look to be both of those things.

The trouble is that these political targets have nothing to do with science, and it’s clear that politics – both democratic and autocratic – is incapable of dealing effectively with climate change.

As Labor climate change spokesman Chris Bowen put it at the National Press Club: “Our target of 43 per cent emissions reductions over the years to 2030 is ambitious and achievable.”

By which he means it looks relatively ambitious and is politically achievable. Why 43? Because it sounds better than 26 to 28, a bit less ambitious than their previous 45, and more achievable than 50 or, God forbid, 75.

The problem with all of these numbers is that greenhouse gases, both carbon dioxide and methane, stay in the atmosphere, so the best way to look at emissions is cumulative, not year by year, since they accumulate.

Led by Adam Bandt, the Greens have an emissions reduction target of 75 per cent by 2030. Photo: AAP

Our carbon budget

The annual emissions targets everybody is arguing about are just a way of achieving a cumulative number that might be consistent with preserving our way of life.

So far, 1.6 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide have been put into the atmosphere since 1751, which has warmed the planet by an average of about 1 degree centigrade above the average temperature of 1850 to 1900. It’s all still there.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has produced a range of possible budgets to keep further warming to 1.5 and 2 degrees from here.

For a 50 per cent chance of 2 degrees, it’s 1350 gigatonnes (billion tonnes) of carbon dioxide; for 67 per cent it’s 1150 GtCO2; and for 83 per cent it’s 900 GtCO2.

For a 50 per cent chance of 1.5 degrees, it’s 500GtCO2; for 67 per cent it’s 400; and for an 83 per cent chance it’s 300.

It’s a wide range with a variety of probabilities for us to choose from, but to keep it simple for policymakers they came up with a “net zero by 2050” target to aim at after the Paris meeting in 2015, in line with the 67 per cent probability of 2 degrees of warming.

By the way, an outfit called the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change has a fairly frightening clock ticking down for both 2 degrees and 1.5 degrees, showing 1071 and 321 GtCO2 to go, respectively.

Catastrophic warming

In Glasgow this year, the thinking shifted from 2 degrees to 1.5 degrees because it’s felt that 2 degrees would still be catastrophic.

The current 1 degree of warming is bad enough, and the frequency of extreme weather is not a linear progression with the increase in temperature: The difference between 1 and 1.5 degrees is greater than 50 per cent.

The general 2050 net-zero target was unchanged in Glasgow, but the focus shifted to 2030 so that the task in the next 20 years wouldn’t be too great.

So everybody agreed to come back next year with a more ambitious target for 2030; the Australia government signed that, but then said it wouldn’t deliver a higher target.

It’s also likely that the focus will now shift to carbon budgets rather than annual emissions.

The last official government estimate of Australia’s share of the global budget was published by the Climate Change Authority (CCA) in 2014 – before the Clean Energy Act was repealed in July that year and any further calculations were shut down (while keeping the CCA barely alive).

According to the CCA then, Australia’s carbon emissions budget for 2 degrees of warming for the period 2013 to 2050 was 10.1 million tonnes. It’s probably a bit more now.

The way we’re going, it will be spent by 2033, not 2050.

This year a group called the Climate Targets Panel, brought together by former Liberal Party leader John Hewson, updated Australia’s budget for 1.5 degrees of warming, from 2021.

It’s 3.5 billion tonnes, and will be spent by 2028 at the current rate of 498.9 million tonnes per year (reported by the Department of Industry’s in its latest National Greenhouse Gas Inventory for June 2021).

To keep global warming to 1.5 degrees, and therefore a budget of 3.5 million tonnes, Australia’s emissions would have to be cut by about 75 per cent by 2030, or to 125 million tonnes, which is the reason for the Greens’ target.

But is that even possible?

Basically, it would require all coal-fired electricity generation to be shut down over the next two or three years and replaced with solar, wind and batteries and most transport and household heating and cooking to switch to electricity, away from gas, very quickly indeed.

It may be theoretically possible, but would cost the government a multiple of Labor’s $24 billion Powering Australia plan for a 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030.

That means the real problem for Australia in combating climate change is that the budget deficit to be revealed next week is about $100 billion and government debt is more than $850 billion because of the pandemic.

The latest IPCC report said bushfires would become more intense and frequent. Photo: AAP

When politics fails

The spending and sacrifice required for 1.5 degrees is politically impossible, and 2 degrees is close to impossible.

Something similar applies globally.

Governments everywhere are mired in debt while pledging to cut emissions to net zero by between 2030 and 2060, mostly 2050.

Some, like Europe, are using emissions trading schemes to force the private sector to pay for it, while others, like Australia, are planning to use taxpayers’ money.

But the average global carbon price of about $4.50 per tonne is way too low to have any serious impact, and most government spending proposals are hopelessly inadequate for the simple reason that the pandemic has emptied the coffers (unless governments around the world have an unlikely conversion to Modern Monetary Theory).

