Search

The spatial clustering of life satisfaction scores noted in recent empirical research suggests that 'happier' people may live in specific neighbourhoods or regions. This prompts the questions: Do 'happier' people choose to move to specific places? Does living in specific places make people 'happier'? To answer these questions, this paper explores possible occurrences of selective mobility, and social and ecological influence. Using panel data collected in Australia from 2013 to 2021, we examine the association between life satisfaction scores and selective geographic mobility, and the possible influence that living at specific locations may have on individual life satisfaction trajectory, while controlling for individual personality traits and socio-demographic factors. Our results indicate that urban residents reporting lower life satisfaction scores before the move have a higher probability of moving to a rural area. Similarly, lower life satisfaction scores are associated with a higher probability of moving to a region with a different climate. We also find evidence that moving from the city to the country is associated with an uplift of the life satisfaction trajectory for the individual. A similar conclusion is reached for people who moved to a warmer climate, but not for a move to a cooler climate. To our knowledge, this is the first time the concepts of selective mobility and social and ecological influence have been applied in life satisfaction research. Our work provides an indicator that can be important to demographers predicting population movements. It can also inform policy development around assisting regional and rural areas attract/ retain residents to support regional sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Future soil moisture (SM) estimation is a practically useful task for eco-hydrologists, agriculturists, and stakeholders in environment health monitoring to generate comprehensive understanding of hydro-physical and soil dynamic system. This paper demonstrates the capability of a hybridised long short-term memory (LSTM) predictive framework to emulate SM under global warming scenarios. The proposed model is developed by integrating Boruta-random forest (BRF) feature selection and capturing significant antecedent memory of SM behaviour were applied to estimate the future SM using Coupled Model Intercomparison Phase-5 (CMIP5) repository. The BRF is adapted to extract pertinent features in hydro-meteorological variables intrinsically related to SM, and therefore, is used to construct a hybridised deep learning (i.e., BRF-LSTM) model. To establish the viability of deep learning model for SM estimation until 2100, five stations closely matched to the global climate model grid are selected in Australia's Murray Darling Basin. The performance skill of BRF-LSTM model is compared against standalone models (i.e., LSTM, SVR, and MARS). The results showed that the hybrid deep learning model (i.e., BRF-LSTM) with a feature selection capability could significantly outperform the standalone models for both warming simulations. The proposed hybrid model also demonstrated superiority in SM estimation with over 95% of all predictive errors lying below 0.02 mm, and low relative root means square error (≈ 1.06% for RCP4.5 and ≈ 1.888% for RCP8.5) to outperform all the benchmark models. This study demonstrates the capability of LSTM algorithm coupled with BRF feature selection to simulate future soil moisture under climate change, and so, can be successfully implemented in hydrology, agriculture, soil use management and environmental management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) drives substantial variability in precipitation and drought risk over Australia. Understanding the combined effect of anthropogenic forcing and ENSO on Australian precipitation extremes over the coming century can assist adaptation efforts. Here we use 24 CMIP5 climate models to examine externally forced changes in the frequency of "droughts", when precipitation falls below the pre-industrial Decile 1 threshold. We focus on June to November (i.e., southern hemisphere Winter–Spring season) because precipitation during this period is important for agricultural production and recharging reservoirs in many parts of the country. The analysis in this paper is based on two 90-year simulations (1900–1989 and 2010–2099) for Historical and RCP8.5 scenarios. We show that the frequency of droughts, including droughts occurring in consecutive Winter–Spring seasons, is projected to increase in the twenty-first century under the RCP8.5 scenario in all eight Natural Resource Management (NRM) "clusters". Approximately 60% of years are projected to be drought years in Perth, 35% in Adelaide, 30% in Melbourne, and approximately 20–25% of years in Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. The relative frequency distributions of seasonally averaged Winter–Spring precipitation shift to lower values in all NRM clusters. However, apart from the Southern and Southwestern Flatlands, the shifts are accompanied by changes in the shape of the distributions whereby the high end of the distributions do not shift as much as other parts of the distribution and the wettest seasons become marginally wetter. This means that in most locations generally drier conditions are projected to be infrequently punctuated by seasons that are just as wet or wetter than the wettest years experienced during the twentieth century. While the models generally do a poor job in simulating ENSO precipitation teleconnections over Australia, an increase in ENSO-driven variability is suggested for the Wet Tropics, the Monsoonal North, the Central Slopes and the Southern and Southwestern Flatlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite an exponential growth in the volume of adaptation research over the last