(AU Canberra Times) Climate Change Robs Australia Of Rain

Canberra Times - Tracey Ferrier

Australia's fire risk has gone beyond worst-case scenarios developed just a few years ago.

Vast swathes of Australia have already lost 20 per cent of their rainfall and the country's fire risk has gone beyond worst-case scenarios developed just a few years ago, a renowned climate expert says.

Australian National University Professor Mark Howden is a vice-chair of the world's leading authority on climate science and says despite dire, repeated warnings "our foot is not off the climate change accelerator".

He warned that without urgent action, conditions that spawned the devastating Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20 could be the new normal by the end of this decade.

"That becomes a relatively normal condition under our climate change scenarios say for 2030 and 2050," said Prof Howden, who contributed to the most recent IPCC report on climate risks.

Late last year, the CSIRO also warned Australia was at risk of more "mega fire years", with the nation now dealing with fire hazards year round. Areas lost to fire in autumn have increased three fold, and four-fold in winter.

"In south west Australia and south east Australia we've already lost around 20 per cent of our rainfall compared with that of 100 years ago," he said.

"In those mid-latitudes - where Australia sits - there have already been very strong drying trends. We're likely to see a strong intensification of that."

"As we go to the higher levels of climate change, we will not be able to keep up with our current type of agriculture - so agriculture as we currently conceive it.

Last year was, depending on which set of records are consulted, either the 5th or 7th warmest on record.

Regardless of that broad cooling effect, Prof Howden said people must remember the succession of disasters the world dealt with, all compounded by climate change.

Hurricane Ida hit the US, the fifth costliest globally. There were devastating floods across Europe and in China.

But he says there is still a "glimmer of hope" that the world will take the narrow opportunity it has and chose a future climate that's "relatively benign", something around the 1.5C of warming that's the best case objective of the Paris pact.

"We have to have immediate, rapid and large scale action."

"Climate adaption is now unavoidable and it's urgent," he said.

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