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Taskforce to tackle sea creature deaths

ABCUpdated April 4, 2013, 9:35 am

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Dead fish on Hallett Cove beach.
ABC © Enlarge photo

A taskforce will be appointed to investigate the mass death of fish and dolphins in South Australian waters.

Sixteen dead dolphins have washed up during the past month along with thousands of dead fish, two penguins and an unusual amount of sea grass.

The dolphins were were found between Maslins Beach and North Haven, with four on Kangaroo Island and one in the South East which may be unrelated to the other deaths.

The South Australian Museum’s curator of mammals, Catherine Kemper, says most were less than 18 months old.

Marine experts are hoping autopsies on two dolphins could shed light on changing conditions in coastal waters.

Dr Kemper says a post mortem on one of the creatures revealed some organ damage but the results were inconclusive.

“There was E. coli identified near the blow hole of that animal and it didn’t look one hundred per cent inside either so there was some evidence that something was going on in terms of pathology inside,” she said.

“In other parts of the world, fish and dolphins have died as a result of biological toxins entering the system and these happen when you have things like red tides and algal blooms.

“We wouldn’t normally do testing for this but we will this time.”

‘Environmental emergency’

The Government says the taskforce will be made up of a team of scientists from several departments.

State Greens MP Mark Parnell says it has not been properly funded.

“The Government needs to put some money into this. We need to know why these animals are dying, is it purely natural causes? Or is it, as most people suspect, something that we’re doing?” he said.

“Whether it’s pollution or whether it’s climate change, whatever, we need to get to the bottom of it.

“Environmental emergencies need an emergency response and the government will need to find money so that the scientists can do their job properly. There’s not much point bemoaning the death of sea life if you don’t resource the scientists to find out what’s going on.”

Fisheries Minister Gail Gago says the taskforce is adequately resourced.

“Those payments are picked up by either [the Environment Department] or PIRSA and those funds are available from our existing resources to more than adequately cover those costs. So it’s just irresponsible scaremongering,” she said.

“We will continue the testing and seek to find out the underlying cause for that so at this point in time we simply do not know what’s caused the dolphin and penguin deaths.”

The deaths of dolphins are not the only unusual recent incident along Adelaide’s beaches.

Several tonnes of seaweed piled up on Glenelg beach last week.

Days earlier, tens of thousands of dead leather jackets were discovered on beaches along Spencer Gulf and Gulf St Vincent.

The Environment Department said the fish deaths and seaweed piles could both have been caused by unusually high ocean temperatures.
Warmer waters produce large amounts of algae consuming the oxygen needed by the fish.

Water trading stops flow of exits

ABCApril 4, 2013, 9:46 am

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The number of Murray irrigators pulling out of the industry has halved over the past two years, new data shows.

The finding is contained in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s annual water monitoring report which analyses changes in the irrigation industry.

The report also shows the amount of water being traded had increased by around 2000 gigalitres since the 2009-10 financial year.

ACCC Commissioner Joe Dimasi says farmers are seeing the benefits of water trading and are using the scheme to boost production.

“What we’re seeing is irrigators are becoming more used to a market for water being there, are trying it out, are using it to meet their needs and so we’re seeing greater flexibility in the use of water,” he said.

“A few years ago, people who were distressed basically had to sell their water rights and for a fairly high price. It wasn’t worth their while using it.
“Now we’re seeing people who might need some more water, we’ll buy it, on a market that’s deeper, which is more affordable and putting that water to use as they need.”

Climate Commission’s work needed: Flannery

AAPApril 4, 2013, 10:19 am

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The head of the Climate Commission has defended the work of the science body, after Opposition Leader Tony Abbott repeated his pledge to axe it.

Mr Abbott on Wednesday renewed the coalition’s commitment to do away with the commission as part of plans to repeal the carbon tax.

But chief climate commissioner Professor Tim Flannery said the body played an important part in informing the public about the dangers of climate change.

“I think we do an important job and that job needs to be done,” he told ABC radio on Thursday.

“There is a real need in parts of the community for the information we provide.”

Mr Abbott said there were four major bureaucracies associated with the carbon tax and climate change.

“We are going to get rid of the carbon tax and we are going to get rid of the bureaucracy associated with it,” he told Fairfax Radio on Thursday.

Mr Abbott said Prof Flannery had many appointments as well as the one from the federal government to talk about his views on climate change.