decade, there is still a research gap in regard to the provision of suitable information to adequately inform climate change adaptation policy makers. Contributing to this gap is a paucity of research reporting on the effectiveness of implemented adaptation strategies. This paper reports on the success, failures and future risks of the responses taken by the South East Queensland (SEQ) water sector during the Millennium Drought. The adaptation strategy employed a portfolio approach mixing 'hard' and 'soft' adaptations. Strategies included the following: large-scale water manufacturing facilities and distribution networks; the exploitation of local water resources; regulatory instruments; institutional reforms; support for research and training and a range of demand management programmes. The strategies employed were innovative and in many cases required rigorous scientific evidence for their development, implementation and follow-up assessments. However, we show that there has been considerable disparity between anticipated and actual policy outcomes, which points to maladaptive consequences. By revisiting the effectiveness of implemented adaptation strategies in the SEQ water sector, our paper provides evidence for the need for integrative studies with genuine policy integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the change in soil organic carbon (C) stock in a warmer climate and the effect of current land management on that stock is critical for soil and environmental conservation and climate policy. By simulation modeling, we predicted changes in Australia's soil organic C stock from 2010 to 2100. These vary from losses of 0.014–0.077 t C ha−1 year−1 between 2020 and 2045 and 0.013–0.047 t C ha−1 year−1 between 2070 and 2100, under increasing emissions of greenhouse gases and temperature. Thus, Australian soil will be a net emitter of CO2. Depending on the future socio-economic conditions, we predict that croplands will accrue as much as 0.19 t C ha−1 year−1 between 2020 and 2045 due to their management, but accrual will decrease with warming and increased emissions by 2070–2100. The gains will be too small to counteract the losses of C from the larger areas of rangelands and coastal regions that are more sensitive to a warmer climate. In principle, prudent management of the rangelands, for example, improving grazing management and regenerating biodiverse, endemic native plant communities, could sequester more C and mitigate the loss; in practice, it may be more difficult, requiring innovation, interdisciplinary science, cultural awareness and effective policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Murray dairy region produces approximately 1.85 billion litres of milk each year, representing about 20 % of Australia's total annual milk production. An ongoing production challenge in this region is the management of the impacts of heat stress during spring and summer. An increase in the frequency and severity of extreme temperature events due to climate change may result in additional heat stress and production losses. This paper assesses the changing nature of heat stress now, and into the future, using historical data and climate change projections for the region using the temperature humidity index (THI). Projected temperature and relative humidity changes from two global climate models (GCMs), CSIRO MK3.5 and CCR-MIROC-H, have been used to calculate THI values for 2025 and 2050, and summarized as mean occurrence of, and mean length of consecutive high heat stress periods. The future climate scenarios explored show that by 2025 an additional 12-15 days (compared to 1971 to 2000 baseline data) of moderate to severe heat stress are likely across much of the study region. By 2050, larger increases in severity and occurrence of heat stress are likely (i.e. an additional 31-42 moderate to severe heat stress days compared with baseline data). This increasing trend will have a negative impact on milk production among dairy cattle in the region. The results from this study provide useful insights on the trends in THI in the region. Dairy farmers and the dairy industry could use these results to devise and prioritise adaptation options to deal with projected increases in heat stress frequency and severity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background, aim, and scope One barrier to the further implementation of LCA as a quantitative decision-support tool is the uncertainty created by the diversity of available analytical approaches. This paper compares conventional (`process analysis') and alternative (`input-output analysis') approaches to LCA, and presents a hybrid LCA model for Australia that overcomes the methodological limitations of process and input-output analysis and enables a comparison between the results achieved using each method. A case study from the water industry illustrates this comparison. Materials and methods We have developed a tiered hybrid model for calculating the life cycle impacts of a system. In so doing, we have developed a novel way of overcoming a key methodological issue associated with this method: avoiding double counting. We calculate `system incompleteness factors' and use these to delete the lower-order burdens in the input-output inventory according to the depth of production taken into account in the process inventory. We apply this method to a case study of Sydney Water Corporation. The functional unit is the provision of water and sewerage services to residential, industrial, and commercial customers in the city of Sydney in the year 2 002/03. Results and discussion We analysed the case study using three methods: process analysis, input-output analysis, and hybrid analysis. In each case, we obtained results for eight impact categories: water use; primary energy use; global warming potential; carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic