Climate scientists warn of hotter summers than expected
Updated
A US climate scientist has warned that future climate change will be beyond anything predicted.
Professor Chris Field a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the 2007 report is based on old data and emissions are rising more rapidly than expected.
Presenter: Jennifer Macey
Speakers: Professor Roger Stone, University Of Southern Queensland; professor Chris Field, Carneigie Insitute Of Science; Dr Penny Whetton, Centre For Australian Weather And Climate Research
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JENNIFER MACEY: It's not the first time that a scientist has said that the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was out of date as soon as it was published.
But Professor Chris Field from the Carnegie Institute of Science in the US says the report seriously underestimated the scale of the problem.
He says new data shows that greenhouse gases are rising more rapidly than expected due largely to the burning of coal for electricity in India and China.
CHRIS FIELD: Fossil emissions have proceeded much more rapidly than anticipated in any of the scenarios that were characterised in detail. The consequence of that is that we are basically entering a domain of climate change that has not been explored by the models. We're on a different trajectory of emissions and therefore an unknown trajectory of warming.
JENNIFER MACEY: In Australia, scientists are largely sticking to their forecasts for the region.
Dr Penny Whetton from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research is also an IPCC lead author.
She says average Australian temperatures are expected to rise by 0.6 to 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next 20 years.
But she says it's more likely that this will be at the upper end of this scale.
PENNY WHETTON: Look, it's true that the consequence of how greenhouse gas emissions have been going in recent years, the chance of us getting warmer is right at the low end of that range, it's decreasing, unless we can start reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
JENNIFER MACEY: Dr Whetton says this will lead to more hot days, a drop in rainfall across southern Australia and will increase the intensity of tropical cyclones.
PENNY WHETTON: The change is already taking place, but what we expect is, as the decades go by, these changes will get stronger.
JENNIFER MACEY: Professor Roger Stone from the University of Southern Queensland is an expert in Climate modelling and forecasting.
He says some changes already observed in Australia have been underestimated.
ROGER STONE: There's still a bit more to do there after seeing just what's going on in Australia, but I have to say some of the work we're doing through the Murray-Darling system suggests that there's potential for some underestimation on the patterns we've seen in the last 10 years, they're already worse than some of the climate change projections.
JENNIFER MACEY: And he says it's time to start thinking about risk management for the worst case scenarios.
ROGER STONE: At the moment there's probably about a 60 per cent chance of an El Niņo developing by mid-winter. If that happens that will exacerbate the whole drought and therefore fire situation over a lot of Australia, not just Victoria, for next summer.
