THE heads of Australia's main environment groups who claim to represent 1.48 million members have signed a joint letter urging the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to reject a plan to dump dredge spoils from expansion of the Abbott Point Coal terminal within the marine park.
Environment groups said a decision to approve dumping would be "a fundamental breach of the duties and office" of reef authority chairman Russell Reichelt.
Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt has approved the capital dredging program but a decision on whether or not to approve the dumping in Great Barrier Reef waters was deferred by the reef authority until next week.
Conservation groups claim the final site for dumping has not been agreed to and that no decision should be made until the outcome of an independent inquiry into the Gladstone Harbour dredging and port expansion is known.
Mr Hunt said he would announce the terms of reference for an independent commission of inquiry into Gladstone next week.
That probe will not investigate the Abbott Point expansion, which is more than 600km north.
The inquiry into the management, regulation and implementation of the Gladstone expansion as part of the $35 billion Curtis Island LNG export project has been taken up by a broader environmental campaign to restrict industrial development and shipping near the Great Barrier Reef.
Yesterday's joint letter was signed by the heads of WWF-Australia, the Australian Marine Conservation Society, Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Get UP! and Humane Society International-Australia. It called on the reef authority to refuse a dredge dumping permit for North Queensland Bulk Port Corp's Abbot Point dredging program.
"The overall health of the Great Barrier Reef, particularly in the southern two-thirds of the region, has declined significantly," the letter says. "Key habitats such as coral reefs and seagrass meadows are in serious decline and populations of threatened species, like turtles and dugongs, are continuing to dwindle.
"A primary driver in this decline has been poor water quality and we are extremely concerned that further pressure through dredging and dumping in the reef's waters will only exacerbate the situation."
A spokeswoman for the reef authority said the January 31 deadline still stood. She said the authority had no comment on the letter.
The environment groups say they do not believe strict conditions placed on the dredging project by Mr Hunt will be sufficient.
"We reject the proposition that action to reduce sediment by 150 per cent can or will be undertaken in the anything like the same timeframe as the proposed dredging and dumping," they said.
The state's peak resources sector body, the Queensland Resources Council, has said it was confident the reef would make its decision "based on facts and science, rather than 'slacktivist' campaigns using social media".
The council chief executive Michael Roche said he was confident "the science that shows more than 30 years of port development has not been harmful to the Great Barrier Reef will prevail".
Scientists in NSW have one card left to play to identify the cause of massive oyster deaths in Port Stephens.
A mysterious illness is wiping out the Pacific oysters, while leaving the smaller Sydney Rock variety growing unharmed.
Port Stephens is the second biggest production area in NSW.
There are about 60 growers and Pacific oysters make up 25 per cent of the production there.
Ian Lyall, from the NSW Department of Fisheries, says scientists at Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute have been looking for a cause since oysters starting dying 12 months ago, but haven't found any signs of disease.
"The final thing we can do is what's called a transmission trial, set up to exclude a transmissible agent and that could take a few months."
Mr Lyall says pollution could be the other cause of oyster deaths.
"Researchers are working closely with the NSW Food Authority to analyse water quality and the Environmental Protection Agency to look at pollution, but we have not come across a single agent or group of agents that are causing these mortalities."
He says growers are very upset.
"This is a very valuable crop and the loss of income is really impacting on the growers who focus on Pacific oysters."
There is some assistance available, but the State Government has encouraged growers to diversify into different species and sources of income, saying that it can't continue to help after a series of disastrous disease outbreaks and weather events in recent years.
Growers in Wallis Lake, the state's biggest oyster production area, have stopped taking oysters from Port Stephens to limit the spread of whatever is affecting them.
A recent headline – Failed doubters trust leaves taxpayers six-figure loss – marked the end of a four-year epic saga of secretly-funded climate denial, harassment of scientists and tying-up of valuable government resources in New Zealand.
It’s likely to be a familiar story to my scientist colleagues in Australia, the UK, USA and elsewhere around the world.