human toxicity potentials; and terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecotoxicity potentials. Although the process analysis has a relatively shallow investigative depth, it shows good system coverage (i.e. a small truncation error) for most indicators. The truncation errors for all of the indicators except marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential compare favourably with predicted truncation errors for the relevant industry sector. This suggests that the truncation error of a particular process analysis cannot be accurately predicted using generic system completeness curves, and implies that the truncation error of a typical process analysis may be less severe than is commonly generalised by the proponents of input-output analysis. Conclusions The case study supports the largely theoretical claims in the literature about the relative merits and drawbacks of process and input-output analysis. Each method has the potential to highlight different aspects of the system. By estimating the truncation error of the process analysis independently of the relationship between the results obtained using the other methods, our hybrid model enhances the ability to investigate the differences between results and thus adds considerable value to such a study. Recommendations and perspectives Input-output LCA has become more popular as computational tools have become more accessible. We directly compare input-output, process and hybrid LCA and recommend that, from an environmental analysis perspective, it would be beneficial to consider the three methodologies in parallel. We highlight the potential for misinterpretation of differences between methods that rely on different reporting frameworks, and recommend that LCA method and practice continue to emphasise the role of careful interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary & Nonprofit Organizations is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The sixth assessment report of the IPCC indicates low-to-high confidence in trends of extreme rainfall with regional inconsistency in the tropics, where a key phenomenon causing intra-seasonal variations in weather is the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO). It remains unknown how the MJO-induced extreme rainfall and the societal exposure may change in response to global warming and climate mitigation attempts. Here, using eight CMIP6 models that capture the eastward-propagating MJO structure and amplitude, we detect a nearly 60% increase in extreme rainfall over tropical Asia and Australia by the end of the 21st century under the fossil-fueled warming scenario (SSP5-8.5); 84% of this change is associated with MJO-induced extreme rainfall. Extreme rainfall increases are modulated by the warming-induced asymmetric changes in MJO phase characteristics, occurring mostly over the lands with distinct zonal differences. The region that is most likely to be affected includes Malaysia, Indonesia, and northern Australia where 96.68 million people and 9.72 million km2 of urban areas are exposed to potential danger stemming from extreme rainfall. More than 95% (99%) of the population (urban) exposure can be potentially avoided under the "middle of the road" development (SSP2-4.5) scenario, whereby CO2 emissions hover around current levels before starting to fall mid-century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since global warming between 2 and 4.9 °C by 2100 is unlikely to be avoided, humans will have to live with and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Migration has long been touted as a strategy for adapting to climate change, but there is limited understanding of which aspects of climate change will have greatest influence on peoples' decision to move somewhere they consider safer or stay somewhere safe. Here, we present results from two online surveys about mobility decisions from one low (Philippines) and one high (Australia) income country within the Asia-Pacific region with similar vulnerabilities to natural hazards. Online surveys with about 1100 respondents each were conducted in both countries. Results showed that natural hazards played a strong role in the mix of reasons for mobility, particularly in the Philippines. Sudden onset hazards had the greatest influence. Results of ordered probit models showed that the perception of personal damage from hazards was strongly positively associated with mobility decisions of respondents in both countries. Mobility decisions of people in Australia were further influenced by their experience with the specific hazards: those with greater experience of slow onset hazards were more likely, and those who had experience with sudden hazards less likely, to consider these when moving or staying somewhere. People in Australia might only react to sudden onset hazards with temporary relocation since experience had shown that they can adapt to them. This suggests that slow onset climate change related impacts such as heat waves and sea level rise, as well as environmental degradation and pollution, may have more sustained effects on long-term mobility than sudden events. In the Philippines, personal characteristics such as gender, income, and health had the greatest impact while experience with hazards had almost none. