The article starts with some reasonable points about UHI in crowded new suburbs but then quoting an academic claims the BoM station sites do not reflect the UHI completely missing the fact the breezes and wind do blow and UHI affected air will move through the thermometer enclosures affecting BoM published weather observations.
Then further down quoting another academic in a para starting… [Studies following the 2019–20 bushfire season found that climate change had made fires a conservative 30 per cent more likely.] Statements are made about the 2019/20 fire season amazingly forgetting to quote the BoM’s Sep 2019 account of “Sudden Stratospheric Warming” over Antarctica and predictions for the coming 2019/2020 summer drought and fire season.
Surely Australian taxpayers deserve better than experts amnesia on this scale.
What a crazy mixed up heart tugging bit of fluff !
It’s not really about BOM & UHI much..
That’s just a bit of spin ay the start…
It’s really about a family rebuilding on 5 acres in the bush after the 2019-2020 fires in Western Sydney..
if ya live in the bush surrounded by Eucalypts,
One day you’ll be burned out..
I’d get rid of the female trees & bushes and replant with flame retardant species.. If I had to build there again..
From their IR photos it is easy to see that tarmac roads glow hot. How many BoM sites where originally installed where there was no road. Then the beaten track became a gravel road over time and now is sealed?
I have blogged on the issue of councils over decades allowing housing to increasingly be built in fire prone areas.
I have also noted how rare it is on news over last coupla years to hear any mention that rebuilding needs to be parallel to any degree of reduction of fire risk. It seems society is just planning to keep making the same idiot mistakes. Every time I go to shop for a loaf of daily bread I drive through bush with heavy understorey right up to the tar seal – since the fires I have not seen an iota of clearing of firebreaks – we have council elections in about a month and we have a Green Mayor. Fire risk is not a public issue here I have noticed. Also found this Building in bush Aussie National habit 24Dec2019
Many years ago a friend was living in the Piccadilly valley in the Adelaide Hills. He had a large water tank (and was installing another) with a diesel driven pump. The water circulated onto the roof and was collected by the gutters** and recycled to the tank. Any trees/shrubs had been selected for low fire risk.
He pointed across the gulley and said WHEN the fire comes through that house will burn, so will the next, that one will be OK and the next will go up. He moved out before the 1983 fire but he was quite right. How did he know? The minority who took precautions were safer.
**It was the first time I had heard of gutter guard.