But if you’re not a scientist, and are genuinely trying to work out who to believe when it comes to climate change, then it’s a story you need to hear too. Because while the New Zealand fight over climate data appears finally to be over, it’s part of a much larger, ongoing war against evidence-based science.
From number crunching to controversy
In 1981 as part of my PhD work, I produced a seven-station New Zealand temperature series, known as 7SS, to monitor historic temperature trends and variations from Auckland to as far south as Dunedin in southern New Zealand.
A decade later, in 1991-92 while at the NZ Meteorological Service, I revised the 7SS using a new homogenisation approach to make New Zealand’s temperature records more accurate, such as adjusting for when temperature gauges were moved to new sites.
The Kelburn Cable Car trundles up into the hills of Wellington. Photo: Shutterstock/amorfati.art
For example, in 1928 Wellington’s temperature gauge was relocated from an inner suburb near sea level up into the hills at Kelburn, where - due to its higher, cooler location - it recorded much cooler temperatures for the city than before.
With statistical analysis, we could work out how much Wellington’s temperature has really gone up or down since the city’s temperature records began back in 1862, and how much of that change was simply due to the gauge being moved uphill. (You can read more about re-examining NZ temperatures here.)
So far, so uncontroversial.
But then in 2008, while working for a NZ government-owned research organisation, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), we updated the 7SS. And we found that at those seven stations across the country, from Auckland down to Dunedin, between 1909 and 2008 there was a warming trend of 0.91°C.
And rather than ever contacting me to ask for an explanation of the science, as I’ve tried to briefly cover above, the Coalition appeared determined to find a conspiracy.
NIWA’s raw data for their official temperature graph shows no warming. But NIWA shifted the bulk of the temperature record pre-1950 downwards and the bulk of the data post-1950 upwards to produce a sharply rising trend… NIWA’s entire argument for warming was a result of adjustments to data which can’t be justified or checked. It’s shonky.
Mr Hide’s attack continued for 18 months, with more than 80 parliamentary questions being put to NIWA between February 2010 and July 2011, all of which required NIWA input for the answers.
The science minister asked NIWA to re-examine the temperature records, which required several months of science time. In December 2010, the results were in. After the methodology was reviewed and endorsed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, it was found that at the seven stations from Auckland to Dunedin, between 1909 and 2008 there was a warming trend of 0.91°C.
That is, the same result as before.
But in the meantime, before NIWA even had had time to produce that report, a new line of attack had been launched.
Off to court
In July 2010, a statement of claim against NIWA was filed in the High Court of New Zealand, under the guise of a new charitable trust: the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET). Its trustees were all members of the NZ Climate Science Coalition.
The NZCSET challenged the decision of NIWA to publish the adjusted 7SS, claiming that the “unscientific” methods used created an unrealistic indication of climate warming.
The Trust ignored the evidence in the Meteorological Service report I first authored, which stated a particular adjustment methodology had been used. The Trust incorrectly claimed this methodology should have been used but wasn’t.
In July 2011 the Trust produced a document that attempted to reproduce the Meteorological Service adjustments, but failed to, instead making lots of errors.
On September 7 2012, High Court Justice Geoffrey Venning delivered a 49-page ruling, finding that the NZCSET had not succeeded in any of its challenges against NIWA.
The NZ weather wars in the news. Image: The New Zealand Herald
The judge was particularly critical about retired journalist and NZCSET Trustee Terry Dunleavy’s lack of scientific expertise.
Justice Venning described some of the Trust’s evidence as tediously lengthy and said “it is particularly unsuited to a satisfactory resolution of a difference of opinion on scientific matters".
Taxpayers left to foot the bill
After an appeal that was withdrawn at the last minute, late last year the NZCSET was ordered to pay NIWA NZ$89,000 in costs from the original case, plus further costs from the appeal.
But just this month, we have learned that the people behind the NZCSET have sent it into liquidation as they cannot afford the fees, leaving the New Zealand taxpayer at a substantial, six-figure loss.
