The latest State of the Climate report by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO was launched at a weather monitoring station on remote Cape Grim in Tasmania. The location was an apt choice for a report that has very bad news about Australia's continuing failure to respond adequately to the climate change crisis.
The report says each decade since the 1950s has been warmer. Annual-average daily mean temperatures have increased 0.9% since 1910 and annual-average overnight minimum temperatures have warmed by more than 1.1% since 1910.
The recent two years of wetter weather, due to the La Nina effect, do not mean this long-term warming trend has ended. The report said last year “was the world’s 11th warmest year and the warmest year on record during a La Nina event”.
The world’s 13 warmest years on record have all been in the past 15 years.
La Nina is related to warmer-than-average ocean temperatures around Australia and sea-surface temperatures around Australia have risen faster than the global average, the report said.
The report projected an average temperature rise in Australia of 1-5ｰC by 2070, long-term drying over southern and eastern Australia and more extreme weather such as floods, droughts and cyclones.
CSIRO research says an average temperature rise of just 1-2ｰC would bleach 58-81% of the Great Barrier Reef each year. Core habitat for vertebrates in the northern tropics would drop 90%.
Three to four degrees would kill 95% of Great Barrier Reef species, shrink 20-85% of total snow-covered area in the Australian Alps and ruin 30–70% of core habitat for Victoria and highland tropical vertebrate species.
If average temperatures rise above 5°C, Australia will lose 90–100% of core habitat for most vertebrates.
The State of the Climate report said the global average sea level last year was 210mm above 1880 levels and rose faster between 1993 and 2011 than during the entire 20th century.
The report said greenhouse gases continue to rise exponentially. Carbon dioxide has reached 390 parts per million in the atmosphere.
It is almost too late to take the radical action needed to avert catastrophic climate change. And if the voices of reason don’t prevail over powerful vested interests blocking such action, then we could pass that point soon.
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