Ross Garnaut devoted a chapter of his 2008 Climate Change Review to adaptation, starting with these words: “Mitigation will come too late to avoid substantial damage from climate change.

“Some may expect that government can, and should, protect the community from climate change by implementing the right strategy, program or initiative to allow Australians to maintain established lifestyles. This is not a realistic expectation …”

I remember thinking at the time that this was a big statement.

Since then, there has been nothing from government about what to expect, apart from that “first pass” on the coastal impact from the Department of Climate Change and endless optimism about how we’re meeting and beating our targets and everything will therefore be OK.

As Garnaut wrote 13 years ago: This is not a realistic expectation.

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(Kenya CBC) Domino Effect

CBC News - Margaret Evans

Climate change is tilting the balance of nature for Kenya’s Lake Nakuru, setting off a whole house of cards in a place that once had a reputation of unparalleled beauty.

Jean-François Bisson/CBC

There is a strange new world taking shape in a community called Mwariki on the shores of Lake Nakuru, just a few hours’ drive north of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

Shirtless young men can be glimpsed through a forest of dead trees, wading through chest-deep water with fishing nets trailing behind them.

Squadrons of pelicans float along what used to be streets in a slow-motion display of synchronized swimming, dipping their heads under water as one to scoop up dinner in their pouches.

And cormorants perch on the walls of gutted houses half underwater.

Lake Nakuru is one of a string of lakes in the Great Rift Valley where climate change is blamed for unprecedented rainfall over the past decade and flooding that has displaced thousands.

“When I came here I was very happy,” 51-year-old Jane Wanjiru said as she was seated in the front of a boat taking us from the new shoreline to the home she lost to rising water in the spring of 2020.

“Because it was mine,” she said. “I opened my own gate. My children were playing in my own compound.

“We thought [then] after six months or three months the water will go back.”

But it stayed, sinking her dreams.

Jane Wanjiru, left, and her friend, Peninah Muthoni, are still waiting for government help more than a year after their homes were submerged in floods that affected hundreds of families near Lake Nakuru, Kenya. (Margaret Evans/CBC)

For Wanjiru, a single mother, the house represented her climb out of a slum in nearby Nakuru Town and the single room she shared there with her two daughters.

She was able to afford it by joining a savings group supported by an NGO called Muungano wa Wanavijiji (Federation of Slum Dwellers). It helps make loans more accessible to the urban poor.

Wanjiru is devastated by what’s happened.

“When you come from very low and then you get something that you feel you are proud of it, and then a disaster like this comes, you feel very bad. Very bad.”

Especially when there’s little, if any, hope of compensation in sight. If government money does arrive, it will likely go toward repairing infrastructure such as downed power lines and a sewage treatment plant also under water.

How flooding and rising water levels have displaced wildlife and affected tourism at Lake Nakuru. 59sec

In the same part of Mwariki, 173 households lost their properties, most like Wanjiru having saved for years, pooling their resources in order to buy a plot of land they would divide between them.

“We are facing a lot of problems,” Joseph Oyawa, assistant chief for the area affected by the flooding, said as he was sitting in a small hut with a tin roof and rain pounding down on it.

“We don’t have houses for them to stay. It’s a problem of housing,” he said. “Most of them were not employed. They were just casual labourers.”

Joseph Oyawa, assistant chief of Mwariki Parkview, says the area is facing a lot of problems. (Jean-François Bisson/CBC)

The influx of young men from other parts of Kenya who are looking for a livelihood and hoping to fish has brought its own set of social problems, he said, adding to housing problems.

Oyawa remembers the days when Lake Nakuru almost ran dry in the early 1970s.


Locals say over the past decade, it’s grown from about 40 square kilometres to 70. And it’s not just humans suffering.

“The [wildlife] reserve to the south, they’re complaining there’s not space enough for the habitat of the animals there because of the swelling of the lake,” said Oyawa.

Young men have felt emboldened to try fishing in the expanded Lake Nakuru but some studies indicate the fish they’re catching have elevated levels of heavy metals. (Margaret Evans/CBC)
The top of an electric fence that once kept lions and hippos and rhinos away from the community can be seen peeking above the water opposite Wanjiru’s submerged house.

Lake Nakuru National Park, recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site in 2011 for its biodiversity, used to encompass the entire lake. But it’s now expanded beyond the park’s borders.

It’s one reason so many young men feel emboldened to try their hand at fishing. The lines about where legal fishing is allowed have blurred. In the past, the Kenyan Wildlife Service limited it within the park.

“Those youth have absolutely zero source of livelihood,” said local ecologist Jackson Raini. Three new species of fish have appeared in the lake in recent years, one theory being that they’d been swept in from nearby pond fisheries.

“But some studies we’ve conducted indicate that the fish have a fairly elevated concentration of heavy metals especially chromium and lead, which are above the World Health Organization standards,” he said.