On the surface it looks like the trust was purely for the purpose of taking action, which is not what one would consider the normal use of a charitable trust.
This has been an insidious saga. The Trust aggressively attacked the scientists, instead of engaging with them to understand the technical issues; they ignored evidence that didn’t suit their case; and they regularly misrepresented NIWA statements by taking them out of context.
Yet their attack has now been repeatedly rejected in Parliament, by scientists, and by the courts.
The end result of the antics by a few individuals and this Trust is probably going to be a six-figure bill for New Zealanders to pay.
My former colleagues have had valuable weeks tied up with wasted time in defending these manufactured allegations. That’s time that could have profitably been used investigating further what is happening with our climate.
But there is a bigger picture here too.
Merchants of doubt
Doubt-mongering is an old strategy. It is a strategy that has been pursued before to combat the ideas that cigarette smoking is harmful to your health, and it has been assiduously followed by climate deniers for the past 20 years.
One of the best known international proponents of such strategies is US think tank, the Heartland Institute.
The first in a planned series of anti-global warming billboards in the US, comparing “climate alarmists” with terrorists and mass murderers. The campaign was canned after a backlash. Photo: The Heartland Institute
The first in a planned series of anti-global warming billboards in the US, comparing “climate alarmists” with terrorists and mass murderers. The campaign was canned after a backlash. The Heartland Institute
Just to be clear: there is no evidence that the Heartland Institute helped fund the NZ court challenge. In 2012, one of the Trustees who brought the action against NIWA said Heartland had not donated anything to the case.
An extract from a 1999 letter from the Heartland Institute to tobacco company Philip Morris. Image: University of California, San Francisco, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library
The Heartland Institute also has a long record of working with tobacco companies, as the letter on the right illustrates. (You can read that letter and other industry documents in full here. Meanwhile, Heartland’s reply to critics of its tobacco and fossil fuel campaigns is here.)
It’s taken a 15-year court battle with the US government to reach this point, and it shows that evidence can trump doubt-mongering in the long run.
A similar day may come for those who actively work to cast doubt on climate science.
Jim Salinger does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.
Selling water back to farmers could work out for the Murray River too. Photo: Flickr/Tourism.Victoria
The Commonwealth Government’s decision to sell up to 10 billion litres of its water allocation in the Murray-Darling Basin back to farmers could prove to be a win-win for irrigators and the river.
On the surface the decision seems to make no sense. The government bought the rights to water from farmers in the first place to restore the health of the river, why would it sell them back?
But the new decision reflects the variability of water supply and prices.
What water is the government selling?
The Commonwealth currently holds registered entitlements of just over 1,700 gigalitres, including 109 gigalitres in the Gwydir Valley where the proposed sale has been announced. Since 2009, the government has used these entitlements to allow extra water to flow through the river system, maintaining and restoring its health.
The decision to sell water back to farmers does not affect the government’s entitlement to water, which gives it the right to either use the water that is allocated to them, to carry it over for use in future years, or to trade it on the water market. This it will keep and with it, the right to use the allocation in full next year and the year after.
Instead, the government will sell part of its annual allocation of water. As of 31 December 2013, the Commonwealth had a total annual water allocation across the Murray-Darling Basin of close to 1,400 gigalitres. The annual allocation is made against the water entitlements purchased by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. The proposed 10-gigalitre sale by the Commonwealth is less than 1% of this total.
Has the government bought too much water?
If we were talking about land bought for a national park, and then sold a few years later, then this would indeed be strange.
But unlike having a title to land, the amount of water allocated under a water entitlement varies from year to year. Irrigators know this well and plan for variable water allocations from year to year.
In dry years, when less water is allocated to title holders, water is traded from willing sellers who can do without for a year to those who need the water to keep permanent plants alive and the water price will increase. The National Water Commission estimates that water trade increased Australia’s gross domestic product by A$220 million in 2008–09 through reallocation of water used in agriculture.
The government is simply doing the same thing. The Water Act, which established the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, also allows the government to trade its water if either (1) the water is not required and cannot be carried over to the following year; or (2) the proceeds from the sale are used to purchase water entitlements that are more effective in achieving the commonwealth’s environmental objectives.
