Heat Waves In Australia Are Getting More Frequent, and Hotter

vikingpower writes "In a landmark report on bushfires and climate change (PDF), the Australian Climate Council concludes that heat waves in Australia, as driven by climate change, are becoming more frequent — and that they get hotter. 'It is crucial that communities, emergency services, health services and other authorities prepare for the increasing severity and frequency of extreme fire conditions,' says the Council in the report. Sarah Perkins, one of the report's co-authors, was interviewed by The Guardian Australia. '"While we can't blame climate change for any one event, we can certainly see its fingerprint. This is another link in the chain." Perkins said her latest work had analyzed heatwave trends up to 2013. She said the trend "just gets worse – it's a bit scary really."' In 2009, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization signaled that a Southeast Australian heatwave was the hottest in 100 years."

Comments

well the good news.

[nimbius]

given their natural habitat and evolutionary traits, this means its only a matter of time until those ferocious Drop Bears go extinct. the bad news of course is that we can no longer use the drop bear as an excuse for americans to choose New Zealand as their holiday destination.
Granted its also important to note that should americans agree to reduce their carbon footprint and sign the damn kyoto treaty, we wont have to resort to shipping drop bears to safer climates in the states.

A Third Possibility

[DruidWheresMyCar]

It's possible that both the AGW deniers and AGW alarmists are wrong. Climate change could be real, but caused by natural factors that are out of our control, the same ones that have caused ice ages and warm periods in the past when carbon outputs were nowhere near as high as they are now. But that theory would cause people to stop paying their taxes and mortgages and move to the tropics, so we can't have that.

Re:Quick!

[TWiTfan]

I'll buy one, but only if I can act all smug to my friends who still drive gasoline-powered cars, especially hybrids. I'm already practicing saying "Well, I guess driving a hybrid is okayyyy....I mean if you're not ready to go all the way and REALLY help."

Re:Pshaw... it's just weather!

[PRMan]

Yeah, let's measure "global warming" in the Antarctic. Wait? What's that? The ships got frozen?

Well, we need to prove that the earth is warming up so let's get a rescue ship down there so that the researchers can start proving global warming. What's that? The rescue ship got stuck in the ice?

Re:Localized Global Warming?

[PRMan]

It's already been proven that the global average temperature has dropped for about 15 years now.

Re:Hottest in 100 years = cooling down

[hamburger lady]

exactly! a few billion years ago the planet was a super-hot ball of molten rock. therefore it's been way hotter in the past.