Local ecologist Jackson Raini says what’s happening at Lake Nakuru is an example of the kind of chain reaction climate change can set off. (Jean-François Bisson/CBC)

The high levels of metal used in tannery industries in Nakuru Town find their way to the lake even when treated properly, according to Raini.

And hippos and flamingos have been drawn to the damaged sewage treatment plant, and so closer to human settlements, by algae growing in the sewer line.

Raini said what’s happening in and around Lake Nakuru is an example of the kind of chain reaction climate change can set off.

Why don’t the flamingos come to Lake Nakuru the way they used to? 1min

He started working at the lake in the early 1990s and stayed because of all it had to offer. It is recognized by an international treaty signed in the 1970s as a wetland of international importance.

“Just bursting [with] life. Millions of flamingos, you know, flying. Pelicans, cormorants, the kind of variety that was simply inspiring,” said Raini.

But the flooding has changed the ecology of the lake, with runoff and rains diluting its salinity and affecting the algae flamingos like to feed on.

“This algae disappeared almost completely,” he said. “And that really interfered with the basic food chain. So the flamingos have reduced in numbers from the millions that we used to see earlier to now where you just see a few hundred.”

Massive deforestation caused by industry upstream has contributed, he said, and a shifting of the tectonic plates in the Rift Valley is thought to be possibly impacting groundwater levels.

But like many scientists, Raini said climate change is the amplifier, changing destinies.

The Nakuru Lake National Park is the second most important in terms of tourism dollars in Kenya, but it’s also having to adapt to a new reality.

Safari roads around the lake have been washed out and available habitat for wild animals like lions, baboons, giraffes and rhinos has shrunk.

Raini said projections suggest that the next 10 years in this part of Kenya are set to get even wetter.

“We have seen that the groundwater levels have risen by eight to 10 metres. So that means that the catchment area is super saturated, that any more additional water we get from the effects of climate change is not likely to percolate. It’s actually likely to spread further and cause more damage, especially at local communities.”

Safari roads around Lake Nakuru have been washed out and available habitat for wild animals like baboons, water buffalo and giraffes has shrunk. (Jean-François Bisson/CBC)

Extreme weather events are already displacing around 20 million people a year, according to the United Nations, more than those being displaced by violence or conflict.

Help responding and adapting to the changing climate has been one of the main demands from developing countries including Kenya at successive UN climate conferences like the one in Glasgow in November.

The connection is not lost on those in Mwariki still hoping someone somewhere might care about what they’ve lost.

“This thing is happening all across the world,” said David Kahoro Kiragu, a local elder who lost his small subsistence farm in the flooding last year.

“But we are blaming people because they have interfered with the environment, especially even the other [Western or developed] countries because of industries and all of this.”

Sixty-year-old Kiragu and his family were initially housed by a church in a classroom. But when school started, they had to move and they’re now accepting charity from a friend of the family.

“We are actually internally displaced and we are suffering in one way or another,” said Kiragu.

Both Kiragu and Wanjiru say they’ve been ignored by their own government at the county and federal levels, and both say they feel too old to start over again in such harsh conditions.

“No one talks to us,” said Wanjiru. “Now we have become hopeless.”

'We are blaming people because they have interfered with the environment,' says local elder David Kahoro Kiragu, front, referring in particular to developed countries and industry. (Margaret Evans/CBC)

One local official at Nakuru County’s government offices in Nakuru Town said they would like the national government to buy the flooded properties to compensate those who’ve lost everything and then to hand that land over to the Lake Nakuru National Park.

But there is no suggestion that is likely to happen any time soon.

Storks perch atop the roof of a home submerged by flooding near Lake Nakuru. (Margaret Evans/CBC)

“There’s a challenge because there’s no money,” assistant chief Oyawa said, sitting in his small hut. “So the government must sit down so that they can get that money to buy that.” But he, too, is looking to the outside world and the countries making promises about helping poorer countries already being buffeted by climate change.

“They need to be told that there are some people on the ground suffering.”

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(AU The Conversation) The End Of Coal Is Coming 3 Times Faster Than Expected. Governments Must Accept It And Urgently Support A ‘Just Transition’

The Conversation -  

Shutterstock

Authors
  •  is Associate Professor of Economics, Griffith University
  •  is Associate Professor, Griffith University
Coal is likely to be completely gone from Victoria’s electricity system by 2032 with most other parts of Australia not far behind, a report from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) declared last week.

The report, called the 2022 Integrated System Plan, confirmed what many of us in energy policy have long known: the end of coal is coming, and the pace may take some industries and governments by surprise.

The Integrated System Plan (ISP) is effectively the planning “blueprint” the market operator publishes to help industry and policy makers assess how Australia’s electricity system might evolve. It’s an incredibly important document for guiding where and when investment is needed to unlock new renewable resources to meet demand.

Given ISP’s prediction for the rapid closure of coal-fired power stations, it’s critical governments don’t stick their heads in the sand. Continuing to deny the impending end of coal-fired generation is simply not in the interest of coal workers and their communities, who urgently need support.

