Fires, Floods Pressure Australia Government on Climate

James Grubel, PlanetArk 10 Feb 09;

CANBERRA - Australia's deadliest bushfires increased pressure on the national government to take firm action on climate change on Monday as scientists said global warming likely contributed to conditions that fueled the disaster.

At least 130 people were killed in bushfires, set off by a record heatwave in southern Victoria state over the past week days, while large areas of Queensland state remain flooded by tropical downpours.

Scientists said Australia needed to prepare for more extreme weather events due to global warming, while the Greens and environmentalists said the fires and floods proved the government needed to toughen its targets to curb Greenhouse emissions.

"It's very clear, both globally and in Australia, there has been a warming trend since about 1950," leading Australian climate scientist Kevin Hennessy told Reuters.

"In a nutshell we can say the heatwaves and the fires we've seen in Victoria recently maybe partly due to climate change through the contribution of increased temperature.

"Going forward, we anticipate there will be continued increases in greenhouse gases and that locks in a certain amount of warming, and in the case of southern Australia further drying, and this will increase the fire weather risk."

Australia is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change because of its hot, dry climate, with the nation's south in prolonged drought and temperatures tipped to rise by 3 degrees Celsius by 2050 across the tropical north and desert interiors.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has set a target to cut overall greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent by 2020, and will only cut further, to about 15 percent, if there is widespread international agreement on tougher action.

But Green groups want Australia, which creates about 1.5 percent of global emissions, to cut emissions by at least 25 percent by 2020 as an example to the developing world, particularly India and China, about the need to take firm action.

Greens climate spokeswoman Christine Milne said all Australians had been deeply touched by the fire tragedy and the increased risk of fires from global warming.

STARING AT THE FUTURE

"As the community comes together to heal, we also will need to grapple with the fact that climate change is with us and is dramatically increasing Australia's bushfire risk," Senator Milne said in a statement to Reuters.

"Over the last few days, we Australians have looked our own future in the face."

Rudd, elected to power in late 2007, promised voters to take firm action on climate change. He has also promised to introduce carbon trading from July 2010 to help curb greenhouse gas emissions, with the laws to hit parliament in May.

Brian Fisher, a leading climate policy analyst and economist, said it was crucial for Australia to try to influence the world's top emitters to rein in greenhouse gas pollution.

"The key issue is what we can persuade others to do in concert with Australia. That determines what will happen to the world's climate," said Fisher, an author for the UN Climate Panel's Second, Third and Fourth Assessment Reports.

Bushfires and tropical floods are a normal part of Australian life, and can be crucial to help natural ecology. More than 250 people have died from bushfires in the past 40 years, making fires the most dangerous natural hazards in Australia.

But after years of drought, and with record high temperatures in Victoria over the weekend, fuelled by hot north winds blowing down from Australia's arid centre, the conditions were set for a major disaster.

"I have never seen weather and other conditions as extreme as they were on Saturday. The fire weather was unprecedented," said Sydney University bushfire analyst Professor Mark Adams.

"We do not have all the evidence yet to fully explain this day in terms of climate change. However, all the science to date shows that we can expect more extreme weather in the years to come -- that includes hotter days and drier landscapes across southern Australia."

(Additional reporting by David Fogarty; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Australian wildfire ferocity linked to climate change: experts
Neil Sands Yahoo News 9 Feb 09;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia is naturally the most fire-prone continent on earth but climate change appears to be making the wildfires that regularly sweep across the country more ferocious, scientists said Monday.

The intensity of the firestorm that killed at least 126 people in Victoria state has stunned Australians, even though they have a long history of dealing with bushfires.

The government-run Bureau of Meteorology said Australia's dry climate and naturally combustible vegetation, including oil-rich eucalyptus forest, meant fire was an intrinsic part of the country's landscape.

The history books back up the theory -- 75 dead in the "Ash Wednesday" fires of 1983, 71 killed in "Black Friday" 1939 and dozens more stretching back to the early days of white settlement in Australia.

But the wildfires that hit Victoria on the weekend were the nation's deadliest and experts believe the problem is linked to climate change.

"Climate change, weather and drought are altering the nature, ferocity and duration of bushfires," said Gary Morgan, head of the government-backed Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre.

"This weekend's fires highlight the importance of scientific research in order to improve our understanding of the multiple impacts of bushfires."

Australian poet Dorothy McKeller described the country as a land "of drought and flooding plains" and University of Sydney bushfire expert Mark Adams said there was evidence it was becoming even more volatile.

"I have never seen weather and other conditions as extreme as they were on Saturday, the fire weather was unprecedented," Adams said.

"We don't have all the evidence yet to fully explain this day in terms of climate change, however all the science to date shows that we can expect more extreme weather in the years to come.

"That includes hotter days and drier landscapes across southern Australia."

Research by the Bureau of Meteorology and the government science organisation CSIRO predicts the number of days when bushfires pose an extreme risk in southeastern Australia could almost double by 2050 under a worst-case climate change scenario.

Australia's wild weather included a once-in-a-century heatwave that sent temperatures soaring to 46 degrees Celsius (115 Fahrenheit) in the southeast just before the bushfires erupted, along with severe flooding in the north.

Environmental group Greenpeace said such occurrences would become more commonplace if climate change continued unabated.

"As climate change continues to gather pace, Australia is at risk of more frequent drought, higher temperatures, more frequent and intense bushfires, as well as increased severity of cyclones and flooding," Greenpeace campaigner leader John Hepburn said.

"The scale of this tragedy should be a clarion call to politicians for the need to begin treating climate change as an emergency."

Monash University researcher David Packham said authorities had failed to properly manage Australia's forests, providing fuel for the fires.

He suggested they could learn from Aborigines, who for thousands of years conducted controlled burn-offs in the forests in order to prevent massive conflagrations.

"We have thumbed our noses at what these people did and knew and we just can't keep