SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) — Australia could face a temperature increase of more than 5 C by the end of the century, says the country’s national science agency.
The increase would outpace global warming worldwide.
In its most comprehensive analysis yet of the impacts of climate change, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization painted a worst-case scenario of a rise of up to 5.1 C by 2090 if no actions are taken to cut greenhouse emissions.
“There is a very high confidence that hot days will become more frequent and hotter,” CSIRO principal research scientist Kevin Hennessy said.
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“We also have very high confidence that sea levels will rise, oceans will become more acidic and snow depths will decline.”
The dire warning from the government-funded agency is at odds with the official line from prime minister Tony Abbott, who in 2009 declared the science of climate change was “crap.”
Abbott last year scrapped a tax on carbon pricing and abolished the independent Climate Commission, saying recent severe droughts that have crippled cattle farmers were “not a new thing in Australia.”
As the host of the Group of 20 last year, he attempted to keep climate change off the agenda, resulting in an embarrassing back-down at the leaders summit in Brisbane after U.S. president Barack Obama used a high-profile speech to warn Australia that its Great Barrier Reef was in danger.
Australia, which is one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters per capita, has declined to join other nations in contributing to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund.
Instead, Abbott has committed $2.75 billion to a domestic initiative to reduce the country’s emissions by five percent below 2000 levels by 2020.
The new research by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, which uses 40 global climate models, predicts that Australia will warm at a greater rate than the rest of the world.
The 5.1 C projection for 2090 is at the top end of a range starting at 2.8 C and depends on how deeply, if at all, greenhouse gas emissions are cut. The world average is for an increase of 2.6 to 4.8 C.
The report said the annual average temperature in Australia would likely be up to 1.3 C warmer in 2030 than the average experienced between 1986 and 2005.
