Australia: hotter, longer fire season, and rising seas

From an excellent article in The Guardian:

Australia is experiencing more extreme heat, longer fire seasons, rising oceans and more marine heatwaves consistent with a changing climate, according to the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO’s state of the climate report.

The report, published every two years, measures the long-term variability and trends observed in Australia’s climate.

The 2018 report shows that Australia’s long-term warming trend is continuing, with the climate warming by just over 1C since 1910 when records began.

That warming is contributing to a long-term increase in the frequency of extreme heat events, fire weather and drought.

“Australia is already experiencing climate change now and there are impacts being experienced or felt across many communities and across many sectors,” said Helen Cleugh, the director of the CSIRO’s climate science centre.

The report’s key findings include:

1. Australia’s fire seasons have lengthened and become more severe. In some parts of the country, the season has been extended by months.
2. The number of extreme heat days continues to trend upward.
3. There has been a shift to drier conditions in south-eastern and south-western Australia in the months from April to October.
4. Rainfall across northern Australia has increased since the 1970s, particularly during the tropical wet season in north-western Australia.
5. Oceans around Australia have warmed by about 1C since 1910, which is leading to longer and more frequent marine heatwaves that affect marine life such as corals.
6. Sea levels around Australia have risen by more than 20cm since records began and the rate of sea level rise is accelerating.
7. There has been a 30% increase in the acidity of Australian oceans since the 1800s and the current rate of change “is ten times faster than at any time in the past 300 million years”.

[Read the full article here]

(Source of all graphics: The Guardian)

Australia's federal government is a hotbed of climate denialism.   "Australia's always been hot", "Australia has always had droughts and bushfires", "it's all a plot by lefties", "the BOM is massaging the figures", "there have always been cycles", and similar cretinous opinions are rife within the two parties that make up our ruling coalition.  The evidence is unambiguous that global warming is affecting us adversely right now, yet still our stupid government denies this, and in fact, so stupid is it that it wants to fund new coal power stations with public subsidy (because new coal power stations are no longer cost competitive with renewables, so nobody else will build them.)  Or maybe not stupid: just venal--coal companies give big contributions to our government.  The face of evil.