Australia experienced its hottest decade on record from 2000 to last year because of global warming, the nation’s bureau of meteorology said yesterday, as annual summer bushfires again burn drought lands and destroy homes.
The average temperature in Australia over the past 10 years was 0.48ºC above the 1961 to 1990 average, the Bureau of Meteorology said in its annual climate statement.
FORECAST
And this year is forecast to be even hotter, with temperatures likely to be between 0.5ºC and 1ºC above average.
“We’re getting these increasingly warm temperatures, not just for Australia but globally. Climate change, global warming is clearly continuing,” bureau climatologist David Jones said.
“We’re in the latter stages of an El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean and what that means for Australian and global temperatures is that 2010 is likely to be another very warm year — perhaps even the warmest on record,” Jones said.
CLIMATE POLICY
Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett used the report to attack opposition politicians for blocking the government’s key climate policy, a carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) aimed at reducing greenhouse gases causing global warming.
“Australia is one of the hottest and driest inhabited places on earth and our environment and economy will be one of the hardest and fastest hit by climate change,” Garrett said.
“Today’s statement finds that the patterns of the last year and the decade are consistent with global warming. It [passing the ETS] is in the national interest and it is in the interest of the world,” he said in a statement.
The government has promised to reintroduce its ETS legislation to parliament next month, a move that could trigger an early election next year if the legislation is again defeated.
An election is due in late next year.
EXTREME WEATHER
Last year will be remembered for “bushfires, dust storms, lingering rainfall deficiencies, areas of flooding and record-breaking heatwaves,” the bureau said.
It was Australia’s second-warmest year on record, with the annual mean temperature 0.9ºC above the 1961 to 1990 average, driven by three record-breaking heatwaves that caused Australia’s most deadly bushfires, killing 173 people.
“To get one of them in a year would have been unusual. To get three is just really quite remarkable,” Jones said.
OUTBACK
Outback Australia was warming more quickly than other parts of the country, with some inland areas warming at twice the rate of coastal regions, the bureau said.
But as Australia warmed, with large tracts of the country battling a decade-long drought, the northern part of the country was becoming wetter, the bureau said.
Floods now cover large parts of northern New South Wales state and the tropical state of Queensland.
“Australia as a whole has been getting warmer for about 50 to 60 years and it’s actually been tending to get wetter,” Jones said. “You see this paradox — the country, particularly in the north, it’s getting wetter but is also warming up.”
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