Sydney Suburb Of Penrith At 46.9C (116.4F); January 2017 Hottest Jan Ever For Sydney, Brisbane
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Australians are no strangers to hot weather. But for the past week large parts of the continent have suffered a heatwave of unusual length and intensity. Temperature records were beaten in cities and rural towns around the country. Shops across Sydney ran out of fans, and New South Wales energy minister Don Harwin urged people to beat the heat by going to the movies. More than 40,000 homes in South Australia experienced blackouts as electricity networks struggled to cope with the increased demand placed on the grid by air conditioners. For those lucky enough to live near the coast, there’s an easy solution: go for a swim. Sydney’s beaches have been packed, as they are every summer, with city dwellers and tourists desperate to cool off.
But in the far-western Sydney suburb of Penrith – 60km from the coast – options for getting out of the heat are few. Penrith has the dubious honour of being Sydney’s hottest suburb, with summer daytime temperatures four or five degrees higher than in the inner city. During last week’s heatwave, the suburb sweltered through an unheard-of 46.9°C – a record for the city. “Penrith has had about 12 days above 40 degrees this summer, which is clearly unusual,” says Karl Braganza, climate monitoring manager at the Bureau of Meteorology. When it gets that hot, Penrith mayor John Thain recommends that people don’t even venture outside. “The burn factor here’s so quick: it’s really important for people to stay safe,” Thain says. “Last weekend people were just hunkered down at home.”
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The heatwave is officially over, but the reality of Australian summers getting hotter is much more serious and far-reaching than a few more hot days each year. Almost every Australian capital city experienced higher-than-average temperatures in January; in Sydney and Brisbane, it was the hottest month on record. That scorching January came after 2016 was the country’s fourth-hottest year on record – a year that, in turn, followed on from 2013, the hottest year the country has ever recorded. That increasing heat has made an already dry continent even more prone to devastating bushfires. NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons describes fire conditions during the heatwave as “the worst possible... they are catastrophic. We haven’t seen this in NSW to this extent, ever.” Fire conditions were even worse than on “black Saturday”, Australia’s worst-ever bushfire disaster, in 2009, in which 173 people died. Less dramatic, but just as worrying, is the rising number of deaths from heat stress, which already kills more Australians than all other natural disasters combined. A shockingly high number of Australians died of heat stress on 27 January – the day after Australia Day, a national holiday where outdoor activities like swimming, barbecues and going to sporting matches are commonplace.
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Conservative governments in Britain, Germany and elsewhere have taken steps to reduce their nations’ carbon emissions, often suffering politically as a result. But no such political courage seems to exist in Australia. Instead, absurdity reigns. At the height of the heatwave last week, treasurer Scott Morrison, one of the most powerful politicians in the country, brandished a lump of coal at parliamentary question time, declaring coal to be the future of Australian energy. “This is coal. Don’t be afraid! Don’t be scared!” Morrison proclaimed to the laughter of his government colleagues. They passed the lump of coal around among themselves as Morrison claimed the opposition Labor party, which has proposed ambitious renewable energy targets, are suffering from “coalphobia”. It was reminiscent of the stunt pulled in 2015 by US Republican senator James Inhofe, who infamously threw a snowball on the floor of Congress as “evidence” that global warming is a myth. Morrison’s actions typify the government’s attitude to climate change – not just indifference, but an active hostility towards anything that threatens the country’s large coal industry. Last year prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and a number of his ministers blamed another South Australian blackout on the state’s renewable energy supply, despite advice from the public service stating that the real cause was a large storm that knocked over several major transmission lines.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/19/australia-new-normal-47c-climate-change