This matches the logic that an irrigator might use in deciding whether or not to sell a water allocation. The irrigator will sell if the water can’t be used and can’t be carried over to the next year. Alternatively, the irrigator will sell if the proceeds can be used to purchase water at a different time or in a different catchment if this offers greater potential for the farm business.
Better for everyone
For some time the Commonwealth government has been reflecting on the question of actively trading environmental water. It released a discussion paper last year and received feedback from irrigators and others.
One of the irrigators' main concerns is that the Commonwealth’s water holding is very large, so any trade has the potential to affect water price. Given that the Commonwealth’s future trading behaviour is uncertain, so are any fluctuations in price. This makes it harder for irrigation businesses that rely on water trade to make decisions.
The other side of this is that the sale of environmental water allocations will only occur if irrigators see benefit in using the allocation they are purchasing. A trade will only occur if there is mutual benefit for both the environment and the farmer.
On this basis, one would hope that some trade of environmental water will see benefits for irrigators. Indeed, trade will overcome one of the most challenging aspects of water governance in Australia: achieving an optimum allocation of water between environmental and agricultural water use.
If we seek to place an impermeable divide between these two uses, labeling each drop of water as either for the environment or for farmers, then we have missed a huge opportunity. The same drop of water can deliver benefits for both environment and farmers and the best outcomes for regional communities will be achieved with arrangements that allow flexibility in the way water is allocated and delivered so that it can be used to find these win-wins.
Like all things in water management, it won’t be a panacea and there will no doubt be problems, but it is likely to be a step forward for productive use of water in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Michael Stewardson sits on the Commonwealth Environmental Water Scientific Advisory Panel. He leads an ARC Linkage Project that receives partner funding from the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office (CEWO) and is contracted to develop and implement a component of the CEWO's environmental monitoring and evaluation program.
Guitarfishes are among the most threatened rays, due to the high value of their large fins. They are classified as vulnerable by IUCN. Photo: Matt D. Potenski/Flickr
One quarter of the world’s cartilaginous fish, namely sharks and rays, face extinction within the next few decades, according to the first study to systematically and globally assess their fate.
Previous studies have documented local overfishing of some populations of sharks and rays. But this is the first one to survey their status through out coastal seas and oceans. It reveals that one-quarter (249) of 1,041 known shark, ray and chimaera species globally fall under three threatened categories on the IUCN Red List.
“We now know that many species of sharks and rays, not just the charismatic white sharks, face extinction across the ice-free seas of the world,” says Dulvy. “There are no real sanctuaries for sharks where they are safe from overfishing.”
Over two decades, the authors applied the IUCN’s Red List categories and criteria to the 1,041 species at 17 workshops involving more than 300 experts. They incorporated all available information on distribution, catch, abundance, population trends, habitat use, life histories, threats and conservation measures.
Sharks and rays are at substantially higher risk of extinction than many other animals and have the lowest percentage of species considered safe. Using the IUCN Red List, the authors classified 107 species of rays (including skates) and 74 species of sharks as threatened. Just 23 percent of species were labeled as being Least Concern.
The authors identified two main hotspots for shark and ray depletion—the Indo-Pacific (particularly the Gulf of Thailand), the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
“In the most peril are the largest species of rays and sharks, especially those living in relatively shallow water that is accessible to fisheries. The combined effects of overexploitation—especially for the lucrative shark fin soup market—and habit degradation are most severe for the 90 species found in freshwater.
“A whole bunch of wildly charismatic species is at risk. Rays, including the majestic manta and devil rays, are generally worse off than sharks. Unless binding commitments to protect these fish are made now, there is a real risk that our grandchildren won’t see sharks and rays in the wild.”
Losing these fish will be like losing whole chapters of our evolutionary history says Dulvy. “They are the only living representatives of the first lineage to have jaws, brains, placentas and the modern immune system of vertebrates.”
