Extreme Down Under

Wednesday, 25 February 2009 20:00

Australia is a continent known for its extremes. Extremely poisonous snakes and spiders, extremely large saltwater crocodiles, the extreme nature of the early inhabitants of the colony (convicts).

Extremely Poisonous

Death Adder (Acanthophis antarticus)

Historically the weather of Australia has also been extreme. The blistering hot heat of the Outback is an extreme contrast to the rainy season that historically has washed over the coastal areas. While Australia's natural ecosystems, and the people that inhabit them, are used to the extreme nature of their country, February 2009 defied all previous measures relative to the extreme nature of the Australia landscape.

I arrived in Sydney on Feb 1 for three weeks to continue work on the Moranco project. When I arrived, the southern portion of the country was gripped by a record setting heat wave. Weeks of temperatures over 100 degrees F. At the same time, the north of the county had been deluged by record setting rains and cool temperatures. Both conditions blew out the previous 8 year averages, and both set new records. The harsh contrast was best captured by the map image below created by NASA. This map of Australia shows how the land surface temperature from January 25 to February 1 compared to the average mid-summer temperatures the continent experienced between 2000-2008. Places where temperatures were warmer than average are red, places experiencing near-normal temperatures are white, and places where temperatures were cooler than average are blue. The data was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.