Hottest November On Record For Melbourne - Mean Temp Up 1+C In 20 Years, Rainfall Down 15% In 10

[hatrack]

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The change in climate is also significant - though the numbers may seem subtle. Figures from the Victorian Climate Centre, within the Bureau of Meteorology, show Melbourne's mean maximum temperature has trended upwards for decades, from below 20 degrees in the 1970s to almost 21 degrees this decade. The mean minimum temperature has crept up from under 10 degrees in the 1950s to almost 12 degrees. Last month, Melbourne residents sweltered through the city's hottest November night on record - with the temperature stuck above 28 degrees at midnight.

More dramatic still has been the plunge in annual rainfall levels this decade, by more than 100 millimetres to about 520 millimetres. The drop has been greatest in autumn and spring, by as much as 23 millimetres over the long term, says the climate centre's Harvey Stern. The retreat of westerly winds has diminished the strength of cold fronts in the city, where the growth in traffic and concrete buildings conspire to retain heat and release it in the evening. And all this to the backdrop of global warming, Stern adds.

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TWO years ago, Di David razed her English cottage garden of camellias, roses, lavenders, box hedges and lush ground covers - her pride and joy for 15 years. Planted in its place around her Sandringham home is a native garden of grasses, tea trees, acacias, grevilleas and weeping gums. She misses the perfume of her David Austin rose bushes, but has no regrets. ''There was a lot of colour to it but it was an extremely labour-intensive garden physically, and obviously needed a lot of water and also had lots of grass. We had gone through a very hot summer and I had been bucketing like many people and thought I can't do this any more,'' she says. ''It is an exciting event to start again, to have a new garden, a new perspective.''

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http://www.theage.com.au/environment/under-a-changing-sky-20091205-kc43.html

[villager]

1. so when they weren't using their hair dryers to melt snowpack at the icecaps, those hoaxy scientists

... had them all trained to blow hot air over the skies of Melbourne!?

[dgibby]

2. It would appear Melbourne is toast (literally). n/t

[orwell]

3. But what about the hacked e-mails?

I thought everything was hunky dory now...

[Craftsman]

4. First time in recorded history it has snowed 2 years in a row here in Houston