Australian climate has changed for good, say scientists

Australia’s top climate scientists and science bodies have endorsed a major report that says the nation’s climate has already shifted – in some cases, permanently.

Released on Wednesday morning, the peer-reviewed Climate Commission report – The Critical Decade: Extreme Weather shows that the Australian climate has shifted, increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events around the country.

Last summer over 100 weather records were broken in Australia, including the hottest month and hottest day on record – and the Climate Commission warns that this can not be considered a one-off.

In its most comprehensive assessment analysis, the commission says Australia has a future of records yet to be broken and in some cases day-to-day weather has shifted for good.

“We see a pattern emerging. The south-west and the south-east of Australia have become drier – the south-west since the mid ’70s and the south-east since the mid ’90s,” report author Professor Will Steffen told ABC Radio’s AM program in an interview.

“That tells us for the future that we would expect to see dry conditions more often, more droughts in the future and very importantly we don’t expect to see the previous pre-climate-change weather conditions come back.

“To a certain extent, for a long period of time the best we can hope for, at least in terms of [our] grandchildren, is to stabilise the planet and it will stabilise at a temperature which is probably 2 degrees or more above the pre-industrial.

“That means some changes in patterns will lock in probably for centuries.”Relationship-between-average-and-extremes

Federal climate change minister Greg Combet said the report showed that climate change was no longer a problem for the future, but was “already here.”

“The Climate Commission’s report is a wake-up call for those who think we can afford to delay taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Combet said.

“Increasing greenhouse gas emissions is like loading the dice for more extreme weather events in the future. We owe it to future generations to clean up our economy and reduce carbon pollution.”

Combet also took the opportunity of the report’s release to have a dig at the Opposition, who have vowed to dismantle several of the the Gillard government’s climate policies – including carbon pricing, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA – should it win the September election.

“It’s time for Tony Abbott to pull his head out of the sand and start listening to the scientists,” said Combet. “The scientific advice is that this is the critical decade to act. The stakes are high. Australia needs responsible leadership and sound policies on climate change, not opportunistic scare campaigns and negative politicking.”

Comments

6 responses to “Australian climate has changed for good, say scientists”

  1. Jenny Avatar
    Jenny

    “Changed for good” is not exactly how I would put it. Now I’m just waiting for the same boring old junk science that has been refuted again and again from the usual deniosaur trolls. It kind of reminds of the game machine my kids occasionally played with when they maybe 6 or 7 where crocodiles kept coming out and they had to whack them on the head with a big rubber mallet (or their fists) to temporarily send them back.

    1. Jenny Goldie Avatar
      Jenny Goldie

      Jenny

      I wish your name wasn’t Jenny because you’re giving the impression that we who are blessed with this name are incapable of reading the scientific literature. In fact, the science is not junk science and nor has it been refuted. Climate change is happening and it is man-made. Get used to it and do something aboiut it.

      1. Jenny Avatar
        Jenny

        Hi Jenny

        OOPS!!!!

        Perhaps irony of my statement could have been more obvious but I usually avoid outright sarcasm.

        I am sufficiently familiar with climate science to accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels. The junk science to which I refer is the usual boringly repetitive cherry picked crap that is to be found on denialist blogs rather than in peer reviewed refereed publications.

        As for what I’m doing myself I engage in political campaigns for action on climate change and at a personal level we use solar hot water, generate solar electricity, grow our own fruit and vegetables, are frugal in our use of energy, use public transport as much as possible, collect our own rainwater and the list goes on.

        We take climate change very seriously.

  2. Beat Odermatt Avatar
    Beat Odermatt

    Amongst the cloud of CO2 and other greenhouse gases we often forget one issue which can be as important as global warming. I mean massive deforestation and land degradation. During the last 30 years, we have seen some of the worlds most massive tree and forest destruction in the world. In Queensland alone, a forest five time the size of the UK has been destroyed. It is not possible to destroy a forested area roughly 3000km long and 500 km wide without causing an environmental impact. In the past, the massive Brigalow Belt provided some cooling in inland Queensland to enable more frequent rainfall and at the same time provided some protection during massive monsoonal rainfall events. The removal of the Brigalow Belt has also caused the removal of any natural food protection. We will see more severe droughts to be broken by more severe rainfall events.
    Queensland and NSW will suffer greatly because of the short-sightedness and greed which led to the massive forest destruction.

  3. ian Avatar
    ian

    That is a bang-on statement, Beat. and all the co2 storage in the biomass.
    Re: the warmer climate- this may be true, but the clowns running the tabloid media still wont listen nor put this info out there to the masses they influence.

  4. Kevin O'Dea Avatar
    Kevin O’Dea

    The scariest part of this story for me is the methane being released by the csg clowns fracking the farmlands of Queensland and NSW, so those states can look forward to heavy flooding events which will make much of that countryside uninhabitable at all. Tony and his mates had better have a viable budget plan to cope with all the costs of this mess.

Get up to 3 quotes from pre-vetted solar (and battery) installers.