Australia Set For More Heatwaves, Fires as Climate Change Hits: Report
Australia’s key climate agencies are forecasting a bleak outlook for Australia, with the country increasingly feeling the effects of the world’s changing climate.
The State of the Climate 2018 report, prepared by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, has warned of more heatwaves and extreme fire weather around Australia as global temperatures continue to rise.
Those rises are commonly attributed to an increase in emissions of the so-called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, working alongside other variables like the El Nino or La Nina events. Director of the Climate Science Centre at the CSIRO, Dr Helen Cleugh, said CO2 levels were unprecedented. “CO2 in the atmosphere now is at levels that we haven’t seen in at least 800,000 years and if we go back to other observations, the science says we probably haven’t seen these levels of CO2 concentration for maybe two million years.” The weather bureau’s manager of climate monitoring Dr Karl Braganza said the latest data revealed Australia’s climate had warmed by more than one degree since 1910.
Dr Braganza said slight increase had already led to an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme heat events. He said extreme fire danger temperatures have become more common, while fire seasons have also increased in length.
Long-term trends in rainfall have also begun to shift, with April to October rainfall decreasing in Australia’s southwest and southeast.