[UPDATE 19 Jan – 25 % of state of Victoria underwater]

While flood levels drop in Queensland and Brisbane, Australia’s state of Victoria has now been hit with historic levels of flooding.

A strong La Nina enhanced by global warming seems to be behind the record flooding in Australia, Brazil, Sri Lanka and elsewhere as documented in my earlier article. Part of the reason for the severity of the flooding is that the atmosphere now contains 4 per cent more water vapour as a result of the increased global temperature of roughly 0.8C.

As the planet continues to warm from the burning of fossil fuels floods will get worse, but so will droughts.