Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The BBC have reported on Cyclone Alfred, which has just hit Queensland:
Hundreds of thousands of people remain without power in Australia after a cyclone brought wild weather to the east coast.
Communities in southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales (NSW) were beginning the clean-up on Sunday after the storm caused widespread flooding and knocked down power lines and trees.
A 61-year-old man’s body was recovered from floodwaters on Saturday, while in a separate incident, 12 soldiers were taken to hospital after their convoy crashed en route to rescue operations.
The storm had weakened by the time it made landfall near Brisbane on Saturday night, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sunday warned locals of the continued wild weather and risks from flooding.
“The situation in Queensland and northern New South Wales remains very serious due to flash flooding and heavy winds,” Albanese said.
“Heavy rainfall, damaging wind gusts and coastal surf impacts are expected to continue over coming days.”
In just about every story about hurricanes, the BBC invariably include a paragraph to the effect that global warming is making them worse.
Strangely this latest report fails to make any comment at all about long term trends. Could it be because cyclones have become a very rare occurrence for Australia?
This is what the Australian Bureau of Meteorology confirm that not only have tropical cyclones becomes less frequent, but there has also been a decline in the more severe ones.
Cyclone Alfred, Australia’s big East Coast cyclone was until recently hyped as a symptom of the climate apocalypse. But doomsayers are facing another disappointment from nature.
Cyclone Alfred, Australia’s big East Coast cyclone was until recently hyped as a symptom of the climate apocalypse. But doomsayers are facing another disappointment from nature.
Is climate change supercharging Tropical Cyclone Alfred as it powers towards Australia?
Cyclone Alfred formed in the Coral Sea towards the end of February when sea surface temperatures were almost 1C hotter than usual
Tropical Cyclone Alfred is due to hit south-east Queensland some time on Saturday morning, bringing the risk of destructive winds, extreme flooding and storm surges to millions of people around Brisbane, the Gold Coast and northern New South Wales.
After last year was recorded as the hottest on record around the world, and the hottest for Australia’s oceans, what role could the climate crisis be playing in Tropical Cyclone Alfred and its impacts?
Fortunately Cyclone Alfred is turning into a fizzle. A powerful storm which will bring lots of rain and flooding, but no longer a catastrophic cyclone.
AS IT HAPPENED: Cyclone Alfred downgraded as it nears coast, expected to cross between Maroochydore and Brisbane; Albanese scraps plan for April election; ‘Dangerous times ahead’ as wind, rain hammer millions
Cyclone Alfred has been downgraded to a category 1 storm in the latest advice issued by the Bureau of Meteorology.
The system is moving north-west at 9km/h, pushing back the timing it’s forecast to cross the coast.
Alfred is still on track to cross over the Moreton Bay Islands early on Saturday morning before crossing the mainland coast between Brisband and Maroochydore later in the day.
The cyclone is forecast to weaken as it moves inland late Saturday and Sunday.
While damaging wind gusts up to 120km/h and heavy to intense rainfall is still forecast, bringing the possibility of life-threatening flash flooding, the weather bureau says destructive wind gusts are no longer expected.
The following is a rather confused statement from the Australian CSIRO, Australia’s peak scientific body. Cyclone frequency is declining, but their broken theories suggest cyclone frequency should be rising.
3. Has the frequency of tropical cyclones changed?
Research has shown a statistically-significant downward trend in the annual number of tropical cyclones in the Australian region over the period extending from 1981/82 to 2017/18, during the period of satellite images. The reasons for this downward trend are still being determined but are likely to be due to a combination of both natural variability and longer-term climate change. Additional non-satellite observations suggest there has also been a longer-term reduction in the number of tropical cyclones since 1900.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s satellite record is relatively short and there have been changes in the historical methods of analysis. Combined with the high variability in tropical cyclone numbers and influences of natural variability such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, it makes it difficult to attribute trends to any single factor.
However, it is clear that sea surface temperatures off the northern Australian coast have increased – part of a significant warming of the oceans that has been observed in the past 50 years due to increases in greenhouse gases. Warmer oceans tend to increase the amount of moisture that gets transported from the ocean to the atmosphere, and a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and so there is a greater potential for intense rainfall events with tropical cyclones.
Obviously, the risk of damaging floods is still a serious concern, and the remnants of the cyclone may dump a lot of water into Brisbane’s rivers or other low laying areas. But there may be another explanation for why that flood risk in Brisbane is so severe.
