Month: February 2020

Daily News 3 Feb 2020

Australian bushfire season 2019-2020 – Severity, reasons and conclusions

Guest essay by Pasi Autio 2.2.2020

The Australian bushfire season of 2019-2020 is now the climate topic of the year – the severe bushfire season has caused more than 2000 houses to burn in the state of New South Wales (NSW) alone. At least 34 people have died and likely over 1 billion mammals, birds and reptiles has been lost (1).

According to wikipedia pages for the 2019-2020 bushfire season (2) 18.9 million hectares of land has been burned as of 14^h of January. This sounds severe, but how large is the amount of burned land when comparing to the earlier seasons?

Annual burned area in Australia

There are sources to place this bushfire season in the context like the study by Giglio at al 2013 (3). The paper describes a fourth generation Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED4). This data set combines satellite records like the 500m MODIS burned area maps with active fire data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) and the Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) family of sensors. The paper also provides burned area data for Australia and New Zealand (combined) for the years 1997-2011.

Luckily Louis Giglio and his team have continued to work and have created excellent source of all burned area and fire-based emissions datasets.MODIS Collection 6 (C6) MCD64A1 burned area dataset (4) provides satellite-based burned area data for all continents – and also for Australia.

The data is available at globalfiredata.org with a great analysis tool available in the same address. Currently the dataset provides burned area data for the years 1997-2016. It’s possible to select a continent or country and choose several options about the source data from emissions to burned area (among others).

Let’s start with burned area data for Australia:

clip_image002

Figure: Annual burned area in millions of hectares

Figure provides the total burned area for each year between 1997 and 2016 in millions of hectares. Area burned every year was between 18.2 million hectares (2010) and 94.6 million hectares (2001). On average, the area burned during this time period was 52.9 million hectares. Since there is 769 million hectares of land in Australia, the area burned between 1997 and 2016 was 2.4 – 12.3 % of total land area – every year.

These figures seem very high but satellite mapping shows which areas were burnt in which year. Let take year 2001 as an example.

clip_image003

Figure: Burned area in Australia for the year 2001

The color of each grid cell presents the percentage of area burned within this grid cell. As we can see the majority of fires are happening within the Australian northern and western territories. But overall, the fires can happen everywhere with the exception of desert in the middle. The reason for lack of fires in the desert is of course obvious: area’s like the Simpson desert have plenty of heat, but little to burn. But if there is sufficient fuel load to burn, the fire seems to be likely at some point.

Thus the area burned so far during the bushfire season 2019-2020 in easy to place in the context: the burned area during this season as quoted by several sources is ~20% of average area burned in Australia annually. It is likely that the quoted area is too low, since the fires in many remote areas are not reported and can be properly identified only with means of satellite observations. The real burned area during this season will eventually be available through satellite burned area datasets.

Most of the burned land areas are shrublands, woodlands and open forests. Forests fires happen mostly within eucalyptus forests (Australia’s northern and eastern shore).

The burned area data provides the details of area being burned in total whether it is forest, non-forest and whether the fire was planned (prescriptive burns) or non-planned. But how about the forests specifically?

Forest fires in Australia

There is another source, which provides a lot of details for forest fires specifically. Australia government’s department of Agriculture provides the “Australia’s State of the Forests Report” for every five year period. The latest one has been published in 2018 (5) and covers years 2011-2016.

This report provides lots of details about forest fires in Australia starting with annual forest fires for seasons 2011-2012 to 2015-2016.

clip_image004

Figure: Annual planned and unplanned area of forest fires in Australia – millions of hectares

Unplanned forest fires where between 8.9 million hectares (season 2013-2014) and 21.2 million hectares (2012-2013). In addition the area burned due the planned (prescriptive) burns was between 6.2 million hectares (season 2013-2014) and 8.2 million hectares (season 2011-2012). Also we can see that this data correlates well with the satellite burned area dataset.

