Australia set to face more heatwaves

Extreme heat likely to be more common, says report

SYDNEY,: Australia is set to experience more heatwaves, with record-breaking hot weather becoming “normal” across the continent as climate change pushes up land and sea temperatures, a government report warned.

The biannual State of the Climate report from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and Australian national science body CSIRO said yesterday that Australia was already experiencing more extremely hot days and severe fire seasons, and projections showed temperatures would likely keep rising.

“Australian temperatures will almost certainly continue to increase over the coming decades.

“Temperature projections suggest more extremely hot days and fewer extremely cool days,” CSIRO senior scientist Helen Cleugh said

“As land temperatures increase, so do ocean temperatures and the report shows that the deep ocean is also impacted, with warming now recorded at least 2,000m below the sea surface.”

The country experienced its three warmest springs on record between 2013-15, the weather bureau said, a season critical to southern Australia’s bushfire season.

While there has been more rain in some areas, there has also been a “significant decline” in others, including an 11% drop during the April-October growing season in Australia’s southeastern region since the mid-1990s, BOM added.

“The changing climate significantly affects all Australians through increased heatwaves, more significant wet weather events and more severe fire weather conditions,” said the bureau’s climate monitoring manager Karl Braganza.

“Some of the record-breaking heat we have seen recently will be normal in 30 years’ time.”

Cleugh said changes in the climate was due to an increase in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which were keeping heat in Earth’s lower atmosphere.

She added this year’s CO2 levels would reach a global average of over 400ppm (parts per million) – the highest in two million years.

Meanwhile, rainfall has reduced by 19% between May to July in southwestern Australia since 1970.

While bushfires are common in Australia’s arid summer, which usually begins in December, firefighters have said they are observing deteriorating conditions, including an apparent increase in the number of the most severe blazes in recent times.