The potential loss of the largest species is frightening for many reasons, says Dulvy. “The biggest species tend to have the greatest predatory role. The loss of top or apex predators cascades throughout marine ecosystems.”
The IUCN SSG is calling on governments to safeguard sharks, rays and chimaeras through a variety of measures, including the following: prohibition on catching the most threatened species, science-based fisheries quotas, protection of key habitats and improved enforcement.
Simon Fraser University is consistently ranked among Canada's top comprehensive universities and is one of the top 50 universities in the world under 50 years old. With campuses in Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey, B.C., SFU engages actively with the community in its research and teaching, delivers almost 150 programs to more than 30,000 students, and has more than 125,000 alumni in 130 countries.
The Federal Government has announced plans to sell back water entitlements to farmers along the Murray-Darling river system.
Irrigation in the Murray-Darling basin. The Government says the plan will help irrigators with the hot and dry weather. Photo: Tim Wimborne/Reuters
The Commonwealth currently owns almost 1,700 gigalitres of water in the basin, following several years of environmental buy-backs.
Parliamentary secretary for the environment Simon Birmingham says the sell-off will have important economic benefits while also maintaining environmental flows.
"The core test for the environmental water holder in undertaking these activities is whether it better achieves environmental outcomes, whether it aligns with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which the Coalition is committed to implementing in full and on time," he said.
"Trading will be limited and will only be a small portion of the overall entitlement held by the environmental water holder.
"But you can get these benefits because not every wetland, not every key asset would naturally receive water in every single year."
Mr Birmingham says the trade will significantly benefit agricultural production in the region.
"This will be good news for irrigators who will be keen to secure more water during this period of hot and dry weather," he said.
The Greens' environment spokeswoman, Lee Rhiannon, says the policy will come at the cost of the environment.
"When you start the sell-offs, particularly when it's driven by a Coalition government, you're opening the door to winding back the small achievements that have been made in terms of restoring health to the Murray-Darling basin," she said.
The Federal Government will release details of the first tender process later today.
You could be forgiven for missing it, but on the Friday afternoon before Christmas, federal environment minister Greg Hunt released the draft details of the Emissions Reduction Fund – the centrepiece of the government’s Direct Action climate policy.
It is still not clear how emissions reductions will be measured. Photo: Marcus Wong/Wikimedia Commons.
The Direct Action plan is crucial if Australia is to meet its modest emissions goal of a 5% reduction on 2000 levels by 2020. But this first draft is beset by loopholes that could mean the plan delivers less bang for its 1.5 billion bucks over the next four years.
There are three standout problems. First, there is a risk that money will be given to carbon-reduction projects that would have gone ahead anyway, thus taking funding away from other projects. Second, the way emissions reductions are calculated could potentially penalise those who have already made cuts, while the most intense polluters might be spared from having to bring themselves into line with industry best practice. And third, companies that fail to meet their emissions pledges could be given long deadlines to put it right, with only minor financial penalties.
Commercial viability
Under the draft plan, companies will be invited to bid for funding regardless of whether their project is commercially viable without it. Projects that are already viable without government help are naturally in a better position to make a competitive bid in the scheme’s “reverse auction” – by which the government will award funds to projects that promise the biggest emissions cuts for the least money.
Put simply, this means that a company that was planning to spend a million dollars on cutting carbon could ask the government to pay for just half of it. While that sounds like a win – a million dollars' worth of emissions cuts for only half a million dollars of public money – bear in mind that those cuts would have happened anyway, at no expense to the taxpayer. Meanwhile, those projects that would require more than half a million in funding to reduce the same amount of emissions, and would not have been implemented without funding, would be uncompetitive in the bid, and therefore still not get off the ground.
Previous schemes such as the Kyoto Protocol have guarded against this potential for taxpayer-funded corporate windfalls, by requiring projects to demonstrate ‘additionality’ – that is, proving that they would not have proceeded without government help.
