Angry Summer Downunder Sparks Disinformation and Spin March 4, 2013

ABC News:

Climate Commission chief Professor Tim Flannery says that while Australia may have always been a land of drought and flooding rains, the nation is now experiencing a “climate on steroids”. “I think one of the best ways of thinking about it is imagining that the baseline has shifted,” he said. “If an athlete takes steroids for example… their baseline shifts, they’ll do fewer slow times and many more record-breaking fast times. “The same thing is happening with our climate system. As it warms up, we’re getting fewer cold days and cold events and many more record hot events. In effect, it’s a climate on steroids.”

Climate Central:

..the summer was remarkable in almost every respect, as the Australian continent smashed records for heat intensity, geographic scope, and duration. Moreover, the heat continued a recent trend toward much warmer summers in Australia, and climate models show that, depending on global emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases, Australia’s summer of 2012-2013 could be the norm by the 2040s, the BOM said. The record warm summer adding another data point to a spate of recent extreme heat events that some scientists say are becoming more common as a result of manmade emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. A 2012 study by NASA scientist James Hansen and others found that a new category of extremely hot summers, such as events that occurred in Russia in 2010 and Texas in 2011, has become far more common than would ever have happened without global warming. Here are some of the sizzling data points: The average summer temperature for Australia was 83.5°F (28.6°C), which was about 2°F (1.1°C) above average. That exceeded the previous record, set during the summer of 1997-98, by about 0.2°F.

A new national daytime maximum temperature record was set at 96.3°F (35.7°C).

The highest temperature recorded during the January heatwave was at Moomba, in South Australia, with a high of 121°F (49.6°C). All-time record high temperatures were also set in Sydney and Hobart. The temperature in Sydney climbed to a stifling 114.4°F on Jan. 18.

A record was set for the number of consecutive days when the average daily high temperature for Australia exceeded 102°F (about 39°C), with seven such days between January 2-8. The previous record was four days in 1973, according to BOM data.

January was Australia’s hottest month since recordkeeping began in 1910.

At one point during the January heat wave, meteorologists had to add a new color to the weather map as temperatures climbed off the standard charts. The summer heat wasn’t confined to the Australian continent, either. Southern Hemisphere land areas had their hottest months of December and January on record, as parts of Africa and South America also saw above-average temperatures.

Naturally, Aussie climate deniers have gone on the offensive, once again, against reality.

News.com.au:

AUSTRALIA’S summer may have been the hottest on record but it’s the long-term trends that matter, not figures for one season, opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt says. After all, over the same period Russia, China and the United States shivered through their coldest weather on record, he says.

Graham Readfern: