According to new climate modelling by CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research scientist, Dr Leon Rotstayn, pollution from Asian industry is impacting on Australian rainfall:
“Elevated particle emissions resulting from increased economic activity in Asia may have increased Australia’s tropical rainfall … What we have seen in our latest climate simulations is that the ‘Asian haze’ is having an effect on the Australian hydrological cycle and generated increasing rainfall and cloudiness since 1950, especially over northwest and central Australia.
“The effect occurs because the haze cools the Asian continent and nearby oceans, and thereby alters the delicate balance of temperature and winds between Asia and Australia. It has nothing to do with Asian pollution being transported directly over Australia.”
The new research is based on simulations performed with a new low-resolution version of CSIRO’s global climate model.
The same CSIRO media release claims that representing aerosols in climate models and understanding their influence on cloud formation and rainfall is one of the biggest challenges facing climate scientists.
(from http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi)
And I wonder what the influence of these aerosols from Asian industry is on temperature locally and globally?
UPDATE 10.45pm
This is perhaps the more relevant map. Thanks to Luke for sending it to me and also to Paul Williams for the link: http://www.bom.gov.au/silo/products/cli_chg/index.shtml .
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Some years ago (1996?) Dave Packham and Nigel Tapper suggested, at a conference in Lorne, Victoria, that a worldwide decline in biomass burning over the past 200 years may have led to clearer skies (fewer smoke aerosols), and so increased incoming UV radiation. Others have pointed out the role of aerosols in raindrop formation. It’s good to see that CSIRO has taken up the idea. If we consider carbon sequestration as soil charcoal, maybe Australian Aborigines, and other hunter-gatherer societies in Africa, and the Americas, got it right in more ways than we yet know.
Ref: Packham & Tapper (1996) Climate change and biomass burning. 13th Conference on Fire & Forest Meteorology, Lorne, Australia.
Jen – don’t like your time series graph – it includes half a continent of drier (Queensland) and half of wetter ! Not illustrating the point clearly.
http://www.bom.gov.au/silo/products/cli_chg/rain_timeseries.shtml
Check the spatial maps !
Luke how long have you been blog commenting for now and have you learnt anything? How’s Phil? Is he happy with the darning job I did on the elbows of his cardi? They were in tatters. I couldn’t get all of the dribble stains out though. He will fret so, clenching his hands & worrying his arms against the jason recliner whenever he reads your blog comments, I worry for his health.
“Others have pointed out the role of aerosols in raindrop formation. It’s good to see that CSIRO has taken up the idea.”
No they haven’t…
“The effect occurs because the haze cools the Asian continent and nearby oceans, and thereby alters the delicate balance of temperature and winds between Asia and Australia. It has nothing to do with Asian pollution being transported directly over Australia.”
So the CSIRO research says that the extra rainfall has nothing to do with Asian pollution (aerosols) in raindrop formation the localised cooling associated with the pollution affecting surrounding weather patterns.
The effect of pollution aerosols localling is a cooling one, if the pollution is large enough then it will have an effect globally – the IPCC TAR has a chapter devoted to it if you interested:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/160.htm
From what I’ve read – black carbon, from forests burning etc, has a small warming affect, biomass burning itself and organics in the atmosphere has a small cooling effect, while sulphates have a larger cooling effect.
I suspect, from recent variations in tone, that the normal Luke is on annual leave and his place taken by some other departmental scrubber. Or should that be more correctly termed, acting scrubber?
But Davey has touched on a very relevant point. We know that past firestick burning was widespread but we have yet to properly reconcile current CO2 emissions from landuse change etc with past emissions from burning.
In terms of continental climate variation, we can say with certainty that current emissions are concentrated around 5 major cities while past emissions were much more evenly spead.
And this means that past emissions were more easily absorbed by both vegetation and oceans and were also more likely to impact on local rainfall etc.
We can also be certain that firestick farming maintained a higher albedo effect (net cooling)than current thickenned forest but it has yet to be determined if the area of fully cleared land has off-set this change.
Which makes it all the more pressing to get a clear handle on the EPA’s entirely anthropogenic emissions from negligent fire management so these can be compared with the foregone sources and sinks from forestry activities prior to their conversion to National Sparks.
Thanks SimonC,
I stand corrected. I meant that CSIRO has taken up the idea that smoke, or industrial particles, can have a significant cooling effect. I can remember being quite glad, in bushfires, when the smoke changed so it went over our heads. It was noticeably cooler.
Pinx – Phil sends hugs. Well virtually – if he could move his hands he would anyway. I’m taking him for another drive this arvo. He likes to get out.
Motty misses me. I thought we were probably just shagged out from clubbing each other into submission actually. Or he realised that forestry has actually stuffed the Pilliga and the ocean is becoming less alkaline and has therefore gone into irreversible cognitive dissonance feedback.
Ian – look everyone is acting these days. I’d be surprised if yourself and Jen weren’t acting for someone too. The whole world is in subsitution. Very soon there’ll be nobody left but the tree police. And they won’t even have ag degrees. I think you guys don’t mind being busted by science grads – it’s the ex-coppers that are the fine line.