What is AEMO predicting?

 The most important aspect of the ISP is that what used to be called the “step change” has now become the “central scenario”. For the first time, this central scenario is consistent with Australia’s commitment under the Paris Agreement and limiting global temperature rise to under 2℃.

The ISP is forecasting that huge volumes of coal will be retired in the next ten years, including all brown coal and two-thirds of black coal, and significant investments in new renewables and “firming technologies” (such as batteries, gas, and pumped hydro) will take their place.

‘Firming’ technologies like pumped hydro are critical to ensure Australians have electricity when wind and solar aren’t available. Shutterstock
Around 14 gigawatts (GW) of coal is now assumed to be exiting the National Electricity Market this decade – more than three times the amount of coal retirements the industry has announced.

Effectively, AEMO is saying (yet again) that the incumbent industry is likely to be caught by surprise by the speed of the transition.

It’s not just an explosion of renewables investment that AEMO predicts. Around 9GW of gas-fired generation and an extra 620GW hours of storage (provided by batteries or pumped hydro) will be required to provide backup generation capacity when solar and wind are unavailable.

Electricity demand is expected to surge out to 2050 and will double to at least 350 terrawatt hours. This includes from electric vehicles uptake, converting natural gas heating and hot water to electric in homes, and electrifying many industrial processes such as low-emissions steel and aluminium.

All these developments will require a major overhaul of the grid. The ISP states around A$12.5 billion in transmission spending needs to occur to unlock $29 billion in investment benefits.

Why is coal being left behind?

 There are two main drivers for this significant substitution of coal for new technologies.

First, the cost of these technologies continues to fall rapidly and consumers are voting with their feet. Some of Australia’s largest and most iconic businesses are increasingly buying 100% of their energy from renewable resources, including Woolworths, BHP and Coles.

Second, state governments have filled the void left by the lack of a nationally consistent energy and climate policy, and are now implementing ambitious policies to drive the uptake of renewable energy and firming.

The most ambitious of these policies is the NSW government’s 12GW energy roadmap, which effectively prepares for the retirement of ageing coal-fired power stations by facilitating investment in new capacity.

Electricity demand is expected to surge out to 2050. Shutterstock

So what should governments be doing?

 It is critical governments focus on a “just transition” to these new technologies, and provide support to communities and workers most impacted, such as those in the Hunter and Latrobe Valleys.

Structural adjustment policies such as job placements, relocation assistance, or financial support to transition local economies are vital to secure opportunities for these regions. Retraining ahead of closures will help workers transition to new or related industries.

Everyone who uses energy must be afforded access to the clean energy transition. At present, the biggest barrier to participating in the solar and battery revolution is owning your own home.

Governments have been absent from this important policy debate. Australian low-income and rental households should be prioritised in any future policies that support adoption of solar and battery storage.

Rental homes have been left out of policy debates on renewables. Shutterstock

Governments must also ensure the private sector (rather than consumers) wear the risk of poor investments. Governments are increasingly taking on very significant risk (on behalf of consumers) through underwriting renewable energy and firming investments of large multi-national energy businesses.

Some economists (including us) have been providing alternative models for governments to achieve the same objectives, but with greater focus on reducing risks to consumers.

Given the surge in households and businesses voluntarily buying renewable energy, it’s important consumers know what they’re getting. The Clean Energy Regulator is doing some interesting work in this space by developing an emissions and renewable energy transparency register as part of the national greenhouse and energy reporting framework.

If governments really wanted to help, they could introduce a carbon price. Such a policy is considered political poison, but a carbon price would result in us reaching this future in a much less costly and more orderly way.

The end of the coal age

 The ISP is forecasting a better and cleaner future. Australia has great opportunities from moving beyond the coal age and into the age of efficient renewable energy, as we’re blessed with some of the best renewable resources on the planet

With global leaders increasingly focused on rapidly reducing emissions, we have a lot to gain through new industries, such as green hydrogen and mineral processing. Both major political parties at the national level have targets that don’t really push beyond what AEMO now thinks is the status quo.

The stone age didn’t end because of a lack of stones. And the coal age is ending despite an abundance of it – whether governments believe it or not.

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13/12/2021

(USA NBC) EXPLAINER: Was Tornado Outbreak Related To Climate Change?

NBC - Suman Naishadham | Seth Borenstein

These types of severe storms in December are not incredibly unusual, but the intensity and length of Friday night's tornadoes likely put them into a record breaking category

1min 19sec

The calendar said December but the warm moist air screamed of springtime. Add an eastbound storm front guided by a La Nina weather pattern into that mismatch and it spawned tornadoes that killed dozens over five U.S. states.

Tornadoes in December are unusual, but not unheard of. But the ferocity and path length of Friday night's tornadoes likely put them in a category of their own, meteorologists say.

