U.K. storm of 2000 blamed on climate change
by Geoff Strong and Lindsay Murdoch, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 18, 2011
AS AUSTRALIANS from both ends of the country were yesterday cleaning up after storms and floods, a British study has concluded for the first time that an extreme storm in that country is likely to have doubled in intensity due to human induced climate change.
The study, published yesterday in the journal Nature, is significant because for the first time climate change has been blamed for a single event.
But Australian experts are divided over whether a similar study here would have been able to blame climate change for our recent floods and cyclones, because of different factors in play in the southern hemisphere.
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The study concentrated on floods in 2000 that devastated parts of England and Wales, causing about $10 billion in damage. Researchers ran 1000 complex computer models to look at how the storms and floods were likely to have happened, both with and without the factors linked to climate change. It found that by adding in the factors the severity risk increased dramatically.
Former head of the CSIRO's Atmospheric Research Division, Dr Graeme Pearman, said that running a similar study in Australia might be able to conclude that recent events such as Queensland's floods or the intensity of cyclone Yasi were linked to global warming.
But Professor Steve Sherwood, head of atmospheric science at the University of New South Wales, doubted it would yet be provable. He said that local weather influences such as the Southern Oscillation Index, which causes the El Nino/La Nina patterns, would make it hard to pick up the influence of climate change until it became stronger.
But Dr Pearman said the British study had used different methodology to what had been used before and for the first time was able to link the climate change factors to the events.
He said the study had needed a huge amount of computing power and had been made possible by thousands of people around the world allowing researchers to access their home computers when they were not being used, to process the information. He said Australia needed to do a similar study to see if a link could be proved between our extreme weather and climate change.
Meanwhile, as residents of Melbourne's eastern suburbs were cleaning up after Wednesday afternoon's deluge, the people of Darwin were counting the cost of their most severe storm in a decade.
Darwin's authorities were warning people to stay out of flooded waterways because of crocodiles. ''Crocodiles are on the move,'' Northern Territory Chief Minister Paul Henderson said after cyclone Carlos moved inland and was downgraded.
NT Parks and Wildlife Service senior ranger Tom Nichols said there was an increased likelihood of saltwater crocodiles entering flooded creeks, rivers, stormwater drains and low-lying areas.
Despite widespread damage to streets, houses and businesses in Darwin, no serious injuries or deaths were reported as more than 600 millimetres of rain and up to 100km/h winds lashed the city over three days.
But authorities warned that the Top End would get more wild weather over the next couple of days.
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