Climate change will hit Australia harder than the rest of the world
The national science agency CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology have released their most comprehensive forecast yet based on 40 global climate models, producing what they said was the most robust picture yet of how Australia’s climate would change.
According to their predictions, Australia could be on track for a temperature rise of more than 5C by the end of the century, exceeding the rate of warming experienced by the rest of the world, unless radical action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In the report it stated there was “very high confidence” that temperatures would rise across Australia throughout the century, with the average annual temperature set to be up to 1.3C warmer in 2030 compared with the average experienced between 1986 and 2005.
In 2014, Australia experienced its third-warmest year on record, with 2013 its warmest year on record. These temperature projections for the end of the century depend on how deeply, if at all, greenhouse gas emissions are cut. According to the report, this “business-as-usual” approach to burning fossil fuels is set to cook Australia more than the rest of the world, which will average a temperature increase of 2.6C to 4.8C by 2090.
Kevin Hennessy, a principal research scientist at the CSIRO, said it and the Bureau of Meteorology now had a greater confidence than ever in their forecasts of Australia’s climate.
“We expect land areas to warm faster than ocean areas, and polar regions faster than the tropics,” Hennessy told Guardian Australia.
“Australia will warm faster than the rest of the world,” Hennessy said. “Warming of 4C to 5C would have a very significant effect: there would be increases in extremely high temperatures, much less snow, more intense rainfall, more fires and rapid sea level rises.”
“Achieving a intermediate, rather than higher, emissions path would require significant reductions in global greenhouse gases,” Hennessy said. “It’s difficult to say what will be achieved, there are a lot of negotiations to come in Paris. We hope there will be an agreement until 2050 at least, but who knows what will happen in the coming decades.”