Baseline call
The second problem hinges on the fact that emissions reductions cannot be calculated without reference to a previous “baseline” level. But the government has delayed its decision on how emissions baselines will be determined until mid-2015. How these are decided will be of greatest interest to the biggest emitters.
One option is to calculate emissions reductions “relative to past practices”, meaning that a company’s emissions will be compared to its historic levels. This means that the biggest polluters, and those with the highest emissions intensity (emissions per dollar of economic output), will find it relatively easy to meet their reductions commitments, because they have the most room for improvement.
In contrast, those who have already cut their emissions may find it relatively more expensive to make further reductions, having cut their “cheapest” emissions first. This would make them less competitive in the fund’s reverse auction.
The government has also considered the alternative option of assessing new projects on a “best practice” basis. So rather than comparing them with historic levels, their emissions would instead be measured against the best current domestic or international performer, or against the average of the top 10% of industry peers for that sector.
For companies with higher-than-average emissions intensity for their sector, a best practice approach would require more of them than their peers, making it more expensive for them to cut their emissions. For example, Chevron has several natural gas projects off the coast of Western Australia with larger than usual carbon dioxide emissions. Unsurprisingly, the company has called on the government to use historic baselines, arguing that it is a simpler approach.
The government says it has delayed its decision on how to determine baselines until next year, to allow time to work out the rules for new businesses that have no historic emissions data.
Meanwhile, it is worth noting that in 2011 the European Emissions Trading Scheme adopted “best available technology” benchmarking across all sectors except power generation, to reward projects that embrace new technologies such as energy efficiency upgrades and carbon capture and storage. Historical benchmarking (or “grandfathering”, as it has been nicknamed in Europe), had been blamed for an oversupply of emissions credits that has driven down prices on the carbon trading market.
Long deadlines, minor penalties
Yet under the government’s current plan, even a company that is given a favourable historic baseline, and then exceeds it anyway, could be given plenty of leeway.
The draft proposal suggests that businesses that emit above their baseline could be given time to invest in other emissions reduction projects. It also suggests calculating emissions on a multi-year average, meaning that companies could exceed their baseline in one year as long as they stay below it on average within the period.
What’s more, in cases where a company routinely fails to meet emissions targets, the government says it does not want the policy to be punitive. Therefore companies could well not comply, without suffering significant financial consequences.
The proposal is open for comment until February 21, and the plan faces plenty more scrutiny, particularly when new Senators take their seats in July. Those Senators also control the fate of the previous government’s carbon price, which has already been repealed in the lower house.
What’s clear is that for the Emissions Reduction Fund’s limited pot of money to be put to best use, these critical points need to be addressed. It’s certainly not beyond us to solve these issues, and to have the scheme deliver real opportunities for a low-cost, low-carbon economy fit for the 21st century. Let’s hope that is what we are all trying to achieve.
Jemma Green does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.
Australia has just sweltered through its hottest year on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Average temperatures were 1.20 degrees Celsius above the long-term average of 21.8C, breaking the previous record set in 2005 by 0.17C, the bureau said in its Annual Climate Statement.
All states and territories recorded above average temperatures in 2013, with Western Australia, Northern Territory and South Australia all breaking annual average temperature records.
And every month of 2013 had national average temperatures at least 0.5C above normal, according to the statement.
The country recorded its hottest day on January 7 - a month which also saw the hottest week and hottest month since records began in 1910.
A new record was set for the number of consecutive days the national average temperature exceeded 39C – seven days between January 2 and 8, 2013, almost doubling the previous record of four consecutive days in 1973.
The highest temperature recorded during 2013 was 49.6C at Moomba in South Australia on January 12, which was the highest temperature in Australia since 1998.
Further, with mean temperatures across Australia generally well above average since September 2012, long periods of warmer-than-average days have been common, with a distinct lack of cold weather, the statement says.
Nights have also been warmer than average, but less so than days.
The country has experienced just one cooler-than-average year in the last decade - 2011.
Australian temperatures have warmed approximately 1C since 1950, consistent with global climate trends.
Globally, each of the past 13 years since 2001 have ranked among the 14 warmest on record.