One of the twisters — if it is confirmed to have been just one — likely broke a nearly 100-year-old record for how long a tornado stayed on the ground in a path of destruction, experts said.

“One word: remarkable; unbelievable would be another,” said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini. “It was really a late spring type of setup in in the middle of December.”

Warm weather was a crucial ingredient in this tornado outbreak, but whether climate change is a factor is not quite as clear, meteorologists say.

U.S. & World
Arkansas Dec 11

Edwardsville Weather Dec 11

Scientists say figuring out how climate change is affecting the frequency of tornadoes is complicated and their understanding is still evolving. But they do say the atmospheric conditions that give rise to such outbreaks are intensifying in the winter as the planet warms.

And tornado alley is shifting farther east away from the Kansas-Oklahoma area and into states where Friday's killers hit. Here's a look at what's known about Friday's tornado outbreak and the role of climate change in such weather events.

What Causes A Tornado?

Tornadoes are whirling, vertical air columns that form from thunderstorms and stretch to the ground. They travel with ferocious speed and lay waste to everything in their path.

Thunderstorms occur when denser, drier cold air is pushed over warmer, humid air, conditions scientists call atmospheric instability. As that happens, an updraft is created when the warm air rises. When winds vary in speed or direction at different altitudes — a condition known as wind shear — the updraft will start to spin.

These changes in winds produce the spin necessary for a tornado. For especially strong tornadoes, changes are needed in both the wind’s speed and direction.

“When considerable variation in wind is found over the lowest few thousand feet of the atmosphere, tornado-producing ‘supercell thunderstorms’ are possible,” said Paul Markowski, professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. “That’s what we had yesterday.”

There's usually a lot of wind shear in the winter because of the big difference in temperature and air pressure between the equator and the Arctic, Gensini said.

But usually, there's not a lot of instability in the winter that's needed for tornadoes because the air isn't as warm and humid, Gensini said. This time there was.

What Conditions Led To Storms Of This Scale?

A few factors, which meteorologists will continue to study.

Spring-like temperatures across much of the Midwest and South in December helped bring the warm, moist air that helped form thunderstorms.

Some of this is due to La Nina, which generally brings warmer than normal winter temperatures to the Southern U.S. But scientists also expect atypical, warm weather in the winter to become more common as the planet warms.

“The worst-case scenario happened. Warm air in the cold season, middle of the night,” said John Gordon, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Louisville, Kentucky.

Once the storm formed, exceptionally strong wind shear appears to have prevented the tornadoes from dissipating, experts say. Tornadoes are thought to die off when thunderstorm updrafts lose energy.

Tornadoes typically lose energy in a matter of minutes, but in this case it was hours, Gensini said. That’s partly the reason for the exceptionally long path of Friday's storm, going more than 200 miles or so, he said.

The record was 219 miles and was set by a tornado that struck four states in 1925. Gensini thinks this one will surpass it once meteorologists finish analyzing it.

“In order to get a really long path length, you have to have a really fast moving storm. This storm was moving well over 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour for a majority of its life,” Gensini said. That's not the speed of the winds, but of the overall storm movement.

“You’re talking about highway-speed storm motions,” Gensini said.

How Related Is Climate Change To Tornado Outbreaks?

It’s complicated. Scientists are still trying to sort out the many conflicting factors about whether human-caused climate change is making tornadoes more common — or even more intense.

About 1,200 twisters hit the U.S. each year — though that figure can vary — according to the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory. No other country sees as many.

Attributing a specific storm like Friday's to the effects of climate change remains very challenging.

Less than 10% of severe thunderstorms produce tornadoes, which makes drawing conclusions about climate change and the processes leading up to them tricky, said Harold Brooks, a tornado scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory.

Scientists have observed changes taking place to the basic ingredients of a thunderstorm, however, as the planet warms. Gensini says in the aggregate, extreme storms are “becoming more common because we have a lot warmer air masses in the cool season that can support these types of severe weather outbreaks.”

Climate Change is Making Extreme Weather More Extreme 6min 28sec

The U.S. is likely to see more tornadoes occur in the winter, Brooks said, as national temperatures rise above the long-term average. Fewer events will take place in the summer, he said.

 Furtado of the University of Oklahoma said tornado alley, a term used to describe where many twisters hit the U.S., has shifted eastward into the Mississippi River Valley. That shift is because of increases in temperature, moisture and shear.

“Bottom line: The people in the Mississippi River Valley and Ohio River Valley are becoming increasingly vulnerable to more tornadic activity with time,” he said.

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(USA Washington Post) A Warming World Could Add More Fuel To Tornadoes, Scientists Say

Washington Post - Michael Birnbaum | Brady Dennis | Jason Samenow

While the link between global warming and disasters like wildfires and flooding are more definitive, experts say, warmer temperatures could intensify cool-season thunderstorms and tornadoes in the future.
BOWLING GREEN, KY - DECEMBER 11: A damaged apartment complex in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021. One or more tornados tore through Bowling Green in the early morning. One or more tornados tore through Bowling Green in the early morning.  (Austin Anthony/For The Washington Post)
In the wake of deadly storms that ravaged parts of the South and the Midwest this weekend, scientists had a warning: While the exact link between climate change and tornadoes remains uncertain, higher temperatures could add fuel to these violent disasters.