Earlier versions of these reports provides similar figures; for example the year 2008 version of this report says that the estimated area of forest burnt in the period from 2001 to 2006 was 24.7 million hectares; an estimated 20.0 million hectares was burnt in unplanned fires and 4.7 million hectares was burnt in planned fires. In average 15.7% of the Australian forest land burned every year. According to the latest report, the total area of forest in Australia burnt one or more times during the period 2011–12 to 2015–16 was 55 million hectares (41% of Australia’s total forest area) (5). Some forests had at least one fire per year during five different years between 2011 and 2016. Thus, forest was in fire every year.

That is a lot of forest fires in one country. You would imagine that after all these fires there are no forests left in Australia. But there is and according to the “State of forests” report, the area of forest has even increased slightly between 1990 and 2016.

Most of the forested ecosystems in Australia are ecologically adapted to fire and even require it for regeneration. Eucalyptus trees – for example – do not just resist fire, they actively encourage it. Eucalyptus leaves don’t decompose and are highly flammable. Some species for these trees hold their seeds inside small capsules until the fire happens. Fire triggers massive drop of seeds to the ground cleaned by the forest fire (6). Due to the flammable materials generated by Eucalyptus trees, the forest fire in Eucalyptus forest is inevitable sooner or later. Sooner it happens, more controlled the fire is and less harm it will generate to the trees and animals. Avoiding fires too long is clearly not a good idea, but since uncontrolled fires are no good either, there are lots of planned (prescriptive burns) in Australia. Prescriptive burns are the only way of managing the volume of burnable biomass in Australian forests, since removing biomass mechanically is in most cases too labor intensive alternative.

In summary, the Australian bushfire season 2019-2020 overall – despite of all the harm it has caused to lives – both for humans and animals – has not been exceptional on country level. It has not been one of the worst seasons in any metric e.g. not based on area of burned land, burned forests or lost lives.

But there is something special happening in New South Wales in particular.

Fires in New South Wales

Almost all the publicity regarding the 2019-2020 bushfire season in Australia has been related to the fires in New South Wales. And indeed, based on MODIS fire count data from globalfiredata.org there is something extraordinary going in in south-east Australia – especially in New South Wales, where the number of fires detected is about four times higher than in previous records.

clip_image006

Figure: Eastern Australia fire counts (7)

Why the fires are so intense especially in New South Wales?

Positive Indian Ocean Dipole event

Incidentally there is an exceptional natural event going on. An exceptionally positive Indian Ocean Dipole (8) is currently ongoing (9) and has caused severe weather not only in Australia, but in Africa too (10). The event among the strongest in 60 years (12).

Why is this relevant to the extreme fires in south-east Australia? According to the study Cai et al 2009 (11) there is a systematic linkage between positive Indian Dipole events and severe fires in southeast Australia. Almost half of most severe fires have occurred during pIOD.

Some of the studies have tried to link pIOD to the Climate Change, but so far the climate model’s ability to predict the pIOD has been less than optimal (13).

Lack of sufficient prescribed burning

According to studies, the hazardous level of fuel loads can occur within 2 to 4 years from the low intensity prescribed burning in southeast Australia (14). But the prescribed burning practices are not popular among locals. The smoke from the hazard reduction burns is a nuisance and health issue itself (15).

New South Wales has about 20 million hectares of forests and the current level of prescribed burning is ~ 200000 hectares annually. This level of prescribed burning will do little to reduce the risks of catastrophic bushfires.

But one thing is sure: the debate about the right level of prescribed burning will continue (16).

Summary

All-in-all the bushfire season in Australia is not abnormal
Consider Australia to be a continent of fire
Most ecosystems in Australia are ecologically adapted to the fire and will even require it
The only way to manage the fire hazards in Australia is to manage the fuel loads
Natural Indian Ocean Dipole events (and ENSO events) have and will have the effect on droughts in Australia
Hazardous volume of fuel loads together with abnormally positive Indian Ocean dipole and the associated drought is the prime reason for extreme bushfire season in southeast Australia and especially in New South Wales during this season

Further reading

Australia’s state of forests report 1998 provides a lot of background information about the forests and forest fires in Australia in the past.

