Canberra aware of climate change, but heatwave adds urgency

Climate change preparation key as Canberra beats heatwave record, Canberra Times, By Jasper Lindell, 18 January 2019 Canberra has experienced its longest run of days above 40 degrees, with the temperature hitting 40.1 at 3.41pm on Friday afternoon, while experts say the city needs to quickly adapt to more extreme heat driven by climate change.A cool change is expected to bring closer to average temperatures on Friday night or early on Saturday morning – but the capital still sweltered through four days at 40 degrees or above, the worst heatwave since January 1939.

Bureau of Meteorology Senior Climatologist Blair Trewin said the current heatwave was striking to people of his generation who grew up in Canberra and never experienced a day above 40 degrees……..

The heatwave placed higher demands on the ACT’s electricity grid this week, but supply shortfalls, which would have seen rolling blackouts in the capital on Friday to manage electricity demand, did not eventuate.

The director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, Mark Howden, said a particular heatwave wasn’t a direct result of climate change, but climate change was embedded into all extreme weather events.

Professor Howden said a small increase in the average temperature meant a higher likelihood of hotter temperatures.

There was only a five degree average temperature difference between present climate conditions and the Ice Age, he said.

Canberra could expect extreme hot weather more frequently and in longer spells, along with a reduction in autumn, winter and spring rainfall, Prof Howden said.

We’d also expect to see a lot more fires and fire frequency, and the fire season and the intensity of those fires going up.”

“Canberra is probably one of the more climate change aware and climate change active cities and that’s particularly because the current government has been leaders in terms of climate change,” Professor Howden said.

The ACT government’s 2016 Climate Change Adaptation Strategy requires the impacts of climate change to “mainstreamed” and incorporated into government, household and business practice.

Dr Peter Tait, an Australian National University lecturer and general practitioner who spent 32 years in Alice Springs, said many of his Canberra patients didn’t have heatwave contingency plans and that needed to change as the city experienced more periods of extreme heat.

But Dr Tait said the emphasis needed to be on building heat resilience into the “fabric of society”, including enforcing heat appropriate building codes.

“We need to be doing that active infrastructure planning now,” he said…….https://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/act/climate-change-preparation-key-as-canberra-beats-heatwave-record-20190118-p50s66.html