global warming

New research into ocean salinity levels has revealed a strong global water cycle intensification during the period of 1950 to 2000. The researchers report the rate of change in the global water cycle is double the rate projected by current-generation climate models. The study found "robust evidence of an intensified global water cycle at a rate of about eight per cent per degree of surface warming," said study co-author Dr Durack, a post-doctoral fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US.

Flocks of Carnaby's Black Cockatoo are iconic sights for the people of Perth, the Swan River Region and the forests of the South west. But comparing two population surveys in 2010 and 2011 showed a 37 percent decline in numbers across the Swan river region. That is a 37 per cent decline in one year.

According to Statistical modelling based on the 2011 Great Cocky Count the population of Carnaby’s cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus latirostris) in the Swan Region was between 5200 and 8600 birds. A year earlier it was estimated that the population was 8000 to 10,000.

Related: Scientific American - Endangered Australian Cockatoo Loses One Third of Population in Just 1 Year | Biodiversity crisis: Habitat loss and climate change causing 6th mass extinction

Back-to-back La Niña events has produced the wettest two year period on record for Australia according to the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM). The two year rainfall total for 2010-2011 of 1409 mm, eclipsed the old record of 1407 mm set during the big wet of 1973-1974. But underlying this wet record is a strong drying trend in the southeast and southwest of the continent with a consistent reduction in Autumn and winter rainfall and streamflow which are important for both agriculture and water storage.

Scientists have been able to calculate the velocity of climate change on land and ocean environments using temperature records to determine isotherms and their change in a fifty year period from 1960 to 2009. So how fast are climate envelopes moving? The general median answer is 27.3 km/decade on land, and 21.7 km/decade in the ocean. This equates to a speed needed to outrun climate change on land (2.7 kilometers per year) and in the oceans (2.2 kilometers per year). This rate of movement of thermal climate envelopes poses problems for species facing a high speed migration, or a difficult and abrupt adaptation or extinction.

Related: Indybay - Climate change and habitat loss threaten biodiversity, extinction rate underestimated | Science Network WA - Rare frog population sent to the South-West