REFERENCES

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/07/record-breaking-49m-hectares-of-land-burned-in-nsw-this-bushfire-season
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bushfire_season
Giglio, L., J. T. Randerson, and G. R. van der Werf (2013), Analysis of daily, monthly, and annual burned area using the fourth-generation global fire emissions database (GFED4),J. Geophys. Res. Biogeosci.,118, 317–328, doi:10.1002/jgrg.20042.
Giglio, L., Boschetti, L., Roy, D.P., Humber, M.L., Justice, C.O., 2018. The collection 6 MODIS burned area mapping algorithm and product. Remote Sens. Environ. 217,72–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2018.08.005.
Australia’s State of the Forests Report 2018; https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/forestsaustralia/sofr
https://wildfiretoday.com/2014/03/03/eucalyptus-and-fire/
2019-2020 Australian bushfire season; image credit globalfiredata.org; image and all other images used with https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/iod/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-16/positive-indian-ocean-dipole-bad-news-for-drought-crippled-areas/11120566
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50602971
Cai, W., Cowan, T., & Raupach, M. (2009). Positive Indian Ocean dipole events precondition southeast Australia bushfires. Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L19710. https://doi.org/10.1029/2009GL039902
https://www.severe-weather.eu/news/unusually-strong-indian-ocean-dipole-australia-europe-fa/
Cai, W., and T. Cowan, 2013: Why is the amplitude of the Indian Ocean dipole overly large in CMIP3 and CMIP5 climate models? Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 1200–1205, https://doi.org/10.1002/grl.5020
Morrison et al 1996, Conservation conflicts over burning bush in south-eastern Australiahttps://doi.org/10.1016/0006-3207(95)00098-4
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-08/nsw-fires-rfs-commissioner-weights-in-on-hazard-reduction-debate/11850862
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-20/hazard-reduction-burns-bushfires/11817336

via Watts Up With That?

https://ift.tt/2u707Dd

February 3, 2020 at 05:01PM

Daily News 3 Feb 2020

Worst flooding in Brazil in 120 years

Collapsed bridges. Damaged roads. Over 100 cities across the three states declare a state of emergency. At least 70 dead. Video shows cars being swept down the streets: https://globoplay.globo.com/v/8277638/

“In the Southern Hemisphere Brazil is experiencing one of the rainiest Januaries ever, says reader Luciano de Souza. One of the most affected cities, Belo Horizonte, had the worse rain of its 120 years when in just three hours the water expected from two weeks fell from the sky.”

Since 17 January 2020, heavy rainstorms in the Southeast Region of Brazil have caused widespread flooding and landslides in the states of Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro.

The state capital of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, reported its the highest rainfall in over 110 years. As of 30 January 2020, at least 70 people have died with 18 still missing, and an estimated 30,000 to 46,500 people have been displaced from their homes.

In the state of Minas Gerais, more than 15,000 people were evacuated as a result of the heavy rain and subsequent flooding. 10,000 people were evacuated from Espirito Santo along with 6,000 people from Rio de Janeiro. There are concerns that the city of Belo Horizonte could see up to 10.2 cm (4 inches) of rainfall. Flooding in the city was reported on 29 January and led to the collapse of the roof of a mall.

Over 100 cities across the three states declared a state of emergency

Reports emerged of several collapsed bridges and damaged roads in rural parts of Minas Gerais. Over 100 cities across the three states declared a state of emergency. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro announced the deployment of the Brazilian Armed Forces to the affected regions. Governor of Minas Gerais Romeu Zema stated that the hardest-hit areas were in areas where “people lived in informal and precarious housing”. The Brazilian federal government allocated $20 million for relief efforts in the affected regions while the state government of Minas Gerais allocated up to $80 million. Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer.[12] The town of Sabará established vaccination points against Hepatitis A and tetanus in the city, which was heavily hit by the flooding.

Heavy rainfall is expected to continue into February and spread towards parts of neighbouring Paraguay. The southern Brazilian regions of Paraná, São Paulo and Mato Grosso do Sul are expected to see the highest risks of flooding.

https://ift.tt/2GOrnJ5

Thanks to Luciano de Souza for this info

The post Worst flooding in Brazil in 120 years appeared first on Ice Age Now.

via Ice Age Now

https://ift.tt/2RXU8d3

February 3, 2020 at 02:36PM

Daily News 3 Feb 2020

BBC Springwatch Demand Societal Change

By Paul Homewood

h/t stewgreen

BBC Springwatch has long given up any pretence of objectivity. Now they are openly campaigning for societal change:

https://twitter.com/BBCSpringwatch/status/1223362042423336961

It seems that the commenters don’t agree!

