Keith_McClary wrote:
Change in temperature (degrees per century) from 1900-2014. Gray areas indicate where there is insufficient data to detect a long-term trend. NOAA Climate.gov map, based on NOAAGlobalTemp data from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.
Keith....great post!
And there's your answer right there. Climate change is NOT being amplified in Australia. Its less then it is at high latitudes and it isn't much different then other areas at the same latitude.
What is going on in Australia is that global warming is driving desertification.....
The reason the effects of global warming are so dramatic in Australia with the longer and more intense fire season is because Australia is mostly an enormous inland desert surrounded by thin belts of temperate forests around the edges. As global warming continues the boundary (or ecotone) between the inland desert and the coastal forests is shifting as the desert expands in response to global warming. The forests in the boundary regions are no longer compatible with the new warmer climate and they are burning off, to be replaced by grasslands and deserts more in equilibrium with the new, warming climate.
Its the same thing in California where there are grasslands and deserts in the south and forests in the north. As the climate warms the forests are out of equilibrium with the new climate....which is more suitable to grasslands and deserts like those just to the south today. So the forests dry out and then burn off.
Global warming is causing desertification in Australia
Cheers!