Spring Heatwave Pushes Australian Fire Danger To "Catastrophic" Category - Plus, Graph Of The Day

[hatrack]

A spring heat wave scorched southeastern Australia in mid-November 2009, pushing the fire danger to the “catastrophic” category in parts of South Australia and New South Wales and to “extreme” in other surrounding areas. Many cities, including Melbourne and Adelaide experienced record-breaking temperatures that continued for many days.

This pair of images illustrates the impact of the heatwave on the land surface temperatures—which are different from the air temperatures reported in the daily weather report—across the continent. Based on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, the maps show where temperatures from November 9–16 (left) and November 17–24 (right) were warmer or cooler than the average for those same eight-day periods between 2000–2008.

Around Adelaide in South Australia and Melbourne in Victoria, the land surface temperatures were up to 12 degrees Celsius (22 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in mid-November. For Adelaide, the event was the first springtime heatwave since records began in 1887, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The city had temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) for 8 consecutive days. (Five days at those temperatures constitutes a heatwave). Later in the month, some areas experienced heavy rain, which broke the heatwave in some areas, but not all.

EDIT

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=41438

[phantom power]

1. 12C anomaly? Ouch.

[hatrack]

2. But what about the emails?!?!?! EMAILS?!?!?!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEMAILS?!?!?!?!?

:toast:

[phantom power]

3. Junk science! Massive international scientific fraud!

Lexus payments!

Pardon me, I was briefly possessed by Jim Sensenbrenner.

[Dead_Parrot]

4. See? It's getting colder !1!

Hah! Let's see you trick your way out of this one, hippies!

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Australia is warming up? I Call Bullshit™!

This is DECMEMBER! The WINTERtime!!! So it is OBLIOUSLY a Hokes!

Algore and his Global Warmingistas will stop at nothing to foster a One-Word Government on us!

You just wait -- after they outlaw cigarettes and C&W music and grab our gums, they'll change all the traffic signs to Godless Metric! Then we will be forbidden to spank or teach the Bible to or spank our children, and they will be FORCED to learn Esperanto! It will be taught by FRENCH GAYS who will also secreetly VACCINATE them!

Remember what Benjamin H. Washington and the Foundling Feathers said: "Those who want Scrutiny instead of Library will have to Water the Tree of Puberty for Four Score and Seven Years!" (And "Taxation is THRIFT!")

WAKE UP AMERICA!!!1!!!!!

IMPEECH HITLARY!!!!111!11!

--d!

[joshcryer]

6. Win for epicness.

You put so many in cliches in that I almost cried laughing.

[Nihil]

8. Thank you!

I needed that after reading some of the other posts this morning!

:toast:

[joshcryer]

7. I have several friends in AU, this is actually quite bad, I haven't heard from one of them...

...in awhile. :/ It was bad last year, too, but this year is looking to be insane.

El Nino is going to kick civilization in the ass next year. It's already one fucked up blizzard season here this year. And in Colorado that's saying something, it usually dries up within a day or two. Been like this for several.