Category Archives: Sudden Prolonged Weather Stasis Australia

Eucalypts and fire-prone species must be cleared from our suburbs. First essay: see also “The impoverished Australian Environment”.

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EUCALYPT AND FIRE-PRONE SPECIES TO BE CLEARED from our dwellings.

In our hearts we knew that the gum-trees surrounding our housing were a risk, but with the alternative being a naked block of dust, what other option was there? Any trees are better than none, has been the opinion of all. Until now.

We’ve put up with the ever-present  fire-risk; and the occasional eucalypt falling on our houses and power-lines and cars. And ourselves, too. We’ve put up with the danger and inconvenience for the sake of having a bit of ‘nature’ in our suburbs, in our back yards, and the wildlife it attracts.

But the time has come when we must draw the line. The climate is drying, and as it dries the eucalypts and fire-prone species have the upper hand: they win in the game of survival. Thousands of our people are now homeless, many financially ruined, because of this fashion for accommodating eucalypts and fire-prone species in our environment.

Each one of us is now at risk, and the cities no longer immune. Queensland is at present having a lucky respite, compared with the devastation occurring in the south, but unfortunately our luck may run out. I look at the tinder of the parched vegetation all around, and hope; just hope.

Ancient and magnificent rain-forest in our national parks, and on the elevated areas, is finally succumbing to the dry. We never thought it could possibly happen; there’s no way that forest could resist fire now. If those areas hang on, eventual rains will quickly revive the trees and the moist ground-cover, but if fire goes through, the entire biodiversity may be permanently lost.

This is a frightening time for all Australians to be living through. There is no security. The government of the day is introducing schemes which should have been in place months ago when the outcomes of drought became obvious. Better late than never, but what of all those who have lost everything?

Now, perhaps, the eucalypts and fire-prone species will be cleared away, from both the burned and spared communities. For those ravaged and blackened areas, the ruined houses will remain ruins, but the eucalypts will revive almost immediately, ready for the next conflagration. Let us not welcome them back.

Let us bulldoze the stumps, the trash, and eradicate the coming seedlings. Clear the suburbs of further inevitable eucalypt danger, and maintain the gum-free zones until our chosen fire-resistant species take hold, and shade our environment, mulching and moistening and enriching. Swap a gum-tree, that weed which produces no cover, or humus, parching the lanscape, for a forest tree of dense shade.

Surely, surely now, our love-affair with the eucalypts, and fire-prone species, is over? The sparse, straggling bush must for ever be associated with danger, and loss, and tragedy.

Queensland drought: THE GRAB-BAG climate in Australia

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THE GRAB-BAG: symptom of the Queensland drought.

I SAILED ABOUT THE PLACE FOR TEN YEARS, in a lovely old ketch-rigged double-ender. Not in an adventurous way, mostly down the coast and back, seldom out of sight of land.

For fear of disaster, an ever-present trepidation affecting all wise sailors, I carried a grab-bag. A bag containing essentials necessary when abandoning ship and taking to the inflatable. Top of the list was the EPIRB. I won’t list the other contents, but you can imagine great thought went into the selection, and the immediate accessibility and portability of The Bag.

Those days are over for me, and a modern grab-bag now contains fantastic technology.

Well, I thought those days were over, but now, on hitherto safe dry land, the fear of disaster returns, and the grab-bag is ready again.

Now, today, the contents of the grab-bag are stacked near the back door, and they won’t fit into a bag, but must nevertheless be loaded into the car in a few minutes, ready to abandon ship.

The ship, in this case the house, could disappear in a roar of fifty-metre flame within minutes of any warning, though hopefully within hours. But you never know. Who will wake you in the dead of night?

The exit must be fast. No time for decision-making; choice must have been decided and packed in advance. What to take? Too late, too late, too late; just go, go go.

Who would have thought, this time last year, that such a situation could come about? What previous weather-pattern in our short European history could have set an example, a warning of possibility? There have been awful, prolonged Queensland drought in the past, but this looks different. This may be pattern-breaking; a drought that continues, continues.

In our subconcious, we wait for Christmas thunderstorms; every afternoon without fail. Without fail……..

Then the January rains, when the whole world is hot, and damp, and mouldy, the creeks are high and roofs leaking.

But this Christmas and January may be different. January, February and March may go past with only the occasional local wetting. Then on into the year, a year of no hope, hopeless. Our hope-gland run dry through over-use. Then what?

Already after just over three months since a warning from the BOM, (not broadcast, but simply stated) the possibilities are being examined by everyone. Some political parties are of course still in denial even now. The country is not yet on a war-footing, but soon……could this be the worst Queensland drought on record?

