Category: Tasmanian Lifestyle Blogs

A severe stratospheric warming event over the South Pole could have big implications for Tasmanian weather, see the story here.

This story and this story explain it further.

If you have an interest in Tasmania’s future, please read this translated article about the future of fighting bushfires, according to Marc Castellnou, who is the Forestry Action Group (GRAF) of the Firefighters of Catalonia chief, and a former EU fire advisor.

He says: “The era of firefighting is ending and the era of landscape management is beginning … there is no capacity to extinguish the big fires, you have to manage the landscape. Large fires are entering areas where they are not expected. They have stopped being the exceptionality to start being the norm.”

Asked if people could live safely next to forest in the Mediterranean, he said: “Yes, if you have a lowered fuel load. But an unmanaged forest, which lacks species, or with an impoverished ecosystem, will burn. The answer must always be to look for healthy landscapes and, whether for mature forests or for forest management, to remove fuel from the landscape, and this has never been done in modern times.”

To reiterate, he says the future of fighting the world’s intensifying wildfires is landscape management, as it is impossible to stop big fires once they get going.

Clearly, Tassie is in a difficult place, given its endless tracts of drying pine monoculture and eucalypt forests, in a windy climate, with hot, dry summers.

Unfortunately, when burned, the flammable eucalypts quickly grow back and there is no gradual change to a less flammable landscape.

Southern Tasmania’s burned areas are already growing back after the Jan/Feb 2019 fires.

Pine plantations near towns will grow more dangerous with every year of warmer, drier, windier weather.

Weather data shows southern Australia is becoming increasingly dry, and Tasmania seems to have a growing propensity for lightning strikes. The wind is famously, at times, gale force.

Is Tassie condemned to a Groundhog Day of intense bushfires?

The solution, according to the above article, requires a little more than the famous “raking” that Donald Trump espoused.

Large scale forest removal/fuel reduction is a radical solution.

Will it take a disaster to implement it?

As discussed earlier, the weakened polar vortex in the northern hemisphere increases the likelihood of Arctic blasts creating record cold in some areas.

This tweet screenshot shows cold weather hitting Finland, as it experiences record cold temperatures.

Such cold snaps are produced as evidence by some that global warming is not happening, when in fact, it is part of the warming process.

Something else that happens – as cold air leaves the pole, hotter air moves in from elsewhere and melts polar ice.

I made a movie (below) of the polar vortexes using snippets from earth.nullschool.net

It uses all the available years from the nullschool website.

The northern hemisphere vortex has changed the most in recent years, as has northern weather.

As climate change affects the southern hemisphere, changes in the vortex and jetstream may influence Tasmanian weather.

For example, Tasmania may get polar blasts, more extreme rain events, and extended heat waves, as the vortex breaks down.

The vortex has had a stabilising effect on weather as it moves things along. Uncertainties lay ahead.

There are some good analytic videos on YouTube about the jetstream.

My video simply depicts the annual vortex over time, make of it what you will.

Siberia has been ablaze again this year, with the fires this decade worse than at any time in the past 10,000 years, according to this report.

What is bizarre this year is severe flooding and fires happening almost side by side, according to this report.

These are not everyday floods, but floods that have risen to the third floor of buildings.

Vast Siberian fires also happened back in 2015. And 2016. And 2017. And 2018.

Much the same is happening in the high latitudes elsewhere.

The point of this post in relation to Tasmania?

Tasmania is getting warmer and drier, and it is already a windy place, with dry lightning strikes hitting the forests in summer.

Forests across the world are burning.

The Tasmanian fires last year were possibly just a shot across the bow.

Take the hint and prepare your property for a more fiery world.

Meanwhile, here’s a reminder that it does get hot in Tassie, even in the Huon.

The recent rain hasn’t changed much on the East Coast. The south-east has had a fair fall, with the Huon River running high.

Here’s our previous post to compare the earlier dryness images.

Meanwhile, an observation regarding fires in the northern hemisphere’s high latitudes.

In Tassie, stay up-to-date with the experts here.

Seems to be a lot of dead trees in the Huon Valley, and they are well outside of last year’s burned areas.

They are on north and south facing slopes.

Is this normal? Or from cyclical drought? Or part of a trend related to a drying climate? Borers? Something else?

Or is the Huon joining the long list of regions around the world experiencing tree death, places such as these.

I’ll post up a few more tree pix in due course.

And Tasmanian blue gum leads the way … story here.

Maybe the extra revenue will solve staffing problems at the hospital.

The Tasmanian Government has gone to caged eggs not long after giving grants to producers to produce more free range eggs … external story here.

Fortunately the average Jo wields plenty of power in his or her choices at the shops. Here’s a good story about Australian egg-buying preferences … here.

And a cage farming video, don’t watch it before your bacon and egg breakfast tho … https://youtu.be/Myqgi0Y-aXg

We can’t get enough of this winter weather. Sure beats bushfire smoke. This is Judbury.