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To stop global warming at well below 2° C, the bulk of the world’s fossil fuel reserves will have to be left in the ground. Coal is the fossil fuel with the greatest proportion that cannot be used, and various advocacy groups are campaigning for a ban on the opening of new coal mines. Recently, both China and the USA implemented temporary moratoria on the approval of new coal mining leases. This article examines whether these coal mining bans reflect the emergence of a global norm to keep coal under the ground. To that end, we review recent coal mining policies in the four largest coal producers and explain them comparatively with a framework based on interests, ideas and institutions. We find that the norm of keeping coal in the ground remains essentially contested. Even in those countries that have introduced some form of a coal mining moratorium, the ban can easily be, or has already been, reversed. To the extent that the norm of keeping coal in the ground has momentum, it is primarily due to non-climate reasons: the Chinese moratorium was mostly an instance of industrial policy (aiming to protect Chinese coal companies and their workers from the overcapacity and low prices that are hitting the industry), while the USA’s lease restrictions were mainly motivated by concerns over fiscal justice. We do not find evidence of norm internalisation, which means that the emerging norm fails to gain much traction amid relevant national actors and other (large) coal producing states. If proponents of a moratorium succeed in framing the issue in non-climate terms, they should have a greater chance of building domestic political coalitions in favour of the norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observational evidence points to a warming global climate accompanied by rising sea levels which impose significant impacts on island and coastal communities. Studies suggest that internal climate processes can modulate projected future sea level rise (SLR) regionally. It is not clear whether this modulation depends on the future climate pathways. Here, by analyzing two sets of ensemble simulations from a climate model, we investigate the potential reduction of SLR, as a result of steric and dynamic oceanographic affects alone, achieved by following a lower emission scenario instead of business-as-usual one over the twenty-first century and how it may be modulated regionally by internal climate variability. Results show almost no statistically significant difference in steric and dynamic SLR on both global and regional scales in the near-term between the two scenarios, but statistically significant SLR reduction for the global mean and many regions later in the century (2061-2080). However, there are regions where the reduction is insignificant, such as the Philippines and west of Australia, that are associated with ocean dynamics and intensified internal variability due to external forcing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-level methane emissions from coal mine ventilation air (CMV-CH; i.e., 1 % CH) can significantly contribute to global climate change, and therefore, treatment is important to reduce impacts. To investigate CMV-CH abatement potential, five different mixed methanotrohic consortia (MMCs) were established from soil/sediment sources, i.e., landfill top cover soil, bio-solid compost, vegetated humus soil, estuarine and marine sediments. Enrichment conditions for MMCs were as follows: nitrate mineral salt (NMS) medium, pH ~ 6.8; 25 °C; 20-25 % CH; agitation 200 rpm; and culture period 20 days, in mini-bench-top bioreactors. The enriched cultures were supplemented with extra carbon (methanol 0.5-1.5 %, formate 5-15 mM, and acetate 5-15 mM), nitrogen (nitrate 0.5-1.5 g L, ammonium 0.1-0.5 g L, or urea: 0.1-0.5 g L), and trace elements (copper 1-5 μM, iron 1-5 μM, and zinc 1-5 μM) in different batch experiments to improve low-level CH abatement. Average CH oxidation capacities (MOCs) of MMCs varied between 1.712 ± 0.032 and 1.963 ± 0.057 mg gDW h. Addition of formate improved the MOCs of MMCs, but the dose-response varied for different MMCs. Acetate, nitrate and copper had no significant effect on MOCs, while addition of methanol, ammonium, urea, iron and zinc impacted negatively. Overall, MMCs enriched from marine sediments and landfill top cover soil showed high MOCs which were largely resilient to nutrient supplementation, suggesting a strong potential for biofilter development for industrial low-level CH abatement, such as those present in CMV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate projection data were applied to two commonly used pome fruit flowering models to investigate potential differences in predicted full bloom timing. The two methods, fixed thermal time and sequential chill-growth, produced different results for seven apple and pear varieties at two Australian locations. The fixed thermal time model predicted incremental advancement of full bloom, while results were mixed from the sequential chill-growth model. To further investigate how the sequential chill-growth model reacts under climate perturbed conditions, four simulations were created to represent a wider range of species physiological requirements. These were applied to five Australian locations covering varied climates. Lengthening of the chill period and contraction of the growth period was common to most results. The relative dominance of the chill or growth component tended to predict whether full bloom advanced, remained similar or was delayed with climate warming. The simplistic structure of the fixed thermal time model and the exclusion of winter chill conditions in this method indicate it is unlikely to be suitable for projection analyses. The sequential chill-growth model includes greater complexity; however, reservations in using this model for impact analyses remain. The results demonstrate that appropriate representation of physiological processes is essential to adequately predict changes to full bloom under climate perturbed conditions with greater model development needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies in temperate countries have shown that both hot weather in summer and cold weather in winter increase short-term (daily) mortality. The gradual warming, decade on decade, that Australia has experienced since the 1960s, might therefore be