Australia and Climate Change

Australia ranked in the bottom 3, of 56 countries when it comes to upholding Paris Agreement COP 21 pledges.  My distaste for the Australian Government's climate change policy is quite profound, this was taken even further when I came across a popular science piece in The Sydney Morning Herald   . The article outlines the findings of a report compiled by a panel of international climate analysts, who have categorized the uptake of initiatives and steps taken to uphold the pledges of the COP 21 Paris agreement, of each country. Australia was ranked 57th among countries analysed (spots 1-3 were void as no country was deemed to be doing enough to be in the top 3). This places Australia even below the USA, under renowned climate activist, Donald Trump. The full report  goes into more detail, describing key facets of climate policy and ranking them on a scale of very low performing - very high performing. The components of the CCPI (shown in figure 1) were Climate polic...

A news story was published in mid 2017, the headline was " State and Federal Governments in talks over drought relief for WA farmers "  The story detailed the drought conditions being experience in parts of the WA wheatbelt region (historically Australia's most reliable wheat growing region). I wanted to briefly explore this story some more. The majority of the rainfall in SW Western Australia occurs during the winter months of June, July and August, with much less through the summer months. The winter rainfall through Western Australia has decreased by 20%  since 1960. This reduction in rainfall has led to a 40% drop in level of influx of rainfall into dams. Figure 1 shows the measured reduction in rainfall from the period of 1925 - 1975 to 1975 - 2003, in Southwest WA. Figure 1. Measured monthly rainfall for southwest WA for before and after 1975.  The mechanisms which have resulted in this decrease in rainfall are multi-faceted, including; land use change ,...

Variability of  ENSO  As I introduced in my most recent post, ENSO is a hugely important driver of climate across not only Australia, but the Pacific region and the wider world. Through the later part of the 20 th century and into the 21 st century, the nature of ENSO has changed , although there has always been variability between ENSO events, the goal posts have now moved and we’re playing in a different game. ENSO is not one beast, but is made of different flavours , which have been increasing distinguished from one another, whilst increasing in amplitude , with a change in system, comes a change in broad teleconnections, so the way in which people prepare and adapt to ENSO must also change.  T he largest change in ENSO, is demonstrated by the shift in the focal point of the sea surface temperature (SST)  anomaly  in the equatorial Pacific. Traditionally  the SST anomaly was focused in the Eastern Pacific (EP) and spread across the equato...

As an introduction to what will become a reoccurring theme over the next few weeks, I will use this post to familiarize the El Nino Southern Oscillation, commonly shortened to ENSO. ENSO is a non-linear climate phenomena and one of the primary drivers of  multi-year variability in world climate, through this, it is one of the largest influences on Australia's weather patterns.  The following video, from the  Australian Bureau Of Meteorology  covers the broad concepts of ENSO.   Video from Australian Bureau Of Meteorology  Over the next few weeks, I'll be exploring how ENSO impacts Australia and how these are predicted to change with anthropogenic climate change.