“We have the benefit of his views anyway. I’m not sure that we need to pay more to get them.”

Prof Flannery said the Critical Decade: Extreme Weather report, released this week, was an example of the commission playing its role of informing the public about climate change.

The report says climate change is exacerbating extreme weather like bushfires, cyclones, heavy rainfall, drought and the heatwaves that scorched Australia earlier this year.
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Development of land based on an airport at Badgerys

DateApril 4, 2013 15 reading now

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Jacob Saulwick, Leesha McKenny

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Barry O’Farrell
Opposed: Barry O’Farrell is against an airport at Badgerys Creek. Photo: James Brickwood

The development of 10,000 hectares of land in western Sydney is being planned on the basis there will be an airport in nearby Badgerys Creek, despite the O’Farrell government’s stated opposition to one.

A draft plan for the Western Sydney Employment Area, a vast tract of undeveloped land north-east of the Badgerys Creek site, is due to be released soon.

The employment area needs to be complemented with roads and other infrastructure, the shape of which would be determined in part by whether an airport is built at Badgerys.

People close to a taskforce set up to decide the future of the Western Sydney Employment Area say consultants on the project have assumed an airport will be built eventually, rather than recommend options that preclude the development of an airport.

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A spokesman said the Department of Planning and Infrastructure was not assuming there would be an airport at Badgerys.

But ”we are ensuring that Commonwealth land and its potential future uses are closely considered in the planning process – but this doesn’t mean the employment area requires the airport to proceed,” he said.

Many urban planners and development industry figures say the government will be hard pressed to meet its ambitious jobs targets for western Sydney without backing an airport.

The draft metropolitan strategy, the government’s plan to manage growth in the next two decades, shows the city’s west will absorb more than 70 per cent of Sydney’s additional 1.3 million residents expected by 2031.

The government wants half of the strategy’s 625,000 jobs located in the west, a target many see as unlikely without an airport.

The University of NSW’s City Futures Research Centre head Bill Randolph said the government’s employment targets for the north west and south west would ”make more sense” if there was an airport between them.

”It’s very difficult to see where employment might come from unless Badgerys Creek gets off the ground,” he said.

”An airport is a huge game changer,” Professor Randolph said. ”If you put an airport in that area, then a lot of the problems of western Sydney could well be solved.”

The Urban Development Institute of Australia chief executive Stephen Albin said the Western Sydney Employment Area would take 20 years to develop without an airport at Badgerys Creek. With an airport, the jobs would emerge in half the time, he said.

The University of Western Sydney’s Australian Urban Research Centre director Michael Darcy said that, without strategic decisions about big infrastructure projects such as another airport, ”the job targets in western and south-western Sydney don’t really instil much confidence”.

”My biggest concern in this plan is the neglect of south-western Sydney, which is an area that’s got the largest population growth flagged, the largest housing growth, the largest jobs growth but the least said in terms of infrastructure,” Professor Darcy said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/development-of-land-based-on-an-airport-at-badgerys-20130403-2h74e.html#ixzz2PRmZ1n4g

Climate Change Fueling Extreme Australian Weather, Group Says
By Soraya Permatasari – Apr 3, 2013 12:01 AM GMT+1100 Facebook Share LinkedIn Google +1 1 Comment
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Australia is facing increased risks of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, wild fires and drought spurred by climate change, according to a report released today by the nation’s Climate Commission.

Key food-growing regions across Australia’s southeast and southwest are likely to experience more droughts in the future, the commission said in a statement accompanying the report.

The number of record hot days in Australia has doubled since the 1960s and a long-term drought is affecting the southwest corner of Western Australia state, which has recorded a 15 percent drop in rainfall since the mid-1970s, according to the commission. There’s a high risk that heatwaves, heavy rains, droughts and cyclones will become more severe over the coming decades, increasing the chances of adverse consequences to human health, agriculture, infrastructure and the environment, it said.

“Records are broken from time to time, but record-breaking weather is becoming more common as the climate shifts,” Chief Commissioner Tim Flannery said in the statement. “Only strong preventative action, with deep and swift cuts in emissions this decade, can stabilize the climate and halt the trend toward more intense extreme weather.”

