Australia’s ‘angry summer’ linked to climate change
Heat wave in 2013 impossible without human influence, according to new report
Australia’s scorching heat wave of 2013, which triggered fierce bushfires and broke more than 100 temperature-related records, including one for the country’s hottest day ever recorded, would have been virtually impossible without climate change, a new report says.
“The evidence on the link between climate change and extreme heat is stronger than ever and, in fact, is overwhelming,” said the report, adding “there is a ‘calculable’ human influence on the record hot summer of 2012-2013.”
It also pointed out that the number of record hot days in Australia has increased strongly since 1950 and particularly sharply in the last two decades.
The heat wave of 2013 — which later came to be known as the “angry summer” — would not have happened if it hadn’t been for climate change, Will Steffen, a climate expert and author of the report, told The Australian Associated Press.
(Steffen is a member of the Climate Council, an independent, crowdfunded Australian agency that is headed by well-known climate activist Tim Flannery.)
Australia experienced its hottest day, month, season and even hottest calendar year in 2013, registering a mean temperature 1.2 C above the 1961-90 average. The report, titled “Quantifying the Strong Influence of Climate Change on Extreme Heat in Australia,” said that recent studies show these heat events would have occurred only once every 12,300 years without greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.
The characteristics of the country’s heat waves have also changed from 1950 to 2013, the report said: they have become hotter and are lasting longer. They are also occurring more often and starting earlier.
Taking data from various studies, Steffen’s report broke down what the heat wave has meant for different Australian cities:
In Sydney, Australia’s most populated city, heat waves now start 19 days earlier.
In Canberra, the number of heatwave days has more than doubled.
In Hobart, heat-wave days start 12 days earlier.
In Melbourne, the hottest heatwave day is 2 C hotter and the heat wave now starts about17 days earlier.
In Adelaide, the hottest heat-wave day is 4.3 C hotter and the number of heat-wave days has almost doubled.
The 2013 Australian heat wave made headlines all over the world but it was the Holmes family’s ordeal in early January that went viral and captured the consequences of the unrelenting heat wave. Tim and Tammy Holmes were babysitting their five grandchildren in the small Tasmanian fishing town of Dunalley when a wildfire engulfed the town. According to multiple reports, there was no escape for the family, so they ran for the water.
Tim took a photograph of the family cowering in the water, with a wall of flames behind them.
The Climate Council report said that new research strengthens the case for strong action on climate change. In his blog, Steffen wrote that “carbon emissions must be reduced rapidly and deeply if the worst of extreme heat in the second half of the century is to be avoided.”
Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott — who famously called the climate-change argument “absolute crap” in 2009 — survived a leadership challenge from his party on Monday.