The Impact Of Climate Change On Brisbane

Climate change is a global issue that is becoming more and more dominant in the world today. According to the Met Office, climate change is wide scale issue that is caused by a shift in Earth’s average temperatures. (Unknown, 2015). The potential impacts of climate change can be separated into two different categories; direct impacts and indirect impacts. The indirect impacts are knock-on effects that are controlled by the direct impacts. These indirect impacts can be as severe as the direct impacts. For example, sea level rise is just as major as the flooding that may come as a result of the rising sea level. If people start to realise the impact that climate change is having on the world (both socially and environmentally), then the effects of climate change may be reduced slightly. In this essay, a variety of direct and indirect impacts will be described and how they affect both Newcastle Upon Tyne and Sunderland.

Rising sea level can be caused by a variety of factors and can have an effect or influence even more. Future changes in sea level may impact human populations around the world and many other aspects of life on Earth more than many initially thought. The U.S. coast of the Gulf of Mexico is on track to be one of the most impacted by further sea level rise and the outcome could be detrimental to the entire coastline.

The floods were caused by heavy rain from a tropical cyclone named cyclone Tasha that joined with a La Niña event* caused an overflow of water in rivers and lakes. The La Niña in 2010 was the strongest La Niña since 1973.This caused a lot of rainfall across Queensland. That December was the wettest on record and 107 places had their highest rainfalls ever. 2010 was also recorded as the states most wet spring since the 1900’s and Australia's third wettest year. Floods started across the state in December. On the 28th December a monsoonal trough crossed the coast from the Coral Sea, bringing heavy rain from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Gold Coast, overfilling a dam in Towoomba, causing it to malfunction and release the water.

2. The Queensland floods were part of the La Niña change that was predicted to happen during the season. La Niña is a change in air pressure across the central and eastern tropical Pacific resulting in warmer sea surface temperatures in the north of Australia. Historically, La Niña changes have bought large scale floods and increased risks of tropical cyclones. As expected, this particular La Niña change caused widespread heavy rain in the central and eastern Pacific affecting the North-East of Australia. The first sign of having a devastating flood period was the abnormally heavy rains during the winter dry season leading into September 2010 which was the wettest September on record. Following this, there was 7 months that were wetter than

Recent mood events such as extremely high temperatures and widespread drought have focused government activity and public attention on the impacts of climate modification in Australia. Despite a slight increase in overall rain in Australia, rainfall patterns are expected to be problematic, as rain has become heavier and infrequent, with little or no uptrend in rainfall in the Western Tableland and the Central Lowlands of Australia. At the same time, Australia continues to have the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions. Temperatures in Australia have also boost dramatically since 1910 and nights have become heater

Climate change creates significant impacts in the Australian context: in considering sea level rise is one of the most critical condition and as per the IPCC report, in 2100 it will increase by79 centimeters (Department of climate change, 2009). Further, it enhances natural hazards affect on the coastal region as flood, inundation, erosion, and storm surges, which will be a significant threat to the coastal community (Button et al.2013). In addition, sea level rise causes a significant change to beaches, coral reefs, estuaries, wetlands and low-lying islands.

A flood can be defined in many depths but is simply water where it isn’t wanted. In late 2010 Queensland was affected by major flash flooding this continued on into the beginning of 2011 and ¾ of Queensland was declared a disaster zone.

Brisbane was not new to flooding, as the banks had broken before in 1974. The main cause this time around was Cyclone Tasha, a tropical storm which hit the area, combined with the La Niña, a phenomenon where wet weather comes to Australia every year. There was a sharp increase in rainfall, heavier than any year since 1973, and by December 2010 the weather was the wettest on record. The average rainfall was measured at 8.25 inches. Climate change was also blamed, as the temperature of the ocean surrounding Australia was said to have risen by half a degree, producing more vapour.

It is increasing due to the melting ice sheets. When there is a rise of temperature, the ice sheets from the Intertidal and Greece land start decreasing in volume. The thermal expansion is another reason that increases the sea level because it leads to an increase in storm surges and frequency of floods.

In January 2011, the Queensland town of Toowoomba experienced flash flooding leading to the death of several people and large damage. The flood waters surged through the city centre as an “inland tsunami”. Describe the cause and developments of the flash flooding event and critically review Toowoomba’s urban hydraulic structures at the time of the flood event. Use a maximum of 400 words for your answer (excluding Figures) (3 marks)

According to scientific research, the average temperature of the earth has risen by between ten and twenty degrees Celsius (M.L. Weitzman, 2008). These high temperatures could well be described as a ‘recipe for disaster’, and could produce results that would be catastrophic on a global scale. What is more alarming however, is that there is already a lot of evidence of predicted results of climate change, for instance, in Australia especially, severe draughts have been common in farming areas in the last few decades, there has been an increase of intense and extreme weather events, for example floods, flash floods, tsunamis, earthquakes and tornados, almost all of the natural disasters listed have occurred for ‘unknown’ reasons in the past few years. Rises in sea water level and temperature due to higher acid levels caused by global warming, threaten the existence of species and in some areas, entire eco-systems resulting in the loss of natural biodiversity. ‘Climate change is pushing the world to the verge of environmental and economic collapse, whether global deniers want to believe it or not’ (N. Klein, 2011).

Rising sea levels are occurring from global warming and extreme climate change. The burning of fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses has released masses amount of heat into our atmosphere which is getting trapped, causing our earths temperature to rise. Our oceans have absorbed up to 80% of this additional heat. Our Earth is not used to the higher temperatures which has had a dramatic impact on Ice Glaciers, causing them to melt which leaves sea levels rising. This problem is on going and each and everyday we are all contributing to it.

Causes of Sea-Level Rise is Thermal Expansion and melting glaciers and polar ice caps. Humans happen play a major in the cause of this. The cutting down of forests and burning fossil fuels is releasing large amount of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, causing the warmer of the planet. This causing the water to heat up. This could also play a role in the reason for the global warming allowing

Global warming can cause sea level to rise due to the melting of the polar ice caps and thermal expansion. This cause the ocean to risen 10-20cm over the last hundred years. However, the rise in sea p level have significantly increase for the last 20 years. Thermal expansion means that when water heats up,

Next in line on the long list of possible causes are sea-level falls, the exact opposite of sea-level rises, which can actually be extremely beneficial to the environment. A sea-level fall involves a large decrease in the total volume of water in the world’s ocean,