What the world will be like under a changed climate?

A leak draft report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) obtained by News Corp revealed major findings on what the world will be like under a changed climate. The report, Working Group II AR5, is due for release On March in Yokohama, Japan.

A section running 100 pages from the report detail the effect of climate change on Australasia with regard to the economy, industry, human health and ecosystems of the country. The section was co-authored by 45 scientists from Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

Alarming projections on Australia include a warning that an extra 9,000 Australians a year across the country will die from heat by the end of the century. The report was based from high-emissions scenario.

Shocking projections are as follow:

  • Yearly, it was projected that 800,000 more people will experience stomach ailments due to stomach bugs from contaminated food and water.
  • There will be more than 270,000 homes that will be in danger of collapsing due to rising sea levels. $226 billion worth of coastal assets - homes, rail and road infrastructures - are at risk due to a 1.1 metre rise in sea levels
  • There will be an increase in temperature-related hospital admissions in South Australia by the end of century.
  • The number of Australian expected to die in NSW due to heat will triple
  • South Eastern Australia is now a global climate change "hot spot". Australian oceans are warming faster compared to any other ocean in the world, and this pace is predicted to increase by ten per cent more than the global average.

"In Australia sea level rise of 1.1 metres would affect over $226 billion of assets including up to 274,000 residential and 8000 commercial buildings. While the magnitude of sea level rise during the 21st century remains uncertain, its persistence over many centuries implies that realisation of these risks is only a question of time," according to the Working Group II AR5 report.

"Projected increases in heatwaves will increase both heat-related deaths and hospitalisations, especially in the elderly, compounded by population growth and ageing. The number of hot days when physical labour in the sun becomes dangerous is also projected to increase substantially in Australia by 2070, leading to economic costs from lost productivity, increased hospitalisation and occasional deaths," as stated from the report.

"While the magnitude of sea level rise during the 21st century remains uncertain, its persistence over many centuries implies that realisation of these risks is only a question of time."

Meanwhile, a research from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, jointly run by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, revealed similar findings to that of the IPPC.

The report from CAWCR, stated that the impact of El Nino years will be intensified due to the heat rise in the waters of the eastern Pacific regions.

''There's an intensification of changes in rainfall that are driven by El Nino,'' as explained by Scott Power, research leader and a senior climate scientist at the bureau.

The report revealed that Australia will have worse droughts during the El Nino years. In the wake of bushfires now happening in the country, the report alarmed that aggravated bushfires will be happening in the future.

''What we found was those two effects are intensified in the future because global warming interferes with the impact that El Nino has. When the world tends to warm up because of El Nino, so does Australia. That's because we tend to get less rainfall, so it dries out and clouds clear, we [then] get more radiation hitting the surface, less evaporation to moderate things, and temperatures go up," Mr Power explained.