Greenhouse gases will continue to create more extreme weather, report finds

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The seventh State of the Climate report was released on Wednesday morning, issuing another dire warning about the climate change crisis.

“Associated changes in weather and climate extremes — such as extreme heat, heavy rainfall and coastal inundation, fire weather and drought — have a large impact on the health and wellbeing of our communities and ecosystems,” the report stated.

“These changes are happening at an increased pace — the past decade has seen record-breaking extremes leading to natural disasters that are exacerbated by anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change. These changes have a growing impact on the lives and livelihoods of all Australians.”

The report was co-authored by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, with the minister for the environment and water Tanya Plibersek saying on ABC it confirmed what was already known.

“Temperatures in Australia on land and in the seas are rising and that’s having the impact of more extreme weather events,” Plibersek said.

The report said the increase in greenhouse gases had led to carbon dioxide being trapped in the atmosphere.

The decline in fossil fuel emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was “negligible”, with fossil fuel carbon dioxide levels back to pre-pandemic levels in 2021.

As a result of climate change, the report predicts Australia will face more heat extremes and fewer cold extremes, longer droughts, heavy rainfall, more dangerous fire days, sea level rise, ocean warming and acidification, more coral bleaching, and less snow in Australia’s alpine regions.

When it comes to tropical cyclones, the report said there would be fewer in number but greater in intensity.

Most of the trapped heat in the atmosphere is being taken in by the planet’s oceans, with the report noting this effect on Australia’s coral reefs.

Not only has the Great Barrier Reef gone through four mass bleaching events since 2016, but the report also noted bleaching in the Ningaloo reef as well.

With the increase in ocean temperature, severe and more frequent coral bleaching is likely to continue.

“Along with ocean acidification and nutrient runoff, the increased severity and frequency of marine heatwaves are likely to reduce reef resilience and hinder coral recovery from future bleaching events.”

The State of the Climate report has been released every two years since 2010.

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