Climate change is already buffetingAustralia with extreme bushfires, droughts and cyclones, and the fossil-fuelreliant country should brace for worse to come, according to the country’stop science and weather agencies, reports AFP.
The government’s top science body, CSIRO, and its Bureau of Meteorologyreleased a report Friday outlining a sobering future for the vast continent nation that was devastated by bushfires in 2019-2020 after its hottest anddriest year on record.
The blazes burned an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom, leaving33 people dead, killing or displacing nearly three billion animals andcosting the economy an estimated US$7 billion.
“Ten or 20 years from now, we won’t be saying 2019 was really hot — 2019will just be usual. There will be nothing exceptional about 2019,” CSIROClimate Science Centre director Jaci Brown told public broadcaster ABC.
“In fact, in the next century, this decade will seem cool.”
The State of the Climate report, which comes out every two years, foundless rain is falling in Australia’s southwest and bushfire-ravaged southeast,even as it increased in the north — hit by major flooding and destructivetropical cyclones in recent years.
Australia has warmed on average by 1.44 degrees Celsius (2.59 degreesFahrenheit) since 1910, the scientists said, nudging the ultimate Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Oceans have warmed by around one degree Celsius over the same period,causing acidification and more frequent marine heatwaves, the reportcontinued.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has suffered three mass coral bleachingevents in five years, losing half its corals since 1995 as ocean temperatureshave climbed.
The report predicted sea levels will continue to rise in line with globaltrends while tropical cyclones become less frequent but more intense.
“Climate change is happening now and it will continue to happen,” Browntold the ABC.
The CSIRO has previously called for Australia to tap “abundant naturalresources and extensive know-how” to become “a world-class clean energy andtechnology provider”, putting it at odds with the conservative government,which has slow-pedalled measures to tackle climate change.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has repeatedly played down the link betweenclimate and the bushfires, and has committed to keeping Australia as one of the world’s leading fossil fuel exporters.
But Australians are increasingly concerned about climate change, with arecent poll by Sydney’s Lowy Institute showing almost 90 percent believing itis a critical or important threat.
Survey respondents placed drought and water shortages exacerbated byclimate change above even the coronavirus pandemic and the global economiccrisis as the top threat facing the country.