Article Audio 6min
As rescuers searched Saturday amid the rubble of violent tornadoes that barreled through multiple states, killed scores of people, and leveled homes and businesses, climate scientists said people around the world needed to brace for more frequent and intense weather-driven catastrophes.

“A lot of people are waking up today and seeing this damage and saying, ‘Is this the new normal?’ ” said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University, adding that key questions still remain when it comes to tornadoes because so many factors come into play. “It’ll be some time before we can say for certain what kind of role climate change played in an event like yesterday.”

Still, he said the warm December air mass in much of the country and La Niña conditions created ideal conditions for a turbulent event. Thunderstorms — the raw material for tornadoes — happen when there is warm, moist air close to the ground and cooler, drier air above, creating a path for humidity to travel upward.

The tornadic thunderstorm carved a 250-mile path of destruction through northeast Arkansas, southeast Missouri, northwest Tennessee and western Kentucky, hurling debris into the sky for more than three straight hours. At times, the wreckage reached an altitude of 30,000 feet. As the twister blasted through Mayfield, Ky., it sheared entire homes off their foundations, indicating its top-tier intensity.

Whether or not scientists can pin down a link between this week’s horrific storms and climate change, Gensini said there’s no doubt that the tornadoes will go down as “one of the most devastating long-track tornadoes” in U.S. history — probably the worst since the Tri-State Tornado of 1925, which tore across three states over several hours and killed hundreds of people.

Meteorologists at the National Weather Service are surveying damage to determine whether this week’s storm was a single tornado or several. If it was a single tornado traveling on the ground without interruption for 250 miles, it will rank as the longest tornado track in U.S. history and the first to cross through four states.

As the death toll is expected to swell, it will become the deadliest December tornado outbreak on record and potentially among the most deadly in any month. Until Friday night, the deadliest December outbreak occurred on Dec. 5, 1953, which killed 38 people in Vicksburg, Miss.

Temperatures in the zone ravaged by tornadoes rose into the 70s to near 80 degrees Friday afternoon, providing the conditions for severe thunderstorms to develop that night. Dozens of record highs were set that day in the states hardest hit by the storms: In Memphis, temperatures soared to 79 degrees, breaking a 103-year-old record.

In a warming world, Gensini said: “It’s absolutely fair to say that the atmospheric environments will be more supportive for cool-season tornado events.”

But Gensini and other climate and weather experts noted that tornadoes are among the most difficult events to link definitively to global warming, partly because they are relatively small and short-lived events compared with the wildfires, heat waves and other climate disasters.


How tornadoes that ripped through 6 states became so deadly 1min 45sec

“Tornadoes are, unfortunately, one of the extreme events where we have the least confidence in our ability to attribute or understand the impact of climate change on specific events,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist who directs climate and energy programs at the Breakthrough Institute, a climate research center based in Oakland, Calif. “There is not much evidence to date that the number of strong tornadoes is different today than it was over much of the past century.”

The most recent National Climate Assessment, assembled by experts at numerous federal agencies, underscored this dynamic in 2018.

“Observed and projected future increases in certain types of extreme weather, such as heavy rainfall and extreme heat, can be directly linked to a warmer world,” the authors wrote. “Other types of extreme weather, such as tornadoes, hail, and thunderstorms, are also exhibiting changes that may be related to climate change, but scientific understanding is not yet detailed enough to confidently project the direction and magnitude of future change.”

The report went on to say tornado activity in the United States has become “more variable” in recent decades, with a decrease in the number of days per year that saw tornadoes but an increase in the number of tornadoes on these days.

Harold Brooks, a senior research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Severe Storms Laboratory, said extreme tornadoes are becoming “clumpier” over time, meaning they have become more concentrated in day-long bursts. He said it wasn’t clear whether there was a connection to climate change.

And warmer Decembers will probably lead to more December thunderstorms.

“Studies suggest that the frequency and intensity of severe thunderstorms in the U.S. could increase as climate changes, particularly over the U.S. Midwest and Southern Great Plains during spring,” Hausfather said.

The additional factors required to transform a thunderstorm into a tornado — among them, a change in wind speeds at different altitudes, with more intense winds up above — are so complex that scientists have a hard time drawing a straight line between warming temperatures and more frequent tornadoes. In fact, the number of intense tornadoes in the United States “hasn’t changed back into the fifties,” Brooks said, around 500 a year.

There may be some evidence that wintertime tornadoes are becoming more frequent, Brooks said. But the tornadoes are rare enough — and hard enough to measure and classify — that it is difficult to achieve statistical confidence.

