19 hours ago.<\/p>\n
Updated\u00a013 hours ago<\/p>\n
\u201cThe summer I wigged out, the monsoon failed \u2026 the earth felt glazed \u2026 the air felt hard. Baked into crystals. Weaponised by any breeze. \u2026 a heat dome rolled in from the east \u2026 it was as if the breath of the five deserts had settled over us.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2013 Juice by Tim Winton.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re close once again, those glorious summer days.<\/p>\n
With spring sprung, our thoughts, particularly as Australians, lead to our unique annual end-of-year pleasures \u2013 languorous afternoons with the feet up watching Test cricket (this year against the Kiwis); a dip in the surf; lunch barbies that somehow extend into back-deck evenings of melancholy reminiscence to a soundtrack of 80s and 90s music; a cairn of thongs kicked off near the front door; footpaths and bitumen roads so sizzling you could fry an egg on them; the wobbly plastic Christmas tree retrieved from the cardboard box in the garage and given pride of place in the corner of the loungeroom, forgotten there well into the New Year.<\/p>\n
With all that summery joy on the horizon, who would anticipate, even in our wildest imaginations, the sort of season depicted in brilliant Australian writer Tim Winton\u2019s dystopian novel Juice, set two centuries into the future where the world\u2019s climate has gone berserk and reprieve from summer, the only way to literally get through it alive, is to take refuge underground?<\/p>\n
It could never happen here, right? Crack open another coldie, would you?<\/p>\n
Now you may be a climate change <\/a>denier or a climate change believer. Let\u2019s just put that debate aside for now.<\/p>\n The reality is we can no longer anticipate summer as one of life\u2019s uninterrupted pleasures as we did when we were kids. Summer lovin\u2019, had me a blast, and all that.<\/p>\n That glorious little slide show needs to be updated.<\/p>\n Summer is now a niggling potential threat, a possible danger, a time that in the blink of an eye can deliver hell and damnation. Not a vague existential threat or some fictional construct, but something that can have very real consequences for our health, our safety, our sense of wellbeing, our lives.<\/p>\n Just look at the statistics<\/a> that have come out of this year\u2019s European summer<\/a>. These numbers are not only a very real portent of what we might expect in our own backyard in coming years, but a possible indicator that climate is no longer just something that changes on cue with the traditional seasons, but flares and rages without respect for the calendar. And its nastier features \u2013 flash floods, hailstorms, bushfires \u2013 seem to have magnified year on year, according to statistics. <\/p>\n The northern hemisphere has had a summer like no other. Heatwaves. Fire. Drying rivers. Parched earth. Death.<\/p>\n Crops of potatoes have literally boiled in their paddocks in South Korea. <\/p>\n Half a million hens expired in the heat in France. Millions of fish and livestock perished in Asia.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the human toll.<\/p>\n July tied for the hottest recorded month on Earth since 1850, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Parts of Western Europe are on track to suffer their fourth heatwave since May. In July authorities measured the highest sea surface temperatures since records began. <\/p>\n In early August the European Union\u2019s Joint Research Centre reported that heatwaves combined with lack of rainfall had seen rivers such as the Danube, the Rhine, the Loire and the Po each record historic low levels.<\/p>\n Agence France Press reported last week: \u201cEurope saw at least 30,000 excess deaths (\u201cexcess deaths\u201d are the number of deaths that exceed the expected statistical average for a certain period) across a blistering summer of back-to-back heatwaves and drought, which scientists have blamed on man-made climate change \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n A US study, released last week, underlined a broad array of health complications associated with extreme heat that went way beyond the traditional patterns of dehydration and heat stroke. <\/p>\n The study \u2013 \u201cIdentifying heat-related diagnoses in emergency department visits among adults in Chicago: a heat-wide association study\u201d, out of Northwestern University in Illinois \u2013 linked climate fluctuation to \u201cskin rashes and swelling, acute kidney failure, multiple sclerosis, mental and behavioural disorders, insect bites and stings, traffic accidents, assault and firearm-related injuries\u201d.<\/p>\n Health authorities and academics have rushed to try to understand the freakish weather phenomena that have punished Europe, Asia and North America. And all have called for better national preparation for climate catastrophes that are no longer an exception to the rule. In other words \u2013 wake up, or we\u2019ll all be heading underground like the characters in Juice, and well before two centuries into the future.<\/p>\n Another recent study \u2013 \u201cMortality, morbidity and healthcare costs of short-term high temperatures and heatwaves exposure in older populations: a global systematic review and meta-analysis\u201d, co-authored by experts from the University of Adelaide, Monash University and the University of Queensland \u2013 stressed the perils of complacency in facing up to this new reality.<\/p>\n \u201cExposure to heat extremes is associated with higher rates of mortality<\/a>, morbidity and healthcare costs. In the context of population ageing and climate change, which is expected to make extreme heat events more intense, frequent, prolonged and widespread, understanding their health impacts on older adults is crucial for informing targeted interventions,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n It concluded there was \u201cthe urgent need for climate policies and tailored health interventions to mitigate the escalating morbidity and mortality risks among older adults\u201d.<\/p>\n And according to the Imperial College London\u2019s Grantham Institute, which specialises in the environment and climate change, more than 2700 people were thought to have perished in the heatwaves that swept across England and Wales in May and June. \u201cOf those,\u201d it said, \u201cit\u2019s estimated that 42 per cent died as a result of the extra heat caused by human-induced warming.\u201d<\/p>\n Virtually all of these recent studies agreed that with a rapidly ageing global population, nations need to devise better ways to protect their most vulnerable citizens<\/a> as a matter of extreme urgency.<\/p>\n Dare we even contemplate that the horrific landslide tragedy in the Himalayas<\/a>, with hundreds dead and thousands missing, including dozens of Australians, could have been triggered by global warming? <\/p>\n So how about the here and now in Australia? Are we in for a dangerous summer? If so, what can we do to prepare ourselves?<\/p>\n The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has laid out its projections for the next few months. Temperature? Above average across most of the country. Rainfall? Below average in the south and east of the continent and above average in the west. <\/p>\n