Page 1241 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 11 April 2018
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been more apparent. From 2013 to 2017 the world experienced the hottest five-year period ever recorded. Globally, 2017 was the third hottest year recorded and the hottest year when the temperature was not boosted by an El Nino event.
Australia followed the global lead, with 2017 being the third hottest year on record. An angry summer of 2016-17 broke more than 205 climate records across the nation. Throughout winter 2017 more than 260 heat and low rainfall records fell. Oceans around Australia experienced breaking heatwaves, resulting in high sea surface temperatures. Canberra did not break from the wider trend. In 2017 it experienced its hottest summer on record for daytime temperatures. 2017 was also distinguishable for Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions increasing by 1.1 per cent, to 531.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. This is nothing to be proud of. Increasing heat and the extreme weather events it leads to are having a devastating effect globally, nationally and locally.
The so-called “beast from the east” is an example of how global weather patterns can influence our weather regionally and locally. Earlier this year the UK experienced temperatures about seven degrees Celsius below the historical average at that time of year. At this time of year the UK would usually be experiencing the northern polar jet stream, which produces the prevailing westerly and south-westerly winds drawn from the relatively warm Atlantic.
It is estimated that 48 people throughout Europe died as a result of the freezing conditions. While this was happening, temperatures in the Arctic were 10 to 20 degrees above normal. The North Pole was thawing in midwinter and Canada’s northern-most permanently inhabited place, about 800 kilometres from the North Pole, was experiencing temperatures 10 to 12 degrees warmer than normal.
These two events are not isolated from one another. In fact, they are both the result of a sudden stratospheric warming where so much warm air enters the Arctic that the extremely cold air usually entrapped over the North Pole is displaced. What caused the stratospheric Arctic warming to occur? A month earlier, a series of thunderstorms as large and as strong as have ever been recorded created an atmospheric disturbance across the region. The storms caused waves of high and low pressure cells that spread across the atmosphere. These waves interrupted the vortex of winds around the North Pole and caused the sudden stratospheric warming event in early February. In turn, the area of thunderstorms resulted in Cyclone Gita, which caused damage in Tonga and Samoa and even led to stormy weather across the ditch in New Zealand.
These events illustrate the inter-relatedness of the climate across regions and how global weather events can interfere with the delicate balance of local weather patterns. While our understanding of sudden stratospheric warming is only in its infancy, there is research which suggests that these events are becoming more frequent. There is clear evidence to suggest that extreme weather events like storms and cyclones are becoming more common and more severe.
The interconnectedness of the global climate means that we cannot and will not escape the impacts of climate change. Australia cannot hide behind our relative population size, as though this excludes us from action. To argue that Australia’s
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