What is unequivocal, Gensini said, is that the steady warming of the planet is making a broad array of extreme weather disasters more likely and more intense.

“When you look at these things in the aggregate, it becomes pretty clear that changes are happening,” he said. “There are definitely shifts in the probability of these things happening.”

That includes longer severe weather seasons and more instability in the atmosphere during “shoulder” seasons when such disasters historically would have been less common, he said. It also could include more variability than in the past — some years could be very intense and marked by multiple catastrophes, while others could prove mild when it comes to severe weather.

That is in line with the findings of a major report the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released this summer, which found that as humans have continued to pump planet-warming gases into the atmosphere, weather-related disasters are growing more extreme and affecting every region of the world.

While the report didn’t draw a conclusion about the relationship between tornadoes and climate change, it noted that the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation in the United States was increasing.

One thing that’s different now: More people and more “things” lie in the paths of future tornadoes and other extreme weather events.

“As populations continue to grow, as cities get larger, as we continue to have more things — this is what you get,” Gensini said. “I know for certain there will be more disaster as our human footprint continues to grow.”

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(AU NYT) First Fires, Then Floods: Climate Extremes Batter Australia

New York Times - Damien Cave | Photographs and Video by Matthew Abbott

Many of the same areas that suffered through horrific bush fires in 2019 and 2020 are now dealing with prodigious rainfall that could leave some people stranded for weeks.



WEE WAA, Australia — Two years ago, the fields outside Christina Southwell’s family home near the cotton capital of Australia looked like a dusty, brown desert as drought-fueled wildfires burned to the north and south.

Last week, after record-breaking rains, muddy floodwaters surrounded her, along with the stench of rotting crops. She had been trapped for days with just her cat, and still didn’t know when the sludge would recede.

“It seems to take for bloody ever to go away,” she said, watching a boat carry food into the town of Wee Waa. “All it leaves behind is this stink, and it’s just going to get worse.”

Life on the land has always been hard in Australia, but the past few years have delivered one extreme after another, demanding new levels of resilience and pointing to the rising costs of a warming planet. For many Australians, moderate weather — a pleasant summer, a year without a state of emergency — increasingly feels like a luxury.

The Black Summer bush fires of 2019 and 2020 were the worst in Australia’s recorded history. This year, many of the same areas that suffered through those epic blazes endured the wettest, coldest November since at least 1900. Hundreds of people, across several states, have been forced to evacuate. Many more, like Ms. Southwell, are stranded on floodplain islands with no way to leave except by boat or helicopter, possibly until after Christmas.

Christina Southwell in her garden shed in Wee Waa, Australia, where floodwaters have surrounded her house.
Christina Southwell in her garden shed in Wee Waa, Australia, where floodwaters have surrounded her house.


Hundreds of people, across several states, have been forced to evacuate. Many more are stranded on floodplain islands with no way to leave except by boat or by helicopter.
undreds of people, across several states, have been forced to evacuate. Many more are stranded on floodplain islands with no way to leave except by boat or by helicopter.


Bryce Guest, a helicopter pilot in Narrabri, flying over farms in the region.
Bryce Guest, a helicopter pilot in Narrabri, flying over farms in the region.



And with a second year of the weather phenomenon known as La Niña in full swing, meteorologists are predicting even more flooding for Australia’s east coast, adding to the stress from the pandemic, not to mention from a recent rural mouse plague of biblical proportions.

“It feels constant,” said Brett Dickinson, 58, a wheat farmer who lives not far from Ms. Southwell in northwest New South Wales, about a six-hour drive from Sydney. “We’re constantly battling all the elements — and the animals too.”

There’s a tendency to think of such extremes as “natural disasters” or “acts of God” that come and go with news reports. But Australia’s nightmares of nature ebb and flow. Its droughts and floods, though weather opposites, are driven by the same forces — some of them timeless, others newer and caused by humans.

Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Climate Extremes at the University of New South Wales, said the ups and downs of weather had been severe for millenniums on the Australian landmass, which is as large as the continental United States and surrounded by powerful climate-driving oceans, from the tropical South Pacific to the colder Southern Ocean off Antarctica.

New York Times

As a consequence, the El Niño and La Niña patterns tend to hit Australia harder than they do other places, with harsh droughts that end with major floods. Some scientists even suggest that the way marsupials reproduce, with the ability to put active pregnancies on pause, shows that the El Niño-La Niña cycle has been around long enough for flora and fauna to adapt.

Australia has been hit with harsh droughts that end with major floods, a phenomenon caused by the El Niño and La Niña patterns and intensified by climate change.
Australia has been hit with harsh droughts that end with major floods, a phenomenon caused by the El Niño and La Niña patterns and intensified by climate change.



On top of that already-intense variability, Professor Pitman said, are now two additional complicating factors: “climate change and human decisions around building things.”

Both make fires and floods more damaging.

“A small change in climate coupled with a small change in landscapes can have a large impact on flood characteristics,” Professor Pitman said.