OK – how about this then if you’re feeling down. Cop this ad hom. Get knotted you agrarian white supremacist greenie hating scumoid living in idyllic surrounds in Australia’s most benign climate feasting on pheasant, quaffing fine wine, listening to Mahler, Queen or Madame Butterfly and showering naked in pristine waterfalls (probably polluting them with Radox bubble bath slats) and having driven there over endangered ecosystems in a V12 Hummer FWD with pentuple diff locks and a whopping trailer to nick some staghorns from the national park.
Feel better now !
Enough pleasantries – back to the debate.. ..
Anyway you’re all off track – except SimonC who gets it.
The Asian cloud moves the ciculation patterns and NW WA gets wetter. So we all trudge up there and grow cotton and the Asians get civilised and clean up the the pollution. So Kimberley becomes drier again.
Anyway I told you dudes all this a few months ago and all you did was gte up me.
So here it is again (where we are):
(1) NW WA wetter coz of the Asian dust cloud
(2) SW WA and southern Australian & SEQ drier coz of the ozone hole + GHG + vortex + natural thing
(3) shear forces across the Coral Sea block cyclone formation (forecs arising from southern hemisphere circulation changes)
(4) cyclones mainly go across the top and around NW WA
Worry is what happens when the ozone fixes but CO2 is higher; AND will a stabilisation scenario be different rainfall wise to a dynamic increasing scenario. Rainfall wetter/drier thing might change around – ooo – won’t that hurt to think through.
Motty is half right – need to get the land surfaces feedbacks in better and the drought reinforcement/intensification feedback.
But he should be careful coz I reckon Top End and Kimberley now burns more than it used to and hotter.
Anyway we’ve been here before. It’s wasted on you lot.
And waiting for Jen to get all sophistica-muckated and stop using time series graphs to obscure spatial trends.
Luke, Can you get us a better graph? It was the best I could find ‘ready made’ at the BOM site. While they have something for MDB and SW WA … there is nothing as such for NW WA.
I did look for NT and it showed an even more dramatic increase in rainfall since 1950.
Jen
I hope the fruit bowl is OK cause the bread bowl is not so good
Jennifer, go to this page,
http://www.bom.gov.au/silo/products/cli_chg/index.shtml
Click on Data Portal and follow the instructions to outline the bit of Australia you want to look at in more detail.
Thanks to Luke and Paul Williams I have just updated the above post/added a graph.
So you admit to being a mere acting scrubber, Luke. And the problem for us all is that we are victims of a poor “substitute” for good governance.
And as for extra burning in the north, just show me the facts, man, just the facts.
But you must admit it is a seriously sick double standard when a forest under management for timber production must account for every tonne of carbon, and possibly pay carbon taxes 80 years in advance, while the same forest after tranfer to Sparks & Wildfires can see 5 million tonnes go up in a preventable conflagration that the IPCC excuses as “natural” carbon cycling.
The logical eventual outcome? Just convert all land to public ownership, let the clowns completely F@$%#& it up, then convert it back to freehold as cleared land with zero emissions so urban tax dodgers can plant plantations and get carbon credits. Just another day in spiv city.
Yes just a mere acting excuse for a scruba –
although I did consult the Macquarie Dictionary
scrubber
// (say ‘skrubuh)
noun
1. someone or something that scrubs.
2. an apparatus for purifying gases.
3. Colloquial a coarse or vulgar woman.
4. Chiefly British Colloquial a promiscuous woman.
Yep on the carbon story. Agree. that’s why we should lobby for “wall to wall accounting” and count everything. But of course that’s more paperwork and more meetings with urban spivvy types ??
Motty,
Are National Sparks run by Bureauclots, producing lots of Bureaucrap?
This map is all very well but for my own location in Nth Coast NSW the message over the past 100 years is the direct opposite. Indeed, each 25 year interval has involved an increase in mean annual rainfall.
And it should also be pointed out the change in local conditions of 50mm over the half century comes off a long term (century) mean of 1800mm.
This amounts to a variation of -2.7% against a normal range of variation of plus or minus 35%.
And the 50 year data also masks a significant improvement in the spread of rainfall, and hence it’s quality. The 50’s and 60’s had a lot more cyclonic activity which made rainfall totals appear high but they masked a sequence of extended dry seasons in spring/summer that, for both crops and wildlife, produced poorer outcomes than we are experiencing today.
Generally, the absence of cyclones may be bad for metrocentrics who rely on inefficient dam catchments but the less intense wet seasons have been balanced by less intense dry seasons.
It should also be noted that the changes shown all over Australia on the map, both positive and negative, all fall well within the normal range of variation from the means.
I don’t suppose BOM has the same map for each of the past four 25 year intervals? Now that might actually provide some meaningful information.
So Ian getting all thoughtful now – just when you thought he was some hick redneck property rights fanatic he does a cerebral bootstrap of the auxiliary processsor.
See if any of this detail helps – an example
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/RainfallAndPastureGrowth/Aus/1960s/1968/Nov/
Or you really need a soil water balance with plant growth model if you want to integarte rainfall patterns
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/RainfallAndPastureGrowth/NSW/index.html
Given the big wets of the 50s and 70s – getting a trend is fairly easy on simple measures. Since 1976 mainly El Ninos – few La Ninas. And few east coast crossing cyclones.