expected to have differentially affected mortality in the two seasons, and thus indicate an early impact of climate change on human health. Failure to detect such a signal would challenge the widespread assumption that the effect of weather on mortality implies a similar effect of a change from the present to projected future climate. We examine the ratio of summer to winter deaths against a background of rising average annual temperatures over four decades: the ratio has increased from 0.71 to 0.86 since 1968. The same trend, albeit of varying strength, is evident in all states of Australia, in four age groups (aged 55 years and above) and in both sexes. Analysis of cause-specific mortality suggests that the change has so far been driven more by reduced winter mortality than by increased summer mortality. Furthermore, comparisons of this seasonal mortality ratio calculated in the warmest subsets of seasons in each decade, with that calculated in the coldest seasons, show that particularly warm annual conditions, which mimic the expected temperatures of future climate change, increase the likelihood of higher ratios (approaching 1:1). Overall, our results indicate that gradual climate change, as well as short-term weather variations, affect patterns of mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the future changes of Asian-Australian monsoon (AAM) system projected by 20 climate models that participated in the phase five of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). A metrics for evaluation of the model's performance on AAM precipitation climatology and variability is used to select a subset of seven best models. The CMIP5 models are more skillful than the CMIP3 models in terms of the AAM metrics. The future projections made by the selected multi-model mean suggest the following changes by the end of the 21st century. (1) The total AAM precipitation (as well as the land and oceanic components) will increase significantly (by 4.5 %/°C) mainly due to the increases in Indian summer monsoon (5.0 %/°C) and East Asian summer monsoon (6.4 %/°C) rainfall; the Australian summer monsoon rainfall will increase moderately by 2.6 %/°C. The 'warm land-cool ocean' favors the entire AAM precipitation increase by generation of an east-west asymmetry in the sea level pressure field. On the other hand, the warm Northern Hemisphere-cool Southern Hemisphere induced hemispheric SLP difference favors the ASM but reduces the Australian summer monsoon rainfall. The combined effects explain the differences between the Asian and Australian monsoon changes. (2) The low-level tropical AAM circulation will weaken significantly (by 2.3 %/°C) due to atmospheric stabilization that overrides the effect of increasing moisture convergence. Different from the CMIP3 analysis, the EA subtropical summer monsoon circulation will increase by 4.4 %/°C. (3) The Asian monsoon domain over the land area will expand by about 10 %. (4) The spatial structures of the leading mode of interannual variation of AAM precipitation will not change appreciably but the ENSO-AAM relationship will be significantly enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used 16 Global Climate Models and three global warming scenarios to make projections of recharge under a 2050 climate for the entire Australian continent at a 0.05° grid resolution. The results from these 48 future climate variants have been fitted to a probability distribution to enable the results to be summarised and uncertainty quantified. The median results project a reduction in recharge across the west, centre and south of Australia and an increase in recharge across the north and a small area in the east of the continent. The range of results is quite large and for large parts of the continent encompasses both increases and decreases in recharge. This makes it difficult to utilise for water resources management so the results have been analysed with a risk analysis framework; this enables the future projections for groundwater recharge to be communicated to water managers in terms of likelihood and consequence of a reduction in recharge. This highlights an important message for water resource managers that in most areas of Australia they will be making decisions on water allocations under considerable uncertainty as to the direction and magnitude of recharge change under a future climate and that this uncertainty may be irreducible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The patterns of large-scale climate change over the 21st century simulated by 23 CMIP3 global climate models are analyzed to provide understanding of the range of projected temperature T and precipitation P changes for Australia published in 2007. Means of change, standardized by the global warming, within each of 11 regions are calculated for each model. Correlations between regions across the 23 models indicate that the changes are rather coherent across much of the mainland. The all-Australian average changes are also well correlated with a pattern of tropical sea surface temperatures. A Pacific-Indian Dipole index, representing this pattern, correlates strongly with Australian P. It also correlates well with variables in Southeast Asia. The global warming itself correlates well with Australian warming. These two indices of large-scale ocean warming are used to partition the 23 models into four representative future climates. For Australia overall, these can be described as much warmer and drier, much warmer, warmer and drier, and warmer. The four climates span much of the range of the earlier Australian projections over most of the continent. Further, they may be reproduced by a downscaling model forced with the SST anomalies. An assessment of the realism of the ocean pattern changes has the potential to reduce the uncertainty of projections, both for Australia