Climate Change in Australia

The CSIRO and the BOM put their heads together to work out what the findings of the 2007 IPCC Report means to Australia.

In a nutshell, we have to dramatically reduce emissions to keep Australia's average temperature from increasing more than the 1% that is already programmed into the system.

If this is a Government agency report, then how can any self-respecting Government ignore the implications.

clipped from www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their fourth assessment report, concluding that: Warming of the climate system is unequivocal Humans are very likely to be causing most of the warming that has been experienced since 1950 It is very likely that changes in the global climate system will continue well into the future, and that they will be larger than those seen in the recent past. These changes have the potential to have a major impact on human and natural systems throughout the world including Australia. The IPCC reports provide limited detail on Australian climate change, particularly when it comes to regional climate change projections. For this reason the Australian Greenhouse Office, through the Australian Climate Change Science Programme, engaged CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology to develop climate change projections for Australia.

Trend maps of Australia warming for 95 years

If you go to the trend maps at the BoM website you get a series of maps showing the trends of rainfall, temperature, sea surface, and pan evaporation across Australia over the 20th century.

By selecting Mean Temperature from the drop down menus, and Australia, Annual season, and the period 1910-present (2005), and you can display an at-a-a-glance graphic representation of effects of global warming for those criteria.




The trend clearly is to warming, and we know that is currently at 2°C per decade. By playing around with the seasons you can see that summer, winter and autumn all show warming and cooling in what seems to the untrained eye to be a relative equilibrium, but spring is different. Spring is clearly when the warming is happening.

How much of that is due to land clearing over the 95 years? If carbon dioxide is not being transformed into furious spurts of spring growth by plants and trees, because they have been cleared, then it becomes apparent that there is a build up of heat-retaining atmospheric carbon dioxide carrying over into the next seasonal cycle, causing the warming trend from year to year. How much of a contribution comes from emitting into the atmosphere, and how much of it is because carbon-dioxide is not being taken out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis?

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