WeatherNation Chief Meteorologist Paul Douglas reviews past year’s amazing string of extreme weather events:
Proof once again that the weather is apolitical:
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Previous in TP Climate Progress
Climat Change looks like this…
‘The Seeds Are Being Planted For The Destruction Of The House Republican Majority’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/joe-scarborough-seeds-planted-destruction-house-republican-majoirty_n_2402551.html
Paul, we live with hope. The Morning Joe piece is worth book marking.
The clip show what we can expect as societies start to crumble under the pressure of GW and resource depletion. The greed of the ruling 1% is sacrificing everything.
If you add up the stresses, the climate stability collapse, the myriad other ecological crises, the various resource depletion crises, the economic implosion and mass immiseration caused by growing inequality and the geopolitical crises linked to Western decay, you get a recipe for intractable chaos. Every one is the fruit of global Rightwing dominance, and market capitalism working only for the 1%, the 0.01% in particular. The revolt will come swiftly, once people realise that ‘business as usual’ equals global genocide, and, reform of capitalism being impossible, it is now our only hope.
Met Office confirms 2012 as England’s wettest year on record, UK’s 2nd wettest, and more rain falling in heavy downpours.This adds to a high frequency of wet years since 2000 in the UK – with four of the top five wettest years occurring since then:
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/statistics-for-december-and-2012-is-the-uk-getting-wetter/
“Rainfall has increased in recent decades over many parts of the northern hemisphere and we’re seeing rain falling in heavier bursts,” said Prof Nigel Arnell, at the University of Reading. “The sort of wet winters we currently see over northern Europe just once every 20 years could happen almost every other year by the end of the century, but curbs on global greenhouse gas emissions could significantly reduce the expected increase in flood risk.”
Talking of the ‘end of the century’ is ludicrous. It puts the problem out of mind in the never-never when most of us will be dead, thereby contributing to the ‘soft denialism’ problem, and, at the rate we are going, civilization will not persist long after 2050 in any case.
But it won’t get worse if we just limit warming to 2 degrees, right? We will be able to stop the summer melting of the Arctic if we limit warming to 2 degrees, right? It will all be OK if we limit warming to 2 degrees, right? Because that is what the “negotiators” are telling us. That is the hoped for, best case scenario. We have been told repeatedly that if we act soon we can have that wonderful 2 degrees of warming future. So, if that is the best case if we achieve a global agreement and aggressively end fossil fuel use, I want someone to explain to me how future climate disruption will be better than what we have seen so far. And, if future climate disruption will not be better than what we have seen, and if we will still ensure an ice free Arctic in the summer that will still lead to feed backs and even more warming…Then lets embrace this past year and celebrate how it is better that what we will get in the future, NO MATTER WHAT!
Great comment. A decade from now we can look back at 2012 and be thankful it was not such a bad weather year. Pathetic comes to mind. Other thoughts are not repeatable here.
If the climate modelers choose not to include positive feedback mechanisms in their integrated models, how can we conclude one way or another whether the present 0.8 C increase will lead to feedback-driven runaway temperatures?
And yet we keep pumping more and more energy into the climate system.
Paul Douglas…simply the best.
Looks like Australia is off to a flying start in 2013 with extreme heat in the south and “catastrophic” fire warnings current in South Australia. Yesterday Eucla recorded over 48C (118F). Eucla is a tiny settlement situated right on the Great Southern Ocean. Hobart in southern Tasmania, recorded 41.3C (106.3F) today, an all time record.
Hopefully there will not be a repeat of the 2009 tragedy.
Tasmania in Australia has had its hottest day ever recorded 40 degrees + and climbing. Australia has Melbourne, Adelaide and Tasmania having consecutive 40+ days and extreme fire danger. If people don’t believe in climate change they never will.
Hobart ended up getting 41.3 and there are fires everywhere with some property losses but no lives. Boats are going over to the peninsular to get the evacuated off the beach. But get this- parts of northern SA recorded 50+, ME
Do you have a citation on that, ME? I read some reports that they were anticipating that the previous Australian record of 50.7 (iirc) would be broken, but none saying that temperatures had in fact reached that level yet.
Of course, many local records are being broken or matched.
Tasmania has had “catastrophic” fire danger levels and out-of-control bush fires.
This all bodes ill for the rest of us for the rest of the year, imvho.
2013–hmmm, maybe not going to be a very lucky one (unless you’re a drought, heat wave, or brush fire).
I heard it on ABC24 but they are measures from some of the big stations (ranches?) out there – not too many offical BOM recording sites in those areas, ME
Not quite what you are asking for, but here is the maximum temperature map from the BOM for Jan 3 2011. Jan 4th not yet available.
http://www.bom.gov.au/web03/ncc/www/awap/temperature/maxave/daily/colour/latest.pdf
Very hot.
Thanks, ME and q. On your map, q, they don’t even have a color for over 50 degrees! In that vast area that is above 45, I think it is safe to guess that there are some temps in the 50+ range.
Definitely bodes ill for the rest of us heading into a likely hotter-than-ever year.