The bureau's Neil Plummer told News 24 that as a predictor of climate in Australia, the statistics "speak for themselves", and that a "consistent body of evidence" gathered globally pointed to a "warming trend".
"All Australian records go back to 1910. The trend over that period is a little short of a degree warming over that period, where most of the warming has occurred since around about 1950, and that's consistent with the global pattern," he said.
"It's not just us at the bureau doing the number crunching, it is all the bureaus around the world, and it is that body of evidence that we're all seeing a warming over Australia and a warming world."
According to the weather bureau's statement, significant climate events of 2013 included:
The January heatwave, which saw a number of severe bushfires in south eastern Tasmania and in Victoria, where bushfires were particularly widespread.
An early start to the fire season saw major bushfires in the Blue Mountains during October, the most destructive in the region since 1968.
Ex-tropical cyclone Oswald, which caused heavy rain and flooding along the east coast in late January, with many coastal areas from Sydney to Cape York receiving more than 200mm of rainfall in 24 hours, and Upper Springbrook in the Gold Coast hinterland receiving 1496mm in eight days.
Tropical cyclone Rusty was the most intense tropical cyclone to make landfall in 2013, causing flooding in the Pilbara and Western Kimberley in late February.
Tropical cyclone Alessia crossed the coast near Darwin in late November, the earliest tropical cyclone to make landfall in the Northern Territory in 40 years.
The statement concurred with a report released by the United Nations' climate panel in September, saying that recent warming trends had been "dominated by the influence of increasing greenhouse gases and the enhanced greenhouse effect".
According to the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, scientists are 95 per cent sure that humans are responsible for global warming.
The report, the result of almost seven years' work by more than 600 scientists and researchers, says the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 40 per cent since the pre-industrial era.
It presents a number of different scenarios of how climate change may unfold over the next century, but says the majority of climate models point to a mean temperature rise of around 2C.
University of New South Wales climate expert Dr Sarah Perkins says last year shows the effects of global warming are taking hold.
"It's here and now. We're actually starting to feel the effects, and even though the global temperature hasn't risen more than a degree at the moment, that's already had impacts on extreme temperatures and that's consistent with what we've been seeing for quite a while," she said.
Dr Perkins says record temperatures without the climatic influence of an El Nino makes 2013 especially significant.
"Usually when we have warmer than average temperatures and lower than average rainfall, that's associated with an El Nino summer," she said.
Australia has always been a country of extremes; we're no strangers to tropical cyclones or heatwaves or anything of the like, but it's the time they're occurring, particularly the start of the bushfire season this year. It was the earliest on record. That's what we're worried about.
Climate expert Dr Sarah Perkins
"When we have La Nina summers, we have higher than average rainfall and lower than average temperatures.
"However, the past two summers have been neutral years, so they should have be effectively average rainfall and average temperature.
"So that's what we're a little bit worried about - that we're seeing all these records breaking when we're not really in a pattern of climate that influences those sorts of extremes.
"Australia has always been a country of extremes; we're no strangers to tropical cyclones or heatwaves or anything of the like, but it's the time they're occurring, particularly the start of the bushfire season this year. It was the earliest on record. That's what we're worried about."
Earth's oceans also heating up
According to the bureau, the planet's oceans are also getting warmer, with sea surface temperatures over the past 10 years the warmest on record.
Mr Plummer said the waters around Australia were no exception.
"In fact the waters to the south of Australia were the warmest on record, too, so it's that consistent body of evidence, particularly since the 1950s, where we've seen quite a strong warming," he said.
In 2013, sea surface temperatures around Australia were "unusually warm throughout the year", according to the bureau statement, with the temperatures for January and February among the highest on record.
Surface temperatures off the western and southern coast of Australia from summer 2012–13 until May were "consistently very much above average," the bureau says.
Global temperatures on the rise
In an analysis of the BoM Annual Climate Statement written for the The Conversation website, bureau experts said that 2013 was the 6th hottest year on record globally, while 13 of the 14 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001.
