Catastrophe' as deadly floods hit Central and Eastern Europe. BBC Adam Easton

CLIMATE CRISIS......It’s time to give up on ‘normal’ weather: Australia’s climate is entering a different phase. Guardian David bowman Fri 3 Nov 2023 Heavy winds struck south-east Australia over the weekend as a series of cold fronts moved across the continent. It followed a high fire danger in Sydney and other parts of New South Wales last week, and a fire in south-west Sydney that threatened homes.The severe weather rounds out a weird winter across Australia. The nation’s hottest ever winter temperature was recorded when Yampi Sound in Western Australia reached 41.6C on Tuesday. Elsewhere across Australia, winter temperatures have been way above average. We can look to the positives: spring flowers are blooming early and people have donned T-shirts and hit the beach. But there’s a frightening undercurrent to this weather. Earth’s climate has become dangerously unstable and it’s only a matter of time before we get the bad combination of hot and dry weather, strong winds and a spark. None of this should come as a surprise. The sooner we stop expecting Australia’s weather to be “normal”, the sooner we can prepare for life in a wild climate.

The green is deceiving........The landscape around Sydney – and in fact across much of south-east Australia – is very green at the moment. That’s because we’ve had a couple of years of good rains which triggered an explosion of vegetation growth. Nasa satellite imagery reveals the picture in stark detail. It’s certainly lush out there at the moment. But the problem with climate change is that weather conditions can turn on a dime. This August was a case in point. At month’s end, much of Australia was hit by a record-breaking heatwave and damaging winds – conditions that can dry out a green landscape with devastating efficiency, turning it into fuel for a bushfire. The dangerous fire weather that struck Sydney this week came as a surprise to many. But in reality, these abnormal conditions are the new normal. We must open our minds to this if we want to be prepared.               

A climate off the rails.........The year 2023 was Earth’s hottest on record. And 2024 looks likely to be hotter still. In Australia the last 12 months have provided all the evidence we need that our climate is wobbling on its rails.In October 2023, Victoria’s Gippsland region suffered unseasonably early bushfires, then soon after battled heavy rain and flooding.  And Tasmania, where I live, has been gripped by drought. This February was Hobart’s third driest in 143 years. But over the weekend we were hammered by a deluge of rain and wind. This climate instability is setting up bad fire conditions. Not everywhere in south-east Australia will be hit by fire but it will happen somewhere. It could be the hinterlands or the coast. It will depend on how our erratic climate behaves in the coming months. Let’s stick with the Tasmania example. Sure, the surface soils are now nicely saturated. But that will lead to a burst of grass and other vegetation in spring. If the dry weather returns and the temperatures heat up in summer, the fine fuels will dry out and become dangerously combustible. All we need then is a windy day and a spark, and a nightmare fire will soon be racing across the landscape.

Canada on fire......Of course, Australia is not the only country facing climate instability and a worsening fire risk. Canada suffered a catastrophic wildfire season in 2023 – one of the most severe on record. It burned almost 15m hectares and forced the evacuation of 232,000 people. Smoke produced by the fires affected communities up to 1,000 km away, such as in southern Canada and on the east coast of the United States. A recent paper in the journal Nature Communications outlined why. It pinpointed early snowmelt, early-season drought conditions and intense heat. In fact, the average temperature in Canada from May to October last year was 2.2C higher than the 30-year average. The researchers said human-caused climate change exacerbated the fire’s effects. They went on: The disproportionate effect a few days of extreme weather can have on the total area burned is also evident in this fire season, leading to worrisome prospects given projected future conditions.

Normal no longer exists......It’s always been difficult to forecast fire seasons in Australia, due to our natural climate variability. But now we are seeing climate instability layering over itself: background dryness, wet seasons bringing a proliferation of fuels, and above-average temperatures. Eventually we’ll get unlucky and experience extremely strong winds thrown into the mix. That’s when catastrophic fires are most likely to occur......read on    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/02/australia-august-weather-records-heat-wind-storm-bom-forecast

Utah’s Great Salt Lake rings climate alarm bells over release of 4.1m tons of carbon dioxide. Study has found that the lake, which has lost 73% of its water, released climate-warming emissions.Guardian  Maanvi Singh Fri 2 Aug 2024 For years, scientists and environmental leaders have been raising alarm that the Great Salt Lake is headed toward a catastrophic decline.Now, new research points to the lake’s desiccating shores also becoming an increasingly significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have calculated that dried out portions of the lakebed released about 4.1m tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in 2020, based on samples collected over seven months that year. Their study, published last month in the journal One Earth, suggests that the Great Salt Lake – which is the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere – and other shrinking saline lakes across the world could become major contributors of climate-warming emissions. The research also adds to a dire list of environmental consequences brought on by the lake’s precipitous decline. Last year, environmental and community groups sued Utah officials over failures to save the famous lake from irreversible collapse. In recent decades, as more and more water has been diverted away from the lake to irrigate farmland, feed industry and water lawns, a report last year estimated that the lake had lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area. Its decline was accelerated by global heating and a mega-drought in the US south-west.

The declining lake has exposed a dusty lakebed laced with arsenic, mercury, lead and other toxic substances that threaten to increase rates of respiratory conditions, heart and lung disease and cancers. As its volume shrinks, the lake is also becoming saltier and uninhabitable to native flies and brine shrimp. Eventually, scientists have warned that it may be unable to support the 10 million migratory birds and wildlife that frequent it.“I think the impacts on air quality, the impacts on migratory birds and other wildlife are maybe more pressing, locally,” said Soren Brothers, a climate change curator at Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum, who led the study. “But especially at a time when we are all trying to find ways to reduce our carbon footprint, as Salt Lake City is working to reduce emissions, this desiccating lake is adding some of that back.” Other research has documented emissions from other saline lakes, including the Aral Sea in central Asia, though more research is needed to fully understand the extent. Both saline and freshwater lakes can act as carbon sinks, he noted – in some cases locking up huge amounts of carbon in their sediments. But as the climate crisis hastens the decline of these lakes, they could begin unleashing large amounts of carbon dioxide that in turn could exacerbate global heating, creating a vicious feedback loop. Brothers said they hope the study encourages researchers to take more measurements of emissions from across and around Great Salt Lake to better understand how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases it is absorbing and emitting.....not good!...read on   https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/02/great-salt-lake-shrinking-greenhouse-gas-emissions