The wild, wet weather across southern Australia this spring is a consequence of an unusually strong temperature gradient, especially evident in the following chart as warm water to the north of Australia (especially in the Timor and Arafura Seas), and the cold waters off the southwest of Australia.
Thanks to NOAA, http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/clim/sst.shtml
Former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre, Bill Kininmonth, recently emailed me:
The warm water has increased the supply of moisture feeding into the airflow over Australia. The moisture increases by nearly 7 percent with each degree C temperature rise. The cold water to the south and west of Australia tightens the temperature gradient and increases the potential for storm development (technically it is called increasing baroclinic instability). It is normal to have a period of tightening temperature gradient during spring time – the nearby ocean and land of southern Australia are cold after winter but the approach of summer is warming ocean and water of north Australia. Because of this annual tightening of the gradient, spring is the wettest period with often strong storms over southeast Australia. This year has been particularly wet and stormy because of the pattern of sea surface temperature anomalies. It is not climate change.
As the oceans have a critical influence on land temperatures, this same pattern is evident in the surface temperature data for Western Australia. While Perth has had its coldest September on record, it’s actually been very warm in the north of the state.
A colleague has plotted the following fascinating chart which shows a running yearly average of mean temperatures from 180 sites as recorded by the WA Agriculture Department.
Thanks to a friend and colleague, who wishes to remain anonymous
The top line is Kununurra, in the far north, showing temperatures are still rising. The next line is Carnarvon. The great mass of lines are the southwest corner of WA from just north of Geraldton to east of Esperance and these show temperatures are all falling. The coldest lines are at elevated places like Mt Barker. The brown line starting around 2008, and at 16.7C, is South Perth.
There is a remarkable consistency about the southwest corner where the coolest 12 months ended in mid-2006 and the average then climbed around 2.5C to a peak in late 2014 and has dropped by a little over 1C since then.
So what happens next?
The water to the far northwest is very warm as can be seen by the rise in Kununurra surface temperatures, and the orange in the NOAA sea surface temperature map. The Leeuwin current that brings the warm water down the coast is normally weakest in the summer months and strongest over the autumn and winter.
Hmmm?
This comment above by CJ is bordering on sensible.
I would however be interested in CJ's definition of both 'non expert' & 'expert'????
But I do agree that 'political purpose/s probably has more to do with most of NRM policy than anything to do with practical management.
This article by Jennifer and the 'apparently' supporting info from Bill Kininmonth, is very interesting because it exemplifies a highly-misleading rhetorical practice that is effective, frequently used, but not easily recognized by the public–and hence all the more damaging.
This is known as “paltering” and the term was popularized by Frederick Schauer and Richard Zeckhauser in 2009 and refers to “fudging, twisting, shading, bending, stretching, slanting, exaggerating, distorting, whitewashing, and selective reporting.”
A successful palterer will try to avoid being untruthful in each of his/her utterances, but will nonetheless put together a highly misleading picture based on selective reporting, half-truths, and errors of omission. As the commenters have pointed out, this is the case here.
Unfortunately, paltering is difficult for non-experts to detect and the best defense against it is to know who engages in it and for what political purpose.
Mack, I think you are on to something. Your list is a pretty good start.
...and in Europe its back to the 1960s.
http://www.climatedepot.com/2016/10/10/europeans-brace-for-coldest-winter-in-a-century/
To answer my own question, BoM's supercomputers say its going to be cooler and wetter.
'Strong chance of above average October to December rainfall in southeast and northwest Australia.
'Cooler days and nights are likely for much of the country for the October to December period.'
@ Confused Jane
"What do you like to see happen?"
That's a fair enough question. You can understand that total sceptics like myself are up against the entire establishment ,schools, universities, media, (and I mean of all description, books, magazines, science journals, radio, TV news, TV documentaries etc) all blathering on about "climate change".for the last 40 yrs or so.
So the first thing I would like to see would be the removal from the school curriculum of this fear-mongering piece of crap science.
The second thing I would like is to see a politician ( better...a group of politicians) with the balls to stand up and say (better still, to chant in unison), AGW is bollocks. You're lucky you've got Senator Malcolm Roberts.
I want to see the IPCC disbanded and an end to all these conference junkets. I want to see the enormous waste of money going into "climate change" research stopped
I would like to see the EPA revert back to its original task.ie to protect against environmental pollution.
Also the shutting down of old coal fired stations..to be up graded to the cleanist burning possible.
I'd like to not see so many bird-chopping.wind-mills visually polluting scenic landscapes.
That's about all I can think of, for the moment.
'...the overwhelming consensus rather than the minority view?'
You're mixing your memes, focus on the science because nothing else matters at this point in time.
Are you aware that regional cooling has begun?
'Empirical evidence for this belief is where exactly?'
The plateau in temperatures for a couple of decades adds weight to the argument that CO2 does not cause global warming.
"So in a world where 97% of all scientists agree on the consensus"
A bit loose with facts there Jane.
The claim was that 97% of 'climate' scientists agree, not ALL scientists.
(And no real definition of what qualifies as a 'climate' scientist?)
And even that tosh has been totally debunked - the real result was something like 79 opt-in respondents out of 90 or so agreed with a vague proposition about agw. The survey started with around 3,000 prospects, but culled down to a lamentable number because they couldn't be classified as agreeing.
So in a world where 97% of all scientists agree on the consensus there is no such thing as any “greenhouse effect”, where CO2 and land clearing is not a problem, where there is no global warming beyond natural variation, and no more anti-CSG shut the gate protests, what do you want to see happen?
What will this world look like after you represented the overwhelming consensus rather than the minority view?