Record temperatures triggered wildfires in southern and eastern Australian states in January. In the same month, the Insurance Council of Australia declared a catastrophe for parts of Queensland and New South Wales, which together account for half the nation’s economy. The severe weather left six people dead, disrupted mining operations in Queensland and caused an estimated A$187 million ($196 million) in insurance losses.

Sea levels have risen 20 centimeters globally, increasing the risk of flooding, according to the statement. For instance, Fremantle in Western Australia has experienced a three-fold increase in inundation events since 1950, it said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Soraya Permatasari in Melbourne at soraya@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jason Rogers at jrogers73@bloomberg.net; Andrew Hobbs at ahobbs4@bloomberg.net

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Rising Temperature Difference Between Hemispheres Could Dramatically Shift Rainfall Patterns in Tropics

Apr. 2, 2013 — One often ignored consequence of global climate change is that the Northern Hemisphere is becoming warmer than the Southern Hemisphere, which could significantly alter tropical precipitation patterns, according to a new study by climatologists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington, Seattle.

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Such a shift could increase or decrease seasonal rainfall in areas such as the Amazon, sub-Saharan Africa or East Asia, leaving some areas wetter and some drier than today.

“A key finding is a tendency to shift tropical rainfall northward, which could mean increases in monsoon weather systems in Asia or shifts of the wet season from south to north in Africa and South America,” said UC Berkeley graduate student Andrew R. Friedman, who led the analysis.

“Tropical rainfall likes the warmer hemisphere,” summed up John Chiang, UC Berkeley associate professor of geography and a member of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center. “As a result, tropical rainfall cares a lot about the temperature difference between the two hemispheres.”

Chiang and Friedman, along with University of Washington colleagues Dargan M. W. Frierson and graduate student Yen-Ting Hwang, report their findings in a paper now accepted by the Journal of Climate, a publication of the American Meteorological Society. It will appear in an upcoming issue.

Generally, rainfall patterns fall into bands at specific latitudes, such as the Intertropical Convergence Zone. The researchers say that a warmer northern hemisphere causes atmospheric overturning to weaken in the north and strengthen in the south, shifting rain bands northward.

The regions most affected by this shift are likely to be on the bands’ north and south edges, Frierson said.

“It really is these borderline regions that will be most affected, which, not coincidentally, are some of the most vulnerable places: areas like the Sahel where rainfall is variable from year to year and the people tend to be dependent on subsistence agriculture,” said Frierson, associate professor of atmospheric sciences. “We are making major climate changes to the planet and to expect that rainfall patterns would stay the same is very naïve.”

20th century rainfall patterns

Many discussions of climate change focus on long-term trends in the average global temperature. The UC Berkeley and University of Washington researchers went a step further to determine how the temperature difference between the two hemispheres changed over the last century and how that may have affected tropical rainfall patterns.

Using more than 100 years of data and model simulations, they compared the yearly average temperature difference between the Northern and Southern hemispheres with rainfall throughout the 20th century and noticed that abrupt changes coincided with rainfall disruptions in the equatorial tropics.

The largest was a drop of about one-quarter degree Celsius (about one-half degree Fahrenheit) in the temperature difference in the late 1960s, which coincided with a 30-year drought in the African Sahel that caused famines and increased desertification across North Africa, as well as decreases in the monsoons in East Asia and India.

“If what we see in the last century is true, even small changes in the temperature difference between the Northern and Southern hemispheres could cause measureable changes in tropical rainfall,” Chiang said.

This bodes ill for the future, he said. The team found that most computer models simulating past and future climate predict a steadily rising interhemispheric temperature difference through the end of the century. Even if humans begin to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, the models predict about a 1 degree Celsius (2° F) increase in this difference by 2099.

While the average temperature of Earth is increasing as a result of dramatic increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, Earth is not warming uniformly. In particular, the greater amount of land mass in the north warms up faster than the ocean-dominated south, Chiang said. He and his colleagues argue that climate scientists should not only focus on the rising global mean temperature, but also the regional patterns of global warming. As their study shows, the interhemispheric temperature difference has an apparent impact on atmospheric circulation and rainfall in the tropics.

“Global mean temperature is great for detecting climate change, but it is not terribly useful if you want to know what is happening to rainfall over California, for example,” Chiang said. “We think this simple index, interhemispheric temperature, is very relevant on a hemispheric and perhaps regional level. It provides a different perspective on climate change and also highlights the effect of aerosols on weather patterns.”

The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

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