[AlphBravo (OP)]

Well living here in Australia I note that there is a claim these floods are unprecedented, and wondered  if all this water is linked to the melting ice fields etc and will it be an annual event now? []

[jennyjuan]

Hi, guys, this year, not just your country has many water, so do mine.

[CliffordK]

One can never understand those Aussies...
One year they're complaining about a drought.
The next year they're complaining about the rain.

This Catch-All with climate change is one of the big problems with the theory.

One minute they can be predicting global droughts, and desertification.
Then the next moment they can be predicting global floods.

I think there are reports of connections between weak solar cycles and wet years.  But, looking at the global trends, the data doesn't seem that clearcut.  Perhaps it is different when looking at a more local basis.

The el niño/la niña cycles also affect rainfall in various areas.  We're currently in a la niña cycle.  Predictions for local rainfall are available online.

One thing that has struck me is the non-uniformity of mean sea level rise.  
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.shtml
http://climate.nasa.gov/blogs/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowBlog&NewsID=239


Alaska, and the west coast of the USA tends to show more stable, and even perhaps falling sea levels.
The sea level rise in the seismically active regions around Australia, New Guinea, and the Philippines is some of the highest.

Venice & New Orleans were built on river deltas, and for centuries humans have built dykes and had other flood control methods which limit the natural sediment depositions where the cities now exist.  It may actually force sediment depositions out to sea, perhaps creating new "pressure points" just beyond the city's dikes.  Anyway, the sinking of river delta cities may be due to flood control activities.

Seismic Activity is a major driving force of the non-uniformity of sea level rise.

Also, keep in mind that the snapshot of sea levels often presented by the media is very short.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level_png


This seems to indicate a continuing sea level rise throughout the entire Holocene Epoch.

[Daerana]

Yesterday I went to the local markets and I was talking to a guy selling fruit and veggies.  He was telling me about how last year he lost most of crops due to the huge drought and now just following the huge floods in Queensland how this year he's lost most of it too the floods.

Another intersting point is that I remember last year all the dams were down at 10 to 20%.  Now they are at about 130 to 190%.  I remember seeing on the new in the middle of the big Brisbane floods that they were fearing one of the dams wall may break from the pressure.  It wasn't that long ago when they were saying that they feared that the level would soon go below pumping level.  Ironic really.

[Daerana]

That's some interesting information you've found there CliffordK.  Thanks for that.

[yor_on]

The weather patterns are changing globally. Not only Australia but most of the world are seeing stuff they never seen before. But Australia I think is one of the places where it will be noticed first. And with heat comes turbulence, and with that comes also, depending on all those connections one weather have to another, oscillations in those patterns. Look up chaos theory and climate to see, also non-linear systems and what happens before a so called 'tipping' comes.