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Here's a Worrying New Report on Australian Climate Change

Our recent alternations between hot weather and floods and has been attributed to a warming planet.

The aftermath of a bushfire. Image via Flickr user Elizabeth Donoghue

The Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO have just released their biennial State of the Climate report, and it has directly linked Australia's record-breakingly hot weather with climate change.

State of the Climate considers weather data from the past two years and uses it to predict future outcomes. According to the report, Australia is experiencing more severe weather conditions than ever before, with extreme heat leading to more dangerous and frequent bushfire seasons.

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Scientists found that Australia has warmed by around 1 °C since 1910, and that the number of days per year with temperatures more than 35 °C has increased in recent decades—except in some parts of northern Australia. Australia has also experienced longer fire seasons across the board since the 1970s.

CSIRO Senior Scientist and leader of the NESP Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub, Dr Helen Cleugh, directly linked the changes in Australia's weather patterns to an increase in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

"Carbon dioxide is measured in parts per million," Dr Cleugh said in a media statement released with the report. "Before around 1750, the level of CO2 was 278 ppm. This year the Earth will record a global annual average of over 400 ppm, the highest level in the past two million years."

As the report details, the 2016 global annual average for CO2 will almost certainly exceed 400 ppm. Most additional CO2 in the atmosphere is a direct result of human activities—mainly the burning of fossil fuels. The atmospheric CO2 increases in 2015 were the highest ever observed.

Although the last State of the Climate report was compiled only two years ago, climate science has rapidly advanced since that time. The report was able to utilise the latest climate monitoring techniques to analyse Australia's current weather patterns and make predictions for the future.

"Australian temperatures will almost certainly continue to increase over the coming decades," Dr Cleugh said. "Temperature projections suggest more extremely hot days and fewer extremely cool days… As land temperatures increase, so do ocean temperatures and the report shows that the deep ocean is also impacted, with warming now recorded at least 2000 meters below the sea surface."

The report is timed with new findings that coral bleaching in the northern Great Barrier Reef has become even worse over the past six months, with the vast majority of coral north of Cairns under enormous stress due to warming waters. Earlier this year, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority estimated that 22 percent of the reef's coral was dead.

The Bureau of Meteorology's Manager of Climate Monitoring, Dr Karl Braganza said Australia was already in the throes of climate change, and could expect severe weather events to become commonplace within decades.

"Some of the record-breaking extreme heat we have been seeing recently will be considered normal in thirty years' time," he said.

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