May-June Storms 1974: Part 3 – In Retrospect

May-June Storms 1974: Part 3 – In Retrospect

May-June Storms 1974: Part 3 – In Retrospect Looking back over the years we should be well aware of storm impacts along the east coast. There are now many records of such events. I was once shown a scarp at Boat Harbour near Port Stephens that was cut in the...
MAY-JUNE STORMS 1974 – PART 2

MAY-JUNE STORMS 1974 – PART 2

MAY-JUNE STORMS 1974 – PART 2 As I write this blog fifty years ago to the day, the first of the two great 1974 storms had abated. Little did we know that another was coming a week later. We soon started  stewing over the role of higher sea surface temperatures...
May-June Storms 1974 Revisited

May-June Storms 1974 Revisited

May-June Storms 1974 Revisited Fifty years ago in NSW we experienced a sequence of storms that for many of us constitutes the biggest storms on record in terms of impact. In this and a following blog I will recount some of that experience. It was fortunate that...
Urban water quality monitoring

Urban water quality monitoring

Urban water quality monitoring In 2007 Peter Cosier and I from the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists visited Eva Abal at University of Queensland to find out about water quality monitoring studies in southeast Queensland (SEQ). We had embarked on a project...
Impacts of warming oceans

Impacts of warming oceans

Impacts of warming oceans A brilliant Wilcox cartoon appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 12 March. She used two panels: on the left were reef tourists looking down from a boat at bleached corals; on the right was an actual sea surface temperature (SST) map of the...
Coastal vulnerability: an alternative approach

Coastal vulnerability: an alternative approach

Coastal vulnerability: an alternative approach Last month I had the pleasure listening to an old friend, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at the Sydney Opera House. The occasion was one of his more serious operas, Idomeneo. The Director noted that the “wine-dark sea” of the...