Alice Springs Had 55 Days Above 40C For Year Ending 7/19 - How Much Longer Can People Live There?

[hatrack]

Josie Douglas sits on a verandah overlooking a ridge of red rocks and earth, scrubby with saltbush and spinifex near the centre of Alice Springs. It’s late afternoon and only 31C – a reprieve from a run of days in the high 30s and 40s. But Douglas knows that from now on it will only get hotter.

Last summer was the hottest on record, and the driest in 27 years in central Australia. Five per cent of the town’s street trees died. A heat monitoring study showed that on some unshaded streets the surface temperature was between 61C and 68C.

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Across central Australia, people are bracing themselves for another scorching summer of drought. At least nine remote communities and outstations are running out of water. A further 12 have reported poor quality drinking water as aquifers run low and the remaining supply is saline. Temperature records have already been broken. In the year to July 2019, Alice Springs had 129 days over 35C, and 55 days over 40C. It wasn’t meant to be like this – at least, not yet. The national science agency, the CSIRO, predictedthat these temperatures would not arrive until 2030.

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In the meantime, Douglas says, people are living in houses that are “unbearable”. “During our summers you can sometimes see people in communities hosing the outside of their Besser brick walls with garden hoses to keep cool despite the water shortages – that’s how desperate they are.” About 3ookm north-west of Alice Springs is Yuendumu, the largest remote community in central Australia. Its 900 or so residents are facing summer without a reliable supply of adequate drinking water. The NT government has stopped building new housing because there isn’t enough water in the dwindling aquifer to accommodate more people.

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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/18/too-hot-for-humans-first-nations-people-fear-becoming-australias-first-climate-refugees

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1. 40 degrees celsius is 104 degrees fahrenheit.That and even hotter temps...

are normal in our desert southwest.

Aren't they exaggerating a tad?

[hatrack]

2. A lot of it has to do with water supplies, which are limited to begin with

Springs are drying up, wells are failing and there's simply nowhere else to go, barring pipelines.

Australia is by far the driest inhabited continent.

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3. The coastal regions/cities are ok but the vast interior is drying up?

Trying to better understand the problem.

[hatrack]

4. In a nutshell, yes . . .

Slightly longer version - all of Australia is drying and warming relatively quickly, so that even cities like Sydney and Melbourne are substantially stressed by fire and drought. However, the coastal cities have money and resources that the interior doesn't, and the largest rivers are concentrated in NSW, Queensland and South Australia.

Mostly, the continent is just plain flat and very, very dry. This is the Simpson Desert, near the shared border of Queensland, NT and SA - not way out west, but only about 1/3 of the way across.

- Credit Wikipedia/Christopher Watson

Not a lot of people there (as you can imagine) . . .
- Credit Wikipedia/Paul Flemons

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5. No aquifers, no rain, no mountains either with snow run-off?

Any idea what the government is proposing?

[hatrack]

6. No idea what the government is proposing, except more coal and more denial

The Prime Minister is on vacation this week, while record temps and high winds prepare to push the NSW fires into uncharted territory.

Winning!

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7. Seems a huge, national effort needs to be mounted, sort of like Ike's...

interstate highway program but with pipelines and water desalinization development processes from the coasts maybe?

[Boomer]

8. We have better infrastructure

This article focused on indigenous aboriginal communities that are poor and housed in a buildings without air-conditioning and insulation. Many are built with hollow-core concrete blocks or brick, which holds in the heat. Lack of electricity and water exacerbate conditions.

If you're young and healthy, it's easier to withstand high heat, but as woman in her 60s with a heart condition, I know I couldn't survive in 104 degrees without air-conditioning.

[brush]

9. Thanks for the info on infrastructure. And you're right about AC.

Last edited Wed Dec 18, 2019, 10:00 PM - Edit history (1)