And now to the weather. Let’s cross to Herald Sun weatherman Andrew Bolt:
“Back last night from New Zealand, where tour operators on the South Island were apologising for the unseasonal cold, with summer snow falling on mountains from Southland to Kaikoura. In Queenstown, though, a tourist from Chicago still gloated to me how he’d dodged the record-breaking cold gripping the US.
“But back in Melbourne I am plunged back in the same global warming madness, with a local heat wave treated by warmists as a proxy for a world-wide heating …”
Actually, never mind, let’s cross to an actual meteorologist. Magdalena Roze reports for Crikey:
“This record-breaking heat is occurring in ‘neutral’ El Nino conditions. A quick refresh: during a strong El Nino we typically see our worst droughts/heatwaves in south-east Australia, and during a strong La Nina we typically see above-average rainfall and cooler temperatures over eastern Australia. So breaking heat records for duration and intensity in these current neutral El Nino conditions is like a race car driver recording his fastest speed in rain with poor tyres.
“So what’s to come? The frequency, duration and intensity of both heatwaves and hot days have increased in the last 30-40 years, and record hot days are outweighing record cold days by three to one. Australia’s longer, hotter and more frequent heatwaves are consistent with climate change predictions – and the trend is expected to continue.”
And that’s the real news. Chill out.
Crikey is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming. We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while we review, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.