The results are already visible in government budgets. The cost of climate disasters in Australia has more than doubled since the 1970s.

Ron Campbell, the mayor of Narrabri Shire, which includes Wee Waa, said his area was still waiting for government payments to offset damage from past catastrophes. He wondered when governments would stop paying for infrastructure repairs after every emergency.

“The costs are just enormous, not just here but at all the other places in similar circumstances,” he said.

Volunteers and locals transporting food and supplies in Wee Waa.
Volunteers and locals transporting food and supplies in Wee Waa.


A sandbag station in Narrabri. The area is still waiting for government payments to offset damage from past catastrophes.
A sandbag station in Narrabri. The area is still waiting for government payments to offset damage from past catastrophes.


Boxes full of supplies are stacked in front of photos of previous floods, at the State Emergency Service headquarters in Narrabri.
Boxes full of supplies are stacked in front of photos of previous floods, at the State Emergency Service headquarters in Narrabri.


More viscerally, the impact of a “supercharged climate” is drawn on the land itself. Across the vast tracts of farmland and small towns between Melbourne and Sydney where much of the country’s food, cattle, wine — and coal — are produced, the effects of fire, drought and flood coexist.

Even in areas that did not burst into flames, the heat waves and lack of rainfall that preceded the bush fires killed as much as 60 percent of the trees in some places. Cattle farmers culled so much of their herds during the drought that beef prices have risen more than 50 percent as they rush to restock paddocks nourished (nearly to death) by heavy rain.

Bryce Guest, a helicopter pilot in Narrabri, once watched the dust bowls grow from above. Then came “just a monstrous amount of rain,” he said, and new kind of job: flights to mechanical pumps pushing water from fields to irrigation dams in a last-ditch effort to preserve crops that had been heading for a record harvest.

On one recent flight, he pointed to mountains of stored grain — worth six figures, at least — that were ruined by the rains, with heavy equipment trapped and rusting next to it. Further inland, a home surrounded by levees had become a small island accessible only by boat or copter.

“Australia is all about water — everything revolves around it,” he said. “Where you put your home, your stock. Everything.”

Stacks of stored grain damaged by flooding.
Stacks of stored grain damaged by flooding.

The flood plains in what is known as the Murray-Darling basin stretch out for hundreds of miles, not unlike the land at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The territory is so flat that towns can be cut off with roads flooded by less than an inch of additional rain.

That happened a few weeks ago in Bedgerabong, a few hundred miles south of Narrabri. On a recent afternoon, a couple of teachers were being driven out of town in a hulking fire truck — equipment for one disaster often serves another. Across a flooded road behind them, three other teachers had decided to camp out so they could provide some consistency for children who had already been kept out of school for months by pandemic lockdowns.

Paul Faulkner, 55, the principal of the school (total enrollment: 42), said that many parents craved social connection for their children. The Red Cross has sent in booklets for those struggling with stress and anxiety.

“Covid has kept everyone from their families,” he said. “This just isolates them even more.”

He admitted that there were a few things they did not discuss; Santa, for one. The town is expected to be cut off until after the holidays as the waters that rose with surging rains over a few days take weeks to drain and fade.

Children in the area have been kept out of school for months, first by pandemic lockdowns and now by the floods.
Children in the area have been kept out of school for months, first by pandemic lockdowns and now by the floods.



A flock of sheep on a small patch of land surrounded by floodwaters. Cattle farmers, too, have been affected by the drought and the heavy rain.
A flock of sheep on a small patch of land surrounded by floodwaters. Cattle farmers, too, have been affected by the drought and the heavy rain.



The view from Ms. Southwell’s kitchen out onto her flooded yard.
The view from Ms. Southwell’s kitchen out onto her flooded yard.



In Wee Waa, where the water has started to recede, supplies and people flowed in and out last week by helicopter and in a small boat piloted by volunteers.

Still, there were shortages everywhere — mostly of people. In a community of around 2,000 people, half of the teachers at the local public school couldn’t make it to work.

At the town’s only pharmacy, Tien On, the owner, struggled with a short-handed staff to keep up with requests. He was especially concerned about delayed drug deliveries by helicopter for patients with mental health medications.

Ms. Southwell, 69, was better prepared than most. She spent 25 years volunteering with emergency services and has been teaching first aid for decades. After a quick trip into Wee Waa by boat, she returned to her home with groceries and patience, checking a shed for the stray cats she feeds and discovering that only one of her chickens appeared to have drowned.

She said she wasn’t sure how much climate change could be blamed for the floods; her father had put their house on higher stilts because they knew the waters would rise on occasion.

All she knew was that more extreme weather and severe challenges to the community would be coming their way.

“The worst part of it is the waiting,” she said. “And the cleanup.”

Destroyed crops on flooded farmland between Narrabri and Wee Waa.
Destroyed crops on flooded farmland between Narrabri and Wee Waa.

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