Australia will suffer more droughts, fires, floods and storms because of global warming and its famous Great Barrier Reef will be devastated by 2030, according to leaked extracts of a UN report yesterday.
The draft UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warns that temperatures in Australia would rise by 6.7?C before the end of the century, the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) and the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The report, due to be released on Friday, said rising temperatures would cause more intense bushfires and lead to deaths from heatwaves.
It also predicted rising sea levels would push the coast back 110 meters in some Sydney beachside suburbs, swamping some of the city's most exclusive real estate.
It said tropical cyclones would become more common on Australia's east coast, where most of the population lives, while 80 percent of the Great Barrier Reef would be bleached by 2030.
The Australian government played down the report, saying it was based on previously published scientific research and represented nothing new.
"Everything in there is well known to us, we know that there is the possibility or the probability of a hotter and drier future in southern Australia," Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull told ABC radio.
"We have a whole climate change adaptation framework under way, we are very focused on adapting to climate change," Turnbull said.
The UN report is the second in a series of three addressing climate change that has been prepared by a panel of more than 2,000 scientists.
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