From a few days ago;
…
‘Anxiously watching’: Huge Cyclone call made
Even though South East Queensland’s dams are almost full, not a single litre of water will be released until Alfred’s predicted 600mm of rain starts to fall.
“We don’t always know when and where rain will fall,” a Seqwater spokesperson told The Courier-Mail.
“Our 24/7 Flood Operations Centre is mobilised and – pending rainfall – is prepared to make controlled, gated releases later this week if required.”
Why are dam operators being ordered to cling on to every drop of water until the last possible moment? The reason of course, is not enough dam capacity. As Brisbane and other Queensland city populations have boomed, there has been little interest in providing water resources to match the growing population. The result is dam operators have to hang on to every drop of water, and only release that water when they are certain incoming storms will hit their catchment area – even when the incoming storm is a cyclone.
SEQ does not have enough drinking water for booming population
South-east Queensland will not have enough drinking water to support its rapidly growing population amid fears the region’s dams will struggle to supply millions of extra residents.
The revelation comes as residents could be forced to endure mandatory water restrictions in less than four months.
A stark warning about the need for new water sources – such as a dam or desalination plant – was emailed to Water Minister Glenn Butcher’s office in December, with a report revealing demand for water would increase as the south-east Queensland population grew by more than two million people over the next 25 years.
If the dams had greater capacity, there would be much less risk of flooding – dam operators could confidently run their dams down in the face of rainfall threats, without fear of water shortages if the rain misses. The spare dam capacity could be used to soak up floodwater in the catchment area which feeds the dam.
The picture at the top of the article shows the potential consequences of failing to release dam water until the last minute.
Then as now, dam operators were ordered to delay release until the last moment. The result was catastrophic – when 3ft+ of rain abruptly dumped into the catchment area of the Wivenhoe Dam, dam operators were forced to open the floodgates to save the dam, raising the Brisbane River well above normal height. The torrential dam outflow collided with the cyclonic low pressure storm surge rushing in from the sea in Brisbane’s most expensive business and residential district.
Colleges Crossing, pictured at the top of this article, is the main outflow of the Wivenhoe Dam, the water reservoir which supplies the state capital Brisbane. The water which passes through Colleges Crossing feeds into the Brisbane River, which in 2013 was a major contributor to inner city flooding. My home at the time became an island as spillway water flooded across the lowlands, cutting all the roads, and bringing misery to riverside property owners downstream of the dam.
My point is flood disasters in Brisbane have nothing to do with climate change. I doubt flood risk could ever be completely eliminated in a subtropical location like Brisbane, but floods could be mitigated by better flood control, including enlarging existing dams or building new dams. Larger dam capacity would give dam operators the confidence to run down water levels in the face of a dangerous rainfall event, even if they were not sure if the rain would hit the dam catchment, instead of clinging on to water until the last minute, then flooding the city of Brisbane with an emergency release to save the dam from catastrophic failure.
Update (EW): Brisbane might get lucky this time, the heaviest rain appears to be slightly to the South East of the Wivenhoe catchment, though since this rain is expected to last a few days there may still be a risk. It is likely just the rain over Brisbane could create at least minor flooding.
Rain in Brisbane 8am local time 09 March 2025. Source Australian BOM
A year ago I wrote about the odd link between the Hunga Tonga volcanic dust and floods in Australia, but perhaps volcanic dust also played a role in the savage rain bombs of 1893 that caused the infamous floods of Brisbane?
After Hunga Tonga erupted last year, about a week later unusually heavy rain started falling over Australia — even washing out the Indian Pacific Railway line connecting East and West Australia. A month later and the dust had gone around the world and returned to give us glorious sunsets followed by more rain bombs.
So it may be just a coincidence, but the second heaviest Australian rain bomb was on Feb 3, 1893. And three weeks earlier on January 7th the Calbuco Volcano in Chile had its largest eruption in the last 130 years?
In 1893 an astonishing, flabbergasting day occurred, where 907mm of rain dropped from the sky on Crohamhurst in Queensland (that’s nearly 36 inches!). It came in an astonishing week, where the heavens dumped 2 meters of rain (6.6 ft) in just four days subsequently causing some of the worst flooding Brisbane has ever seen as the waters collected and flowed downstream.