As of the end of November, global temperatures were 0.49C above average, the authors said, adding that other parts of the world to experience their warmest year on record in 2013 included the tropical North Pacific region around and east of the Philippines, along with parts of central Asia.
Exceptionally warm sea temperatures in the western North Pacific had "contributed to a very active tropical cyclone season in the region, especially in October and November", they wrote.
"In those months there were seven super typhoons (the equivalent of a category 4 or 5 tropical cyclone in Australia) in as many weeks," they wrote, adding that the most significant of these was Typhoon Haiyan, which they described as one of the most intense tropical cyclones ever to make landfall.
Heat defines first days of 2014 as Australia swelters
Extreme conditions have persisted into the first days of 2014, with soaring temperatures in areas extending from Queensland's interior to Central Australia, northern South Australia and north-western New South Wales.
On Thursday, temperature records tumbled in central, western and north-west Queensland, with the mercury topping 40C in a number of areas.
Friday saw another searing day for parts of central and western Queensland, with St George reaching 47.2C.
Northerly winds will push the heat towards the state's south-east over the next few days. Brisbane is expected to reach a high of close to 40C on Saturday.
South Australia's far north also sweltered through near-record temperatures on Thursday, as ex-tropical cyclone Christine tracked across the state, bringing high winds.
John Nairn from the weather bureau says several outback towns had temperatures well into the 40s.
"Our temperatures have been near record, the highest temperature we had was at Moomba at 49.3 degrees but a lot of centres up there are pushing up around that 50 mark," he said.
A new study, led by a University of Southampton scientist, highlights the potential for fish communities in marine reserves to resist climate change impacts better than communities on fished coasts.
The study, which is published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, involved an Australian research team from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Marine and Atmospheric Research.
The researchers looked at different types of fish community responses to both short- and long-term environmental variability. They found that marine reserves have the potential to build community resilience through mechanisms that promote species and functional stability, and resist colonisation by warm water vagrants.
In addition, some ecological signals were consistently noted in both the reserve and fished sites, such as in increase in the number of herbivorous fish. Their results therefore suggest that persistent long-term warming in southeast Australia will lead to major changes in the structure and function of shallow reef fish communities.
“What I found most striking about this work,” comments lead author Dr Amanda Bates from the University of Southampton, “is that marine reserves have an important role to play in understanding ecological change in the absence of fishing – the knowledge that we have gained was only possible because the long-term data on fish species were available from a marine reserve.”
The authors took advantage of a two decade long data series of fish abundance from the Maria Island Marine Reserve, collected by Dr Neville Barrett and Professor Graham Edgar since 1992 with support from the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service. The study focused on how the biodiversity and biological characteristics of fish communities changed in the marine reserve following a sustained period of sea warming in comparison to nearby sites open to fishing.
The Queensland Government and Opposition have accused each other of allowing "dirty deals" to dictate mining policy on North Stradbroke Island, off Brisbane.
Sandmining on Stradbroke Island. A bill has paved the way for the company Sibelco to extend sand mining on the island from 2019 until 2035. Photo: Giulio Saggin, ABC News
A bill passed overnight paves the way for the company Sibelco to extend sand mining on the island from 2019 until 2035.
Opposition environment spokeswoman Jackie Trad told Parliament the State Government has given preferential treatment to one of its supporters.
"The environmental conditions and the economic modelling used to justify the introduction of this bill have all been provided by the mining proponent Sibelco, who incidentally spent more than $90,000 at the last state election advocating a vote for [Premier] Campbell Newman," she said.
But Natural Resources Minister Andrew Cripps says there is nothing improper about the policy, which was an election commitment.
Mr Cripps says the island's economy would suffer under the former Labor government's plan to end sand mining in 2019.
"It is not this amendment bill that is the result of a dirty deal," he said.
"It was the 2011 Act that was a dirty deal between Labor and the Greens.
"Not only is this bill fixing up the mess left behind by Labor, but in the process it ensures that mining continues within a smaller footprint."
