“One thing that’s certain is that the water north of Australia has warmed about 0.7 degrees above the long-term average. For this key region, we are in the situation now where the long-term trend is as significant as natural variability.”
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change-role-in-floods-wont-be-clear-for-a-decade-say-scientists-20120213-1t29a.html#ixzz1mNploZXM
The Age reports:
THE floods inundating northern NSW and Queensland are likely to have been driven in part by human-induced climate change – although the precise extent of this influence won’t be known for another decade.
Leading climate researchers said the frequency of El Nino and La Nina events that bring drought and flood to Australia seems to have increased in the past 30 years, even though such events have been occurring independently of human influence for far longer…
But the complexity of local and regional weather patterns means drawing a causal link between the weather of the past two years and climate change – and therefore between the floods and the greenhouse gas emissions from human activity – is difficult…
‘the long-term trend is as significant as natural variability.’ Which means the trend is indistinguishable from natural variability. Since models do not capture natural variability, their trend line is useless, which means that…