and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We synthesize variability and trends in multiple analyses of Antarctic near-surface temperature representing several independent source datasets and spatially complete reconstructions, and place these into the broader context of the behavior of other components of the climate system during the past 30-50 years. Along with an annual-mean trend during the past 50 years of about 0.1°C/decade averaged over Antarctica, there is a distinct seasonality to the trends, with insignificant change (and even some cooling) in austral summer and autumn in East Antarctica, contrasting with warming in austral winter and spring. Apart from the Peninsula, the seasonal warming is largest and most significant in West Antarctica in the austral spring since the late 1970s. Concurrent trends in sea ice are independent evidence of the observed warming over West Antarctic, with the decrease in sea ice area in the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas congruent with at least 50% of the inland warming of West Antarctica. Trends in near surface winds and geopotential heights over the high-latitude South Pacific are consistent with a role for atmospheric forcing of the sea ice and air temperature anomalies. Most of the circulation trend projects onto the two Pacific South American (PSA) modes of atmospheric circulation variability, while the Southern Annular Mode lacks a positive trend in spring that would otherwise cause a cooling tendency. The largest circulation trend is associated with the PSA-1 mode, a wave-train extending from the tropics to the high Southern latitudes. The PSA-1 mode is significantly correlated with SSTs in the southwestern tropical and subtropical Pacific. The increased SSTs in this region, together with the observed increase in rainfall, suggest that anomalous deep convection has strengthened or increased the occurrence of the Rossby wave-train associated with PSA-1. This hypothesis is supported by results from two ensembles of SST-forced atmospheric general circulation model simulations. Finally, the implications of the seasonality, timing, and spatial patterns of Antarctic temperature trends with respect to interpreting the relative roles of stratospheric ozone depletion, SSTs and increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have raised concerns that tropical cyclones (TCs), particularly severe TCs, have become more frequent in many places in response to global warming. Other studies discuss errors in TC data that can cause large inaccuracies in some of the observed trends. Additional studies conclude that TCs are likely to become more intense in the future in response to global warming, while regional modelling studies for the south-west Pacific near north-eastern Australia project an intensification of TCs and either a decrease or no change in TC numbers. Here we describe and use a new data base of severe land-falling TCs for eastern Australia derived from numerous historical sources, that has taken over a decade to develop. It provides one of the world's longest reliable records of tropical cyclone activity, and allows us to document changes over much longer periods than has been done previously for the Southern Hemisphere. Land-fall numbers are shown to vary a great deal on interannual, decadal and longer time-scales. The interannual variability is consistent with previous studies using much shorter data sets: land-fall numbers are well-simulated as a Poisson process and are modulated by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Land-falls occurred almost twice as often in La Niña years as they did in El Niño years, and multiple land-falls only occurred during La Niña years. The statistical link between land-falls and pre-season values of the Southern Oscillation Index provides a modest predictive capability. Decadal variability in ENSO drives some of the decadal variability in land-fall numbers. The sign and magnitude of trends calculated over 30 years periods vary substantially, highlighting that caution needs to be taken in making inferences about trends based on e.g. satellite era data only. The linear trend in the number of severe TCs making land-fall over eastern Australia declined from about 0.45 TCs/year in the early 1870s to about 0.17 TCs/year in recent times-a 62% decline. This decline can be partially explained by a weakening of the Walker Circulation, and a natural shift towards a more El Niño-dominated era. The extent to which global warming might be also be partially responsible for the decline in land-falls-if it is at all-is unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 44-item questionnaire was constructed to determine secondary students’ views about how useful various specific actions might be at reducing global warming, their willingness to undertake the various actions, and the extent to which these two might be linked. Responses ( n = 500) were obtained from students in years 7 to 10 in three schools in NSW, Australia. For some pro-environmental actions, the degree to which students professed a willingness to act was greater than might be expected from the extent to which they believed the action to be useful. Such actions are those that involve minimal inconvenience such as switching off un-used electrical appliances, or those that are becoming well embedded in social practice, such as recycling. For other pro-environmental actions, the degree to which students were willing to act seemed less than might be expected, given the extent to which they believed the action to be useful. Actions concerning personal transport, such as buying smaller cars or using public rather than private transport, and obtaining more electricity from nuclear power stations, fell into this category. Here, there are disincentives to acting in a pro-environmental manner relating to personal inconvenience, or