By Rick Feneley and Judith Whelan21 October 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Hundreds of thousands of people face a growing bushfire calamity, with the entire Blue Mountains area as well as Penrith and Richmond in danger of burning over the next few days. Premier Barry O’Farrell on Sunday took the extraordinary step of declaring a […]
[NSW bushfires: live updates] 20 October 2013 (BBC News) – A state of emergency has been declared in New South Wales as Australian firefighters battle bushfires that have already destroyed more than 200 homes. The announcement comes as conditions look set to deteriorate with soaring temperatures and strong winds expected to fan the flames in […]
17 October 2013 (Canberra Times) – Hundreds of homes may have been lost in Thursday’s fires, the worst in more than 10 years, said the Premier Barry O’Farrell. “It’s suspected that by the time we’ve finished counting it [the loss of homes] will at least be in the hundreds,” he said. It would take days […]
Tim Radford for Climate News Network8 July 2013 (The Guardian) – Global warming has increased five-fold the probabilities that Australians will bake in record hot summers, according to new research from the University of Melbourne. And human activities – including greenhouse gas releases from fossil fuels – must account for at least half of these […]
27 June 2013 (University of Melbourne) – Human influences through global warming are likely to have played a role in Australia’s recent “angry” hot summer, the hottest in Australia’s observational record, new research has found. The research led by the University of Melbourne, has shown that global warming increased the chances of Australians experiencing record […]
By Oliver Milman 16 June 2013 (The Guardian) – Floods, bushfires, and this year’s scorching summer heatwave have raised awareness of the dangers of climate change, but an “infantile” debate over the validity of the science has cost Australia precious time, according to a key Climate Commission expert. The commission, an independent body that advises […]
By Matt Siegel24 May 2013 (National Geographic News) – In early 2012 once-in-a-century floods submerged swaths of Great Britain and Ireland, causing some $1.52 billion in damages. Then in June record-high temperatures in Russia sparked wildfires that consumed 74 million acres of pristine Siberian taiga. Months after that, Hurricane Sandy pummeled seven countries, killing hundreds […]
By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer1 March 2013 (LiveScience) – Australia’s summer of 2013 is the hottest on record so far, the country’s Bureau of Meteorology announced today (March 1). The country’s average temperature this summer has been 83.5 degrees Fahrenheit (28.6 degrees Celsius), 2 degrees F (1 degree C) above normal. That breaks the […]
By MATT SIEGEL4 March 2013 SYDNEY, Australia (The New York Times) – Climate change was a major driving force behind a string of extreme weather events that alternately scorched and soaked large sections of Australia in recent months, according to a report [pdf] issued Monday by the government’s Climate Commission. A four-month heat wave during […]
By Philip Bump8 February 2013 (Grist) – “We live in a world in which the climate is changing.” This statement from the EPA, the first line in its draft “Climate Change Adaptation Plan” [PDF] released today, is basic. But that the EPA is saying it is important. For two reasons. The first is that the […]