The prospect is ruinous. Turn off the rain, what survives?

Queensland drought: PROLONGED WEATHER STASIS AUSTRALIA chapter 2

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SUDDEN STRATOSPHERIC WARMING and THE QUEENSLAND DROUGHT. First published Nov 8 2019.

The Sudden Stratospheric Warming event over the Antarctic Region is the likely cause of the current Prolonged Weather Stasis affecting the central latitudes of Australia.

Predicted about three months ago by the Met Office as lasting until ‘Possibly January or February 2020′ this event continues to suppress rainfall generally, despite the occasional local showers giving false hope to those recipients.

My previous blog on the subject outlines the possible effect of Prolonged Weather Stasis, or PWS, on Queensland drought. Sadly the predictions are so far becoming reality for rural townships, graziers and all farmers within the affected zone, which includes most of the coastal fringe excepting the far North and South, and Tasmania; these areas may actually receive more than average rainfall.

As I wrote previously, graziers are de-stocking cattle at an alarming rate, of necessity, there being no feed. Dairy farmers likewise are downsizing, every dry day bringing disaster closer. These are the initial preventative measures in a situation which is daily becoming worse, and these are the businesses which are first affected. As PWS continues, more and more ventures and industries will be forced to close, an accelerating cascade of unemployment throughout the community, as inter-dependent services collapse.

City-dwellers are far from exempt. Critical to the well-being of our communities is the level of water in the dams. At present we have excellent storage in the major dams, and should this tide us over until rain resumes we should thank the original planners and designers for their foresight. If rain events do not resume, diminishing dam levels will become a nightmare for us all, with no viable solution except drastic rationing. Should even that fail, the last option, which should be implemented immediately, right now, Friday the Eighth of November, is the building of coastal de-salination plants: hundreds of them.

De-salination has successfully provided water for coastal market-garden greenhouses, utilising evaporation and condensation of piped sea-water direct to the growers, returning the salt-rich brine to the ocean.

Households can subsist on a relatively tiny water supply…..after severe education and rabid policing, but industry and essential services need massive quantities, which may simply not be available. Think of the staggering volume required by breweries, shock, horror. But this is serious. Industries, to remain viable, must oust residential areas from our coastline in order to operate on desalinated water, though pipelines may span distance. This situation is, of course, going to cost everyone.

As I write, dam levels are dropping. If my forward-planning is a false alarm, so be it. A double pipeline was constructed years ago to pump treated sewage-water from Luggage Point to Tarong Power Station. Excellent fore-sight for exactly this situation.

Well, not this situation exactly, for we may be on the cusp of suffering a far worse outcome. An open-ended Queensland drought.

The weeks pass. The rainy season approaches, many believe, and hold their breath. A month or so and we’ll be at Mid-Summer. We may wait and hope, but action is needed immediately, for this year, The Rains may never arrive. Then what will we do?

Politicians flutter and seem to not be aware of the catastrophe facing huge areas of the country. All are currently and rightly horrified at the fire-devastation which can never be controlled, and may affect every community within cooee of a tree, or a paddock.  But this is just the initial sign of worse to come, although having your house burned down is pretty bad. Once the trees have gone there will be a period of realisation, as townships, one after the other become no longer viable: no water supply. No farm. No industry. No job. No mortgage repayments. Shops with very expensive food. The thought-process of extrapolation from events happening right now are very scary, although we watch the nightly news with comfortable trepidation. Soon each of us may be directly affected; time will tell, but really, there’s little we can do to help ourselves, and nothing we can do to change the weather.

 

Queensland drought: SUDDEN STRATOSPHERIC WARMING AUSTRALIA

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Sudden Stratospheric Warming and the result:

PROLONGED WEATHER STASIS, AUSTRALIA AND THE QUEENSLAND DROUGHT. First published Sept 16 2019

Queensland and NSW drought, September 2019, possible prognosis.

In Queensland and New South Wales we are experiencing a period of sunny days, not unusual in normal years. However, this is not a normal year.

Due to the rare phenomenon of Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) over the Antarctic, the immediate effect is stagnation of local climate in its current mode: absence of cloud, the satellite images  showing no foreseeable rain events.

Prediction of effect and duration, due to the scarcity of previous SSW events in the Southern Hemisphere, is at present  educated guesswork based on Northern Hemisphere knowledge, but the relatively small land-mass and vast ocean may cause a different outcome.

It is thought that the southern parts of South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand could be affected, with cold, wet or snow to the southern extremities (Tasmania, NZ South Island, etc..) rain to the north (Cape York), and static drought and cool conditions between.

