2 October 2007Forbes
Floods and droughts will become more frequent in Australia and cyclones more intense, as the world's driest inhabited continent heats up due to global warming, a new scientific report warned Tuesday.
Sea levels are expected to rise and snow and rainfall to decrease as average temperatures rise by as much as five degrees Celsius within 70 years, according to the report by government scientists.
'By 2030 we will are looking at an increase in temperature of about one degree,' said one of the report's authors, Penny Whetton.
'If you go out to 2070, what happens then depends on what happens to our global emissions of greenhouse gas.
'There is the risk of warming as high as four or five degrees by 2070 in parts of Australia,' she said.
Whetton, from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, said temperatures in Australia overall would rise by between 2 and 3.5 degrees by 2070, depending on the level of greenhouse gas pollution.
These gases, produced by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, are contributing to the so-called greenhouse effect by blanketing the earth and trapping heat inside.
The report, 'Climate Change in Australia', found that rainfall would decrease by between 10 and 30 percent by 2070, particularly in the major agricultural zones in southeastern Australia.
Whetton said there would also be changes in extreme weather events, meaning more days when the temperature topped 35 degree Celsius (95 Fahrenheit), fewer frosts and more intense tropical cyclones.
Scott Power, from the Bureau of Meteorology, said Australia's average temperature had already increased by 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1950.
'We are more certain than ever before that these changes can be largely attributed to human intervention,' he told a press conference in Sydney.
Parts of Australia have been in the grip of drought for more than six years, threatening the country's major agricultural zone, while water restrictions are in place in most capital cities.
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