The fact that people are surprised and world leaders chose to have it there is just fucked in itself
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If even the big money asset operators won’t get behind their plan, they know the reactors are never getting built.
In my mind, the plan serves two purposes: to allow them to nix renewable zones already in the pipeline, and to justify “transitional” investment in refurbishing coal plants to keep running beyond their current end of operation.
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what do they know? There was that day a few weeks back where it was really cold!
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I’m a little confused by the La Nina = Cold/Cooler.
While it generally brings wetter than normal weather to the Western Pacific, it results in dryer weather on the eastern side.
Just because it is wetter here that doesn’t necessarily mean it is going to be colder. If that rain falls as thunderstorms later in the afternoon then you are going to have hot summer days.
The cloud cover from these storms will result in increased temperatures overnight as well as it traps the heat in.
On the other side of the Pacific the nights will be colder due to a lack of cloud cover but the days will be warmer due to increased sunshine.
BOM has you covered!
Cooler temperatures
La Niña years tend to see cooler than average maximum temperatures across most of mainland Australia south of the tropics, particularly during the second half of the year. This is due to increased cloud cover and rainfall. However, the increased cloud cover tends to act as an insulator and results in warmer than average minimum temperatures across northern and eastern Australia during La Niña.
So higher mins, lower highs.
I think the difference with this one though is that it appears to be making Tropical Queensland wetter while the areas south of the Tropic of Capricorn has, for the most part, been drier than normal for summer.
Victoria is in drought as is SA (less influenced by La Nina). Western NSW is also very dry.
We’re well below our average rainfall for summer as well.
SE Queensland has been quite wet though.
Given it is a weak La Nina that formed a lot later than normal maybe this isn’t that unusual? El Nino/La Nina is a weather pattern that we know very little about so maybe we shouldn’t assume that it’s going to be cooler?
I mean it totally discounts any effect the Indian Ocean Dipole has.
It’s also about the global impact. There’s the land temperature as well as sea temperature to think about, for the whole of pacific as well as both ends. El Nino sends the land temperature up for us across a whole swathe of the country but La Nina doesn’t have the same impact on as much of South America due to the Andes being higher than the great dividing range. I’ll see if I can find the guardian article on this from about a month ago when 2024 was declared the hottest year on record.
They’re not assuming it. They’re extrapolating from the data they have.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/updates/articles/a020.shtml
Not saying I know anything either. Just that it’s what they’ve observed from La Nina patterns over the last century. It also doesn’t occur in complete isolation. You can see the section in there on the influence of the Indian Ocean Dipole.
The other factor is these patterns are going to alter with climate change impacting them. Presumably radically at times and subtly at others.
I just happen to be reading this thread during the epileptic fit inducing light show at the derby. Why do we insist on spewing methane into the air so we can light big fires on the sidelines at random moments in the middle of summer? Like does anyone even enjoy it? Even if they do it’s still pretty fucked IMO
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After this was published, NASA declared a la Nina event, but BoM still calls it neutral. Either way, for it to be the hottest January on record globally without an el Nino driving the spike is pretty extraordinary.