Queensland is being affected now. Already, the loss of water supply in many townships is imminent. Maintaining these areas will soon become a logistical problem with perhaps no solution, other than importing water in road tankers and instigating savage restrictions. Long-term pipe-line construction may be immediately considered.

The principal and un-answerable question is: how long will this Queensland drought last? So little information on the effect and duration of Sudden Stratospheric Warming in the southern hemisphere makes prediction most uncertain. The Bureau of Meteorology, Australia, tentatively forecasts current dry conditions until December/January, but this is of necessity guesswork.

We are in Queensland currently experiencing an event for the first time in our short technological history, though no doubt common in past eras. For the past twenty years the graph of rainfall has been trending downwards, despite occasional blips. Records for 100 years prior make assessment of trends confusing, but simple observation of geographic features make obvious the fact that large creek-beds and alluvial levels suggest that floods were massive and regular in the past.

But when was that past? In living memory creeks regularly flooded fifty years ago, but not since. Perhaps flood-plain building is a more recent phenomenon than thought. The last Brisbane flood deposited ten to twenty centimetres of alluvial silt in a small suburban area upstream from the city. There was no flooding downstream; river banks contained the flow.

Previous floods within the past 180 years were similar, but nothing compared with the massive plain-building events of the un-documented past.

Perhaps SSW in the past caused small-scale ‘Punctuated Equilibrium’ events, altering the climate at each stage, wetter or drier. Our tree-cover in Queensland is variously fragile. Right now, September 16th 2019, in, for example, the Toowoomba area, some eucalypts and wattles are on the point of dessication; a not unusual event. Within one day, as roots dry out, leaves hang limp: the tree is dead. The more substantially-rooted species last longer.

Once this stage has been reached, without rain, more trees die, the most susceptible first. Bleached white gums are the tombstones of previous dry periods, a condition we consider normal now in our recent history. Perhaps Aboriginal experience would shed light on the true situation. Fire and drought have no doubt reduced original rain- and vine-forest to the present small fraction, eucalypts once being in the minority.

Right now we are on the cusp of a Queensland drought which may not fit the ‘normal’ pattern, but which may continue over a vast area  for months. Neither water-supplies nor tree-cover can survive so long. This event may well be an example of previous sudden droughts which destroyed so much rain-forest, not as a result of climate-change over thousands of years, but of sudden Prolonged Weather Stasis (SPWS); in this case drought. Six rainless months would just about kill all vegetation, leaving only seeds.

There are perhaps other examples on the planet of Prolonged Weather Stasis caused by SSW. One most obvious caused the extinction of the remaining woolly mammoths in Siberia. The startling discovery of these beasts encased in what until recently was permanent ice, revealed that they died in situ, where they were grazing. This astounding fact has only one meaning: on one single particular day, whilst the beasts were feeding, it was snowing, AND IT NEVER STOPPED. They became snow-bound, then suffocated where they stood, to be encased in a never-ending snowfall: the weather was locked in one mode.

Sudden Prolonged Weather Stasis could be to blame for many situations where civilisations small and large disappeared, leaving their cities intact. It is assumed their water supply failed, both for crops and dwellings. A dwindling supply would suggest a gradual decline of viable agriculture and consequent deterioration of buildings due to the population shrinkage, but a city deserted intact requires a sudden and permanent weather event. Otherwise it would be re-occupied.

There is also the possibility that sudden PWS is not an event after which the climate returns to normal. These events may be the tipping-points from which there is no return. We may be seeing, in Australia, not a gradual desertification from the Red Centre outwards, but a stepped series of drying-events from which the land does not recover its previous vegetation.

There are, around the planet, possible cases of SSW causing massive and continuing rain with its attendant disaster; the weather in fixed mode until SSW dissipates

So, what are we in for, here in Queensland? The next few months will tell. Extrapolating from the worst case is too dismal and obvious to describe, and calls for immediate action from engineers and planners from all Australian cities to solve what may be very long-term problems.

However, the effect of sudden Prolonged Weather Stasis on farming will be a disaster. We may be able to supply domestic water, but not food. Already, within weeks of the last small rain, there is no feed for cattle, all of which are, as I write, on their way to abattoirs. Dairy cows on many farms have no feed or no water, or neither. They may have to be culled soon. A fleet of cattle-trucks is on the road as I write.

Land-crops may be a tragedy; plant- nurseries surviving for a time on underground water. Infrastructure may survive until better times, but where will the farmers be then?

We can only hope that the present outlook is indeed temporary, and Sudden Prolonged Weather Stasis  is in fact not ‘prolonged’, but just a blip on the radar of our rather unsatisfactory climate.

Andy Jenner.