Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO released their fourth biennial report on the State of the Climate on Thursday, describing the variability and changes in the country’s climate already observed, along with predictions that show a consistent picture of ongoing, long-term impacts due to climate change.
The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Australia’s mean surface temperature has risen about one degree Celsius since 1910, rainfall amounts are shifting away from the south of the continent and extremes of heatwaves and fire weather has shown a marked increase.
“Climate change is happening now and it’s having a tangible impact on Australia,” Karl Braganza, manager of the bureau’s climate monitoring, said.
Braganza cited the length of the fire seasons, and how they have been extended “by a matter of weeks on average” as warmer weather has been arriving earlier and lasting much longer. He pointed out that as levels of greenhouse gasses continue to rise, Australia will see a rise in surface temperatures and an increase in the number of hot days.
All this will lead to even more extremes of fire weather, Braganza says, causing wildfires like those that has already devastated wide swaths of the continent this year. The report also points out that rainfall through the growing season for winter crops has already dropped by as much as 20 percent in some regions.
The New York Times is saying that Australia is a leading example of a developed country being hit hard by Climate change. They point out that what the rest of the world is seeing happening right now in the continent is what the rest of the globe can expect to experience as climate change alters weather patterns.
The State of the Climate report echoes the many recent studies on climate change that say we must prepare and learn to adapt, stressing that “Australia will need to plan for and adapt to some level of climate change.”
According to the report, the science behind the future predictions on the impacts of a changing climate will aid in the economic, environmental and social decision-making and local vulnerability assessments by government, industry and communities.
