Climate
Analysis of future emissions trajectories indicates that, left unchecked, human emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) will increase several fold during the 21st century. Consequently, Australia’s annual average temperatures are projected to increase 0.4–2.0°C above 1990 levels by the year 2030, and 1–6°C by 2070. Average precipitation in southwest and southeast Australia is projected to decline during this time period, while regions such as the northwest may experience increases in rainfall. Meanwhile, Australia’s coastlines will experience erosion and inundation from an estimated 8–88 cm increase in global sea level. Such changes in climate will have diverse implications for Australia’s environment, economy, and public health.
A 2007 technical report on climate change in Australia jointly published by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Bureau of Meteorology provides climate change projections accounting for a number of variables, including temperature, rainfall, and others. The report provides assessment of observed Australian climate changes and causes, and projections for 2030 and 2070, under a range of emissions scenarios.
The Government of Australia acknowledges the impacts of changing climatic conditions, and its Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has established the Australian Climate Change Science Program (ACCSP), which aims to understand the causes, nature, timing, and consequences of climate change so as to inform the Australian response. The ACCSP will dedicate $14.4 million per year towards climate change research and has already made substantial progress with a recent publication, Australian Climate Change Research: Perspectives on Successes, Challenges, and Future Directions.
Read more about this topic: Effects Of Global Warming On Australia
Famous quotes containing the word climate:
“If often he was wrong and at times absurd,
To us he is no more a person
Now but a whole climate of opinion.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Certainly parents play a crucial role in the lives of individuals who are intellectually gifted or creatively talented. But this role is not one of active instruction, of teaching children skills,... rather, it is support and encouragement parents give children and the intellectual climate that they create in the home which seem to be the critical factors.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The climate of Ohio is perfect, considered as the home of an ideal republican people. Climate has much to do with national character.... A climate which permits labor out-of-doors every month in the year and which requires industry to secure comfort—to provide food, shelter, clothing, fuel, etc.—is the very climate which secures the highest civilization.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)