Weather is not climate. One region is not global climate. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that Australia's bizarrely hot weather last summer - so hot that Koala's were abandoning their normally shy habits and bonding closely with humans in return for some much needed water and cooling off -- was followed by yet another scorcher this summer.
More below...
It turns out, at least in much of Australia, that 2010 was another hot, dry summer. And Western Australia had its hottest summer on record.
It also had one of its driest, as much of Australia remain in a severe 10 year plus drought that has led to rampant wildfires, and left many of the country's major rivers extremely dry.
This has been particularly true in the South, where in the Southeastern Murray - Darling river basin, an estimated10,000 farming families were climatically pushed off their land from'04 through '08. [The drought, which really got going in 2002 with the "worst drought on record," became so tenacious that in 2007, the state of Queensland planned to introduce recycled sewage for drinking water beginning the following year. At the beginning of 2009, before another dry year was added on top -- the volume of water flowing into the Murray, Australia's main river and once called the "Mighty Murray," was the lowest on record.]
It was so dry these past few months in the Western Australia town of Perth, which had just experienced its driest summer in 113 years, that when one of the freakiest (and costliest) storms in decades hit, at least there was a bona fide silver lining for many -- finally, some rain: As yesterday, the town of Perth was hit with a storm that brought almost a month's worth of average rainfall in just seven minutes.
The storm also brought hailstones the size of golf balls, landslides, flooding, reported winds of over 70 m.p.h., and likely over $100 million in damage -- including the partial collapse of the terminal roof at Perth International Airport where the the rainfall was measured.
What does this mean? When one peruses the climate news for the Australian summer of 2010 -- using the search words "Australia, summer, 2010, and "climate change," near the top is of course a post on the wildly popular disinformation climate site "Watts Up With That?" making a big deal out of the fact that it snowed for the first time in some areas of Australia this past summer; while of course entirely leaving out the more important "also" part of the equation.
Since it was also one of the hottest, and driest, summers on record at the same time the summer's first snowfalls were also at the same time recorded, this minimal bit of information would seem to be more -- albeit slight -- empirical support for the inference that the area is getting warmer, and the weather more volatile at the same time.
The idea that weather does not define climate was examined here. But Anthony Watts' "Watts Up With That?" webblog elected to simply re post verbatim excerpts -- note that the site often simply reposts large chunks or an entire article verbatim without much or any additional commentary, insight or analysis -- from an original snowfall article,with the simple, snarky introduction:
More from the “weather is not climate department.”
Read through the 154 comments to the snowfall article to see if this kind of subtle (and very often not so subtle) 'arguing' doesn't have a profound effect on shaping and misinforming the discussion. Unfortunately, as a perusal of the comments on the site at any point in time aptly illustrate, it does. (Here's an interesting related video, which Watts improperly had YouTube take down, and which was then put back up: see from minutes 3:56 on in particular.)
Not only can a single weather event not necessarily be tied to so called "climate change" - it is rather scientifically silly to do so. Climate is what it is, over time. Many of our actions invariably effect it. (Normally, minimally, and have been ever since we started building fires many millennia ago, however minutely). Physics and biology says that when we increase long lived heat trapping atmospheric gases to levels not seen in perhaps millions of years, that the climate will eventually change -- if not on a predictable time scale or one that we may want to neatly and clearly "tell us" exactly what is going on.
The question, and it is a complex one -- is exactly what type of change, and whether or not that change will involve an increasing number of what we would consider radical, wild, extreme, and even heavily destructive weather events and patterns.
Climate scientists have long predicted that with an ongoing increase in atmospheric heat trapping gases, that this likelihood existed.
Are we seeing it?
In combination with other events around the globe, it is a question well worth studying.