This was my favourite:

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

https://ift.tt/38Wg2D0

February 3, 2020 at 12:57PM

Daily News 3 Feb 2020

Met Office Study: Rejoice! Scorching Scottish Summers To Become ‘The Norm’ By 2050

If you thought all those ugly wind turbines littering the Scottish Highlands and providing so much ‘clean’ energy at times that they have to be switched off would save the misty glens and wild snow-capped peaks from Thermageddon, think again. Experts from the Met Office, University of Edinburgh and Oxford University say that hot, dry summers like 2018 are to become ‘the norm’ by 2050 and will happen every year by the end of the 21st century. So much for ‘clean energy’ then. Just when the Scots were hoping that they had done enough to guarantee long, wet, cold, miserable windswept summers in perpetuity, they learn that all their efforts are in vain. Good news for Aussies though – it means that they don’t need to abandon coal to stop heatwaves and bushfires after all!

The Scottish summer heatwave of 2018 was part of the more extensive early summer heatwave which occurred over northern Europe generally at the time and which was also attributed to climate change in a study which was – to say the least – somewhat unconvincing.

You might be forgiven for thinking that hot, dry Scottish summers doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, but think again. For a start, foreign holiday firms will go out of business as people opt more and more for staycations and avoid jetting off to the Med and other far off exotic places, thereby not belching tons of planet destroying CO2 into the atmosphere . . . . . yep, the authors actually list this as a negative impact!

The researchers say the warm weather led to an increase in “staycations” and boosted sales of garden furniture, fans and ice cream.

But they found there were a series of negative impacts which may have been under-reported at the time. They include:

- Foreign holiday operators and indoor recreation businesses suffered
- Fashion retailers reported a drop in profits due to lower sales of coats and jumpers
- An increase in pests like wasps, jellyfish and mosquitoes
- Lower yields of peas, broccoli, potatoes and cauliflower due to water shortages and pests
- A 30% increase in water demand, putting pressure on the utility company

It’s all because of man-made climate change of course, which is why Boris is banning petrol and diesel cars in 2035 and plans to rip out gas central heating systems across the United Kingdom (assuming Scotland is part of the UK by then). Maybe that will have more success in keeping Scottish summers grim than the windmills have had.

Human influences had made the heatwave more likely, researchers said, adding that their findings indicate the need to start sustainable long-term planning now to deal with heatwaves in Scotland induced by climate change.

Lead researcher Professor Simon Tett, of Edinburgh University’s School of GeoSciences, said: “Despite its cool climate, Scotland must start to prepare now for the impact of high-temperature extremes.

“The bottom line is that heatwaves have become more likely because of human-induced climate change.”

You wouldn’t want to question an expert’s ‘bottom line’ now, would you? Especially when he reveals his bottom in such a trusted and unbiased journalistic medium as the BBC. But, not being overly impressed by neat bums (and smart-arse experts), I thought I’d better just check the actual research paper anyway, on the off chance that not all was as it seemed, fully expecting of course said research paper to present impeccable scientific evidence to back up the claims of its authors and legitimise the BBC’s reporting of the findings of said study.

What I found was . . . . . RCP8.5. What I found was . . . . . . the Met Office’s new ‘state of the art’ ultra high climate sensitivity CMIP6 model HadGEM3-GC3.1. What I found was an unrealistic debunked worst case emissions/concentration scenario being used to drive an unrealistically sensitive climate model in order to make projections of future climate in Scotland and to attribute extreme weather events occurring during summer in that country to man-made climate change. Oh dear. Just when you thought that scientactivists and the climate alarmist media had cleaned up their act and had given up on the scare-stories being generated by the misuse of RCP8.5, amplified in the popular press. Just when you though integrity had finally returned to climate change communication. Just when you thought absolutely nothing of the sort!

The Event Attribution: 2018 Scottish Summer Heatwave

To understand whether high temperatures and temperature extremes are
important for climate change adaptation in Scotland, we place the 2018 heatwave in the context of past, present, and future climate, and provide a rapid but comprehensive impact analysis . . . . .

