The bushfires that swept through Australia last year were connected to a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD), which is expected to become more frequent due to climate change, a geologist studying coral fossils said yesterday.
National Taiwan University Department of Geosciences professor Shen Chuan-chou (沈川洲) since 2001 has been working with Australian and US researchers to study climate systems in the Indian Ocean.
Led by Australian National University Research School of Earth Sciences professor Nerilie Abram, the team published a paper on IOD in the journal Nature on March 9.
Photo courtesy of Nerilie Abram via CNA
The bushfires resulted from a positive IOD event, when the region east of the Indian Ocean becomes drier and there is a reduced chance of rainfall in Australia, Shen told an online news conference held at the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taipei.
To understand the change in climate over the past centuries, the team drilled the cores of live and fossil coral off Sumatra, Indonesia, as coral can be viewed as a thermometer of ocean temperature, Shen said.
Shen’s laboratory used radiometric uranium-thorium dating techniques to identify the ages of the coral samples.
The most important finding was that the climate systems in the Indian and Pacific oceans are “interconnected,” which previously had been a disputed hypothesis, he said.
While similar dating techniques used by other laboratories might have a margin of error of one to two years, Shen said that his laboratory had reduced the margin of error to as little as three months.
The team found that positive IOD events often occur in conjunction with El Nino in the central Pacific Ocean, he said.
Models show that strong IOD events have been increasing and they might become more extreme due to global warming, he added.
Nonetheless, an IOD event in 1675 was estimated to be 42 percent stronger than one documented in 1997, showing that such events are also possible without human-caused global warming, Shen said.
Referring to previous studies of El Nino, Shen said that climate oscillations in the Indian Ocean also affect the climate of Taiwan.
If the temperature in the central Pacific is rising, more typhoons form in the summer and more strike Taiwan in the fall, while rainfall in spring decreases, causing droughts in southern Taiwan, he said.
The government should formulate more policies to mitigate the effects of climate change, Shen said.
CAUTION: Based on intelligence from the nation’s security agencies, MOFA has cautioned Taiwanese travelers about heightened safety risks in China-friendly countries The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday urged Taiwanese to be aware of their safety when traveling abroad, especially in countries that are friendly to China. China in June last year issued 22 guidelines that allow its courts to try in absentia and sentence to death so-called “diehard” Taiwanese independence activists, even though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction in Taiwan. Late last month, a senior Chinese official gave closed-door instructions to state security units to implement the guidelines in countries friendly to China, a government memo and a senior Taiwan security official said, based on information gathered by Taiwan’s intelligence agency. The
The National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday that it will revoke the dependent-based residence permit of a Chinese social media influencer who reportedly “openly advocated for [China’s] unification through military force” with Taiwan. The Chinese national, identified by her surname Liu (劉), will have her residence permit revoked in accordance with Article 14 of the “Measures for the permission of family- based residence, long-term residence and settlement of people from the Mainland Area in the Taiwan Area,” the NIA said in a news release. The agency explained it received reports that Liu made “unifying Taiwan through military force” statements on her online
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said yesterday that it is looking to hire 8,000 people this year, at a time when the tech giant is expanding production capacity to maintain its lead over competitors. To attract talent, TSMC would launch a large-scale recruitment campaign on campuses across Taiwan, where a newly recruited engineer with a master’s degree could expect to receive an average salary of NT$2.2 million (US$60,912), which is much higher than the 2023 national average of NT$709,000 for those in the same category, according to government statistics. TSMC, which accounted for more than 60 percent
Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢), a Taiwanese businessman and deputy convener of the nation’s National Climate Change Committee, said yesterday that “electrical power is national power” and nuclear energy is “very important to Taiwan.” Tung made the remarks, suggesting that his views do not align with the country’s current official policy of phasing out nuclear energy, at a forum organized by the Taiwan People’s Party titled “Challenges and Prospects of Taiwan’s AI Industry and Energy Policy.” “Taiwan is currently pursuing industries with high added- value and is developing vigorously, and this all requires electricity,” said the chairman
RSS