concern about nuclear power. The data were also explored to determine the strength of the relationships, for each action, between students’ professed willingness to act and their belief that an action would be effective. This suggested a measure of the potential effectiveness of education about that action. For some actions, this relationship was weak; in such cases, altering belief about the usefulness of the action might not be expected to produce major changes in behaviour. Issues concerning public transport were of this type; clearly, for issues such as these, other approaches and/or inducements may be needed to persuade people to adopt pro-environmental behaviour patterns. For other actions the relationship was stronger, so that in these areas environmental education could well be effective, especially if a large proportion of the population are not already willing to undertake that action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each year, irrigated Saharan- and Australian-desert forests could sequester amounts of atmospheric CO2 at least equal to that from burning fossil fuels. Without any rain, to capture CO2 produced from gasoline requires adding about $1 to the per-gallon pump-price to cover irrigation costs, using reverse osmosis (RO), desalinated, sea water. Such mature technology is economically competitive with the currently favored, untested, power-plant Carbon Capture (and deep underground, or under-ocean) Sequestration (CCS). Afforestation sequesters CO2, mostly as easily stored wood, both from distributed sources (automotive, aviation, etc., that CCS cannot address) and from power plants. Climatological feasibility and sustainability of such irrigated forests, and their potential global impacts are explored using a general circulation model (GCM). Biogeophysical feedback is shown to stimulate considerable rainfall over these forests, reducing desalination and irrigation costs; economic value of marketed, renewable, forest biomass, further reduces costs; and separately, energy conservation also reduces the size of the required forests and therefore their total capital and operating costs. The few negative climate impacts outside of the forests are discussed, with caveats. If confirmed with other GCMs, such irrigated, subtropical afforestation probably provides the best, near-term route to complete control of green-house-gas-induced, global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional climate projections using climate models commonly use an “all-model” ensemble based on data sets such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 4th Assessment (AR4). Some regional assessments have omitted models based on specific criteria. We use a criteria based on the capacity of climate models to simulate the observed probability density function calculated using daily data, model-by-model and region-by-region for each of the AR4 models over Australia. We demonstrate that by omitting those climate models with relatively weak skill in simulating the observed probability density functions of maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation, different regional projections are obtained. Differences include: larger increases in the mean maximum and mean minimum temperatures, but smaller increases in the annual maximum and minimum temperatures. There is little impact on mean precipitation but the better models simulate a larger increase in the annual rainfall event combined with a larger decrease in the number of rain days. The weaker models bias the amount of mean warming towards lower increases, bias annual maximum temperatures to excessive warming and bias precipitation such that the amount of the annual rainfall event is under-estimated. We suggest that omitting weak models from regional scale estimates of future climate change helps clarify the nature and scale of the projected impacts of global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high-quality monthly pan evaporation dataset of 60 stations has been developed for monitoring long-term pan evaporation trends over Australia. The quality control process involved examination of historical station metadata together with an objective test comparing candidate series with neighboring stations. Identified points of discontinuity were located, including installations of bird guards, site relocations and changes in exposure. Appropriate inhomogeneity adjustments have been applied using established methods to produce the first homogeneous pan evaporation dataset for Australia. Analysis of these data reveals that Australian annual mean pan-evaporation shows large interannual variability with no trend over the 1970-2005 period. Previous studies using unadjusted data have shown a decline in pan evaporation, highlighting the importance of checking data for homogeneity before drawing conclusions about long-term trends. A strong inverse correlation is evident between all-Australian means of pan evaporation and rainfall, while a moderate positive correlation is found between pan evaporation and mean temperature. The positive correlations between mean temperature and pan evaporation that exist on the interannual time scales are not reflected in the long-term trends, highlighting that the mechanisms that are responsible for variations on the short and longer time scales are different. This result cautions against the expectation that large changes in potential evaporation are a natural consequence of global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss the role of the political economy in adapting to climatic change and global warming. Topics discussed include environmental projects under the Adaptation Fund of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the entrenchment process for climate adaptation projects, and two case studies related to enclosure in the ecosystems of Australia and Norway.