Maleny Weather

A strong 6.3-magnitude earthquake has struck Papua New Guinea with no immediate tsunami warning or reports of damage.
The quake hit around three kilometres off the west coast of the island of New Britain early Monday morning at a depth of 192 kilometres.
PNG sits on the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a hotspot for seismic activity due to friction between tectonic plates.

At least 127 people were killed and 2,000 are missing after mudslides swept away homes and destroyed roads in northwest China as the nation battled its worst flooding in a decade
The landslides swept mud, houses, cars and other debris into a river running through Gannan prefecture.

An ice island measuring 260 square kilometres broke off from one of Greenland’s two main glaciers, scientists say, the biggest such event in the Arctic in nearly 50 years.

The new ice island, which broke off on Thursday, will enter a remote place called the Nares Strait, about 1,000 kilometres south of the North Pole between Greenland and Canada.

Professor of ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware, Andreas Muenchow, said he had expected an ice chunk to break off from the Petermann Glacier, one of the two largest remaining ones in Greenland, because it had been growing in size for seven or eight years. But he did not expect it to be so large.

“The freshwater stored in this ice island could keep the Delaware or Hudson Rivers flowing for more than two years,” Professor Muenchow said.

“It could also keep all US public tap water flowing for 120 days.”

He said it was hard to judge whether the event occurred due to global warming because records on the sea water around the glacier have only been kept since 2003.

The first week of July started with a high pressure system entering the Great Australian Bight extending a ridge up the east coast, bringing drier and cooler conditions to the Ranges
Later in the week an upper level trough, from tropical waters, passed over the Ranges leaving 5m of rain in the gauges, just enough to dampen the ground in an otherwise dry week.
The weather pattern changed in the second week with a surface trough moving north into our region with strong south-easterly winds gusting to over 20knots. This episode was quickly followed with successive northwest cloudbands bringing overcast conditions and some isolated rain showers of short duration on to the Ranges
Later in the month a high pressure system over South Australia moved into NSW before clearing out to sea. This synoptic situation brought overcast conditions, strong winds and a promise of a few showers on the Ranges, but Maleny missed out.
Full moon and a change of weather pattern came in the final week with strong NW winds from the Coral Sea bringing daytime temperatures soaring to the mid-twenties and the need to put aside doonas at night.
In the last few days of the month the promise of rain became a reality with 40mm bringing the month’s total to 53mm, representing 61 per cent of the 117 year July average. Although this was the third successive month with below average rainfall the annual amount so far this year is 200mm above the norm.

Two organisations, CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology have combined to present a current picture of Australia’s climate. A summary of their report shows that Australia will be hotter in coming decades.
Australian average temperatures are projected to rise by 0.6 to 1.5 ºC by 2030. If global greenhouse gas emis¬sions continue to grow at rates consistent with past trends, warming is projected to be in the range of 2.2 to 5.0 ºC by 2070. Warming is projected to be lower near the coast and in Tasmania and higher in central and north-western Australia. These changes will be felt through an increase in the number of hot days.
Much of Australia will also be drier in coming decades. In Australia compared to the period 1981-2000, decreases in rainfall are likely in the decades to come in south¬ern areas of Australia during winter, in southern and eastern areas during spring, and in south-west Western Australia during autumn. An increase in the number of dry days is expected across the country, but it is likely that there will be an increase in intense rainfall events in many areas.
It is very likely that human activities have caused most of the global warming observed since 1950
There is greater than 90% certainty that increases in greenhouse gas emissions have caused most of the global warming since the mid-20th century. International research shows that it is extremely unlikely that the observed warming could be explained by natural causes alone. Evidence of human influence has been detected in ocean warming, sea-level rise, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns. CSIRO research has shown that higher greenhouse gas levels are likely to have caused about half of the winter rainfall reduction in south-west Western Australia.
The observations clearly demonstrate that climate change is real. CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology will continue to provide observations and research so that Australia’s responses are underpinned by science of the highest quality.
The Bureau of Meteorology has been observing and reporting on weather in Australia for over 100 years, and CSIRO has been conducting atmospheric and marine research for over 60 years.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its British counterpart, the Met Office have released a report today that confirmed the existence of global warming.
According to the yearly climate change report released by the two institutions we live through the warmest period of the decade – but this decade was also the warmest for the last 50 years. This warming is part of a pattern observed for the last 50 years.
Over 300 scientists from 48 countries have measured the air and sea temperatures, the Arctic sea ice, the snow cover and the humidity in the Northern Hemisphere, using weather satellites, ships, buoys, weather balloons and synoptic land based weather stations. All the evidence collected by these scientists points to just one conclusion; the global warming is here and its presence can be felt by all of us.
Each decade, since the 1980’s, has been warmer than the previous ones – the temperatures have been rising approximately one-fifth degree Fahrenheit every 10 years. The effects are the heat waves, the heavy rainfall and the melting of the glaciers we have seen lately.
The report released by the two institutions does not contain data collected this year, but NOAA’s representative said that this is the hottest year of the decade and the annual average global temperature will most probably be exceeded this year.