Rising levels of carbon dioxide increasing extreme weather events in Australia, report finds

The Guardian by Graham Readfearn Friday 13 November 2020

Australia’s climate has entered a new era of sustained extreme weather events, such as dangerous bushfires and heatwaves, courtesy of rising average temperatures, a new report by the nation’s two government climate science agencies has found.

Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, mostly from fossil fuel burning, has driven more dangerous bushfires, rising sea levels and a rapid rise in the days where temperatures reach extreme levels, the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO said in Australia’s latest State of the Climate Report. “What we are seeing now is beyond the realm of what was possible previously,” said Dr Jaci Brown, director of CSIRO’s Climate Science Centre.

While 2019 was Australia’s hottest on record that helped deliver unprecedented bushfires, those temperatures would be seen as average once global heating reaches 1.5C, the report said. Among the key findings, the report said Australia’s climate had warmed by 1.44C since 1910 with bushfire seasons getting longer and more dangerous. Australia’s oceans had warmed by 1C and were acidifying. Click here to read the full article