Anthropogenic climate change since 1850 has made all these high-temperature extremes more likely. Higher risk ratios are found for experiments from the CMIP6-generation global climate model HadGEM3-GA6 compared to those from the very-large ensemble system weather@home . . . . .

To analyse the anthropogenic contribution to the observed temperatures, we use simulations from the HadGEM3-GA6 model, which is the atmospheric component of the Met Office’s Global Environment Model version 6 (HadGEM3-A hereafter; Walters et al., 2017) . . . . . .

To assess projected changes in the likelihood of 2018 temperatures, we use the perturbed parameter ensembles (PPEs) provided by the UK Met Office as part of the UK Climate Projections 2009 and 2018 (UKCP09 and UKCP18, respectively) . . . . . .

The UKCP18 12-member PPE for 1980-2080 is based on the coupled HadGEM-GC3.1 model that uses version 7.1 of the atmospheric model (Murphy et al., 2018; Walters et al., 2019) and assumes emissions following the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 (Moss et al., 2010). The UKCP09 11-member PPE for 1950-2099 is based on the coupled HadCM3 model (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, 2008; Murphy et al., 2009) and uses the A1B scenario (Nakicenovic and Swart, 2000; Murphy et al., 2009). A1B lies between RCP4.5 and RCP 8.5 in terms of the anthropogenic radiative forcing since pre-industrial over the twenty first century, and is very close to RCP8.5 until 2050 (Collins et al., 2013) . . . . . .

3.2. How much has anthropogenic forcing changed the risk of extreme temperatures?
We performed an event attribution study using the CMIP6-generation global climate model HadGEM3-A, and compared the results with those from the very large ensemble W@H system (Fig. 2). Both models show that anthropogenic forcings and the ensuing SST warming and sea-ice reductions have made all extreme temperature indices over the NBI more likely (risk ratios >1) at the 90% confidence level over many return times. The magnitude of these risk ratios varies substantially between both models, with the estimates derived from HadGEM3-A consistently higher than those from W@H [Isn’t that amazing!] . . . . . .

Model validation is difficult since the common historical period, for which both W@H data (1986-2017) and HadGEM3-A data (1960-2013) are available, is only 24 years. This is very short, causing uncertainties in the observed distributions of temperature indices to be large. We tentatively conclude, however, that W@H has larger biases than HadGEM3-A, both in the mean (which we correct for) and the tail of the distribution (Fig. 3). This suggests that the higher risk ratios derived from HadGEM3-A might be more realistic than the lower ones from W@H . . . . .

Projections of Future Extreme Summer Weather

3.4. How likely are these temperatures in the future?

We assess the relevance of these impacts for adaptation to future climate change using the UK climate projections UKCP09 and UKCP18 . . . . .

There are substantial differences between the two projection datasets, with UKCP18
consistently showing higher likelihoods than UKCP09 from about 2040 [Again, no surprise there, as UKCP18 ensemble is based on the high sensitivity HadGEM-GC3.1 model] . . . . .

Regardless of dataset and extreme index, the projections show a substantial increase
in the likelihood of 2018 temperatures between the present day and 2050 . . . . . Towards the end of the century, every summer might have extremes as hot as in 2018; for nighttime extremes, this could be reached by 2080 . . . . .

Given the substantial increase in the likelihood of future temperature extremes
similar to the 2018 heatwave (Fig. 4), it would be wrong to suggest that Scotland should ignore extreme temperatures in its adaptation planning . . . . . Furthermore, there are many lessons to be learned from the negative impacts – and the costs of alleviating impacts – to conclude that despite its cool climate, extreme temperatures are important to consider for climate change adaptation in Scotland.

There you have it. RCP8.5 once again being used to frame climate policy, in conjuction with a CMIP6 high sensitivity climate model and the results of the research being communicated to the popular press minus any mention of caveats or uncertainties by the authors concerned or the journalists involved in writing up the story. It’s definitely still ‘business as usual’ for climate alarmism in 2020.

via Climate Scepticism

https://ift.tt/2Sd9vwR

February 3, 2020 at 12:21PM