australian bushfires
illconsidered | January 7, 2013So Tasmania is in the news, which is where I am living (see here for links). The stories are about heat and bush fires. So far, nothing as dramatic as "Black Saturday" four years ago has happened, thank goodness, but conditions are very similar.
The post's "featured image" above is of the electronic weather station monitor sitting in my kitchen, taken last Friday. The official Hobart record was set at 41.8 oC, we had a reading of 43.3 oC (33.5 was the inside temperature). I have no idea if this device is well calibrated or subject to some particular siting problem (I tried) or if it…
illconsidered | February 16, 2009I recently wrote about the tragic bushfires in Australia and how it seems to me that it is reasonable to ask if this would have happened without anthropogenic climate changes.
Real Climate has the details on this in their latest post: Bushfires and extreme heat in south-east Australia.
The post is by David Karoly, Professor of Meteorology at the University of Melbourne in Australia. He identifies four factors in the fire's ferocity - maximum temperatures, relative humidity, wind speeds and the ongoing drought - and discusses the possible role of climate change in each of them. For three of…