Having lived in Gungahlin since 1997, I have seen the area grow rapidly from around 13,000 people to the 33,000 we have today.  Whilst most of the growth has been welcome, some has not.  I’ll elaborate more in later posts.  In the meantime…

If you have any comments on your experiences living in Gungahlin I’d love to hear them.  Simply post a reply…

I finally read something interesting in the Canberra Times this weekend.  No, I’m not knocking the Canberra Times, the interesting thing is that I managed to find 15 spare minutes this weekend to skim read it!  Now it’s great the kids are into the outdoors, but this weekend sports really eats into a mans ‘free time’.  Anyway…

Many of you who already know my obsession with the weather also know I don’t totally buy this ‘human induced’ climate change stuff.  I guess I can best be described as a ‘healthy’ sceptic when it comes  to the whole ‘Global Warming Industry’.  Anyway, the following article appeared in Saturday’s Canberra Times and I think it sums up my position nicely.

Enjoy…

Massive floods, blistering heatwaves and bizarre cold snaps since the start of the year may not be the result of climate change, but extreme weather has become more frequent, some scientists say.

The United Nation’s World Meteorological Organisation has reported “there is an increasing trend in extreme events observed during the last 50 years.  It adds that “weather and climate are marked by record extremes in many regions across the world since January 2007″.

Examples are not hard to find.  The death toll from the worst monsoon floods to hit South Asia in decades has passed 2,000, while Britain’s recent floods were the country’s worst for 60 years.  Southern Europe has dealt with record temperatures this northern summer in a brutal heatwave.  South Africa has seen unusually heavy snowfalls and the Argentinean Capital Buenos Aires got snow for the first time in 89 years.  Cyclone Gonu, the first documented tropical cyclone in the Arabian Sea, hit Oman and Iran in June, causing 50 deaths.

But establishing a link between climate change and extreme weather is controversial.  The UN’s weather agency says its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that “the warming of the climate is unequivocal”.  Preliminary observations indicated global land surface temperatures in January and April reached the highest levels ever recorded for those months, it said.  “Climate change projections indicate it to be very likely that hot extremes, heatwaves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent,” it said.

A study by researchers from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research and the Georgina Institute of Technology says about twice as many Atlantic hurricanes form each year on average than a century ago.  It blamed warmer sea surface temperatures and altered wind patterns associated with global climate change for “fuelling much of the increase”, the centre said.

But scientists caution there is not enough evidence to blame global warming for recent extreme weather, and there are those who say there is no proof that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent.  Barry Gromett, of Britain’s Met Office weather service, said much of the extreme weather was down to variability in the climate, which was affected by greenhouse gases but also other factors such as El Nino.

El Nino events are when drastic changes in sea temperatures in tropical areas affect atmospheric pressure in the Pacific Ocean region, having a knock-on effect on rainfall.  “There’s a danger in taking isolated incidents in any given year and attributing this to something like climate change,” Mr Gromett said.  “It’s really important to look for trends over a longer period of time.  More heat equals more moisture equals probably higher rains, so in that respect some of it ties in quite nicely [with climate change].  But there are many different facets that appear to contradict each other.”

A British Met Office study issued on Thursday found natural weather variations helped offset the effects of global warming in the past couple of years, but temperatures are set to rise to record levels beginning in 2009.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climatologist Jean Jouzel said several more years were needed to establish a link between these extremes and global warming.

Source: By Emmanuel Angleys in Paris. Appeared in The Canberra Times, 11 August 2007. 

Ok, I certainly don’t advocate speeding, and I think they should throw the book at the idiots caught way over the speed limit, but I can’t see the new speed camera on the corner of Gungahlin and Gundaroo Drives as anything more than another attempt to raise revenue for the local Government.

When we were originally told speed cameras were coming to the ACT, they were supposed to be located at identified ’black Spots’ in an effort to reduce the incidences of crashes in these areas.  A very noble and worthwhile endeavour.  However, as far as I can tell, the new camera for Gungahlin is not located in a known black spot so will probably do little more than sit out in all weathers taking photos of (generally) law abiding citizens, reducing even more the precious money they have to keep the family going.

I know there’s a simple way to avoid a fine - don’t speed.

On a brighter note, the associated red light camera at this intersection is very welcome.  I think speeding through an intersection against a red light is far more dangerous than going 85 in an 80 zone!

click…    

As I sit typing this the wind is howling outside.  It just hit 55km/h from the NW, and earlier today gusted to 66km/h.  In the snowy mountains things have been quite scary really.  Thredbo (Crackenback) has reported winds over 120km/h.  The wind has also been blamed for a car accident on the way to the snow this afternoon when a large plume of dust, whipped up by the winds, reduced visibilty along the Kosciusko road, just past the Cooma AP.

The good news is the wind should easy slowly tomorrow.  We should also see some much needed showers during Saturday afternoon.

EDIT: The stong winds continued o/night, reaching 61.2km/h shortly before midnight.  The strong winds helped keep the morning minimum to 9.4 degrees C, one of the warmest August nights recorded in Gungahlin.  The warmest August night being 11.1 degrees, recorded in 2003.

I’m Darren and I have had a passion (or is that obsession?) with the weather for over 25 years. I ‘caught the bug’ in 1980 when I moved with my family to Cooma. The weather in Cooma fascinated me (it was certainly more interesting than it was in Sydney). On my second morning in Cooma I woke to an outside temperature of minus 6 with a heavy frost - I was hooked!  Ever since I have been keeping weather records.

The Gungahlin Weather Centre began in 1999, and the website a few years later.

I also developed the Gungahlin Region On-line!  A website providing community and business information for people in the Gungahlin Region and beyond. 

Anyway, that’s enough from me at the moment.

Feel free to add to my blog….