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Victim to drought: The town lake of Condoblin, New South Wales, dried up in 2004. When full, the lake brought economic benefits as holidaymakers flocked to the lake for fishing and waterskiing.
Enlarge imageWorldwide temperatures have risen between 0.5 and 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1900, higher than global trends. Ocean temperatures are also rising. Welcome to life on a warmer planet.
Australia Pacific region hotting up
Things are really hotting up in our region. In 2005, we experienced Australia’s warmest year on record. As further evidence of climate change, 2006 began with Sydney’s hottest New Year's Day on record. The city’s top temperature of 44.2 degrees Celsius caused power blackouts and shut down train lines. The maximum state temperature that day was a searing 47 degrees at Ivanhoe. Forty four fires burned across New South Wales.
Australia is particularly vulnerable to climate change, environmentally and economically. It is the driest inhabited continent on earth. We live on a tropical and sub-tropical latitude with scarce water resources. Many of our crops already grow at or above their optimum temperature range.
How climate change damages Australia and the Pacific
Scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and CSIRO predict that climate change impacts in the Australia Pacific region include:
- more frequent and severe bushfires, droughts, storms and floods.
- the spread of tropical diseases such as dengue fever, Ross River fever, malaria and encephalitis.
- death of the Great Barrier Reef from coral bleaching.
- death of Pacific coral reefs used for food and tourist income.
- destruction of Pacific Island homes and communities as sea levels continue to rise.
- agricultural losses due to heat stress on livestock and crops, and changes in temperature and rainfall.
- increased air pollution.
- loss of the Australian ski industry.
- damage to the Australian economy of one to two per cent of gross domestic product ($7 to $14 billion a year).
Increased drought and floods will actually change Australia’s environment. Read how on the Climate Action Network website.
More on the impacts of extreme weather
How climate change affects older Australians
World impacts
Polar ice shelves are melting, causing sea levels to rise, changing ocean currents and increasing sea temperatures. Unless we reduce greenhouse emissions, global warming over the next five decades could trigger meltdown of the ice shelves. This will cause a whole range of knock-on catastrophic regional impacts, including flooding of inhabited Pacific islands.
Around the world, droughts, bushfires, storms and floods are already increasing in ferocity and frequency.
