Southern Australia is divided into two climate types:
temperate on the coastal region and semi-arid/arid desert grassland region
further inland. In Köeppen’s
climate classification system, the coastal region is a “Cfb” on the Pacific
Ocean and a “Csa” on the Southern Ocean coastline. The capital C indicates that
it is a Mesothermal Mild Mid-latitude climate, while the “fb” is a marine west
coast with a humid and hot summer and the “sa” is a Mediterranean dry, hot
summer. Further inland Australia’s
climate dramatically shifts to a “BSh” climate. The capital “B” indicates that
it is a dry climate, while the “Sh” indicates that it is a subtropical steppe allowing
the viewer to extrapolate that the grassland area is a hot semi-arid region. The
image below illustrates the divide among the climate regions of southeastern
Australia.
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| http://clasfaculty.ucdenver.edu/callen/1202/Climate/EarthTempClim/mapclimateQTVR.mov |
The arid climate of New South Wales can be correlated to the
Southern Oscillation of El Niño because
the central Pacific currents rise in temperature about .5°C which decreases the
strength of the Pacific trade winds, thus reducing the amount of rainfall that
reaches land. La Niña has the opposite effect to increase rainfall that reaches the mainland, but the fire danger is still of critical importance because Australia is a semi-arid climate.
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| Recorded rainfall in Australia one month prior to the Black Saturday fires http://reg.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/lnlist/ |
Although El Niño
can exacerbate the drought conditions of Australia, the fire danger consistently
ranges from moderate to severe to catastrophic according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
The lack of rainfall can be extremely dangerous and deadly for southern
Australia. The arid climate can be so severe that brushfires erupt into
massive uncontrollable fires across the entire southern region.
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| Fires in Victoria, Australia throughout the last decade |
These fires occur nearly every summer and the
image above depicts the number and severity of fires throughout Victoria over
the last decade. The Black Saturday fires were caused by an El Niño event and comprised of nearly 400
individually burning fires. The fires
lasted from February 7, 2009 and March 14, 2009 and were the deadliest fires
recorded in recent history with 173 deaths and 414 people severely injured
across the entire southeastern region of Australia.
Hi Julia. In the section on El Nino's effect on the arid climate of New South Wales, I had one suggestion for improvement. You mentioned how the "arid climate of New South Wales can be correlated to the Southern Oscillation of El Nino". By correlation I take you to mean that the BSh climate above the southern Australian coast rises and falls with the fluctuations in El Nino's area of effect. I thought it would be interesting to show us or tell us (if you could) how much the arid climate "moves" over the El Nino period, so that we could get an idea of how dramatic of an effect El Nino has on New South Wales' climate. Maybe a brief sentence on this would have been an improvement. That's all I have to say about your post, I liked it.
ReplyDeleteAnthony Cordova
Hi Julia! You’re I blog was very informative on Australia’s climate. I like the climate graph you provided because it indicated the exact types of climate found in Australia. It was helpful to see exactly where the semi-arid and temperate regions are located. I like that you gave much detail on climate because it helped me understand it better. You also did a good job explaining how the severe fires are caused and how El Nino negatively affects them by making fires more dangerous. The graph that recorded the fires in the last decade was also helpful illustrating the danger and concern of Australia’s fires. I had no idea that the fires are severe in Australia that it caused 179 deaths in 2009. Overall, you did a great job!
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