In 2011, ash travelled around the world twice — taking 7 days and then another ten to do the second lap. BBC
So this track (through Sydney) would have been too far south to reach Brisbane, but other times volcanic dust travels north. (The path in the map above seems figurative, not literal…).
The two volcanoes we are discussing in Chile lie at 41 degrees south compared to Crohamhurst in Queensland, Australia, which is only 27 degrees south and much closer to the equator. But in a smaller 2015 explosion, the dust from Calbuco was tracked moving north from 41°S up to about 30°S within just a few days — putting it a lot closer to the right latitude for Southern Queensland. With no satellites in 1893, we don’t know where the dust went, but we know there was probably a lot of it, and it went somewhere…
According to the Department of Geological and Mining Engineering at Michigan Tech:
The first historically documented eruption began on 7 January 1893 and lasted until mid-January 1894. The initial phase of this eruption was violently explosive and led to the generation of destructive lahars. During the later stages of the activity, the volcano may have extruded lava although this is not certain.
Minor eruptions occurred in 1895, 1906, on 22 April 1907, in March 1909, and in 1911-1912; none of these events produced lava flows or lahars.
In 2015 a smaller eruption at Calbuco in 2015 sent dust to the North:
On 23 April at around 2330, a third period of activity resulted in ash plumes rising 2 km and drifting NE and E. On 24 April the ash plume continued to rise 2 km and explosions were detected. News articles noted that international travel was disrupted; flights in and out of several major cities were delayed or canceled. Thermal anomalies, based on MODIS satellite data, were also observed during 23-24 April.
According to one news report, ash from the eruption reached southern Brazil on 25 April, prompting some airlines to cancel flights in and out of Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo. Some houses in areas near the volcano had collapsed from the weight of the ash. Sporadic explosions caused continued ash plumes 25 April, but to a lower height of 400 m. Seismicity declined during 26-27 April; ash rose 1.5 km, and drifted NE and SE.
By 28 April, a satellite-based estimate of sulfur dioxide emissions was 0.3-0.4 Tg (Tg is one million metric tons), detected as high as 21 km altitude.
NASA tracking shows the plume from Calbuco can travel north quickly.
The CSIRO discusses the extreme weather events of 1893 but doesn’t mention any volcanoes
According to the CSIRO there were a series of tropical cyclones (TC) in Jan and Feb 1893, but none of the dates fit the monster downpour on Feb 1-4. The cyclone on Jan 22 would have soaked the ground, but not caused big rain nearly two weeks later.
A TC during 21–22 January 1893 passed just east of Brisbane where gusts reached 57 knots (28 m/s) with the MSLP down to 985.1 hPa at 1700UTC 22 January 1893 (Fig. 2). There was a large storm surge in Moreton Bay to 0.58 m (Gourlay 1981) with widespread sea damage at Sandgate, Cleveland and Southport. Heavy rain fell across SEQ with the heaviest 24-h total of 179.8 mm at Mount Tamborine. There were two deaths in northern NSW with heavy gales at Lismore, Casino, Grafton and Sydney.
For Brisbane, the monster rain collected into a major flood. Indeed, many floods in 1893 — on the 5th, 12th and 19th February, and again on the 12th of June. The flooding on the 5th of Feb was the second highest after the 1841 floods.
3.3 First 1893 flood – possibly the worst in Australian history
The largest recorded flood in Brisbane City was 8.35 m on 5 February 1893 (Brunt 1958; Newman 1958) and the unprecedented conditions resulted in at least 30 fatalities. Early on 3 February a 15.2-m high wall of water was observed to roar down a Brisbane River gorge. The water tumbled down the Stanley River to its junction with the Brisbane River. Nearby was Caboonbah, the residence of grazier Mr. H.P. Somerset. Caboonbah (Fig. 3a) is on high ground, with a view of the Brisbane River below its junction with the Stanley River. Crohamhurst (on the Stanley River) recorded 907 mm of rain in the 24 h to 9 am 2 February 1893 and this was an Australian record for 24-h rainfall up until 1979. The location of Crohamhurst and the 96-h rainfall is shown in Fig. 3b.
For whatever it’s worth there were no mass rain events in 1893 in Melbourne or Sydney. If La Nina was the main culprit (or widespread volcanic dust) we would have expected to see major rain there too.
We can’t say much about a path of a dust cloud 130 years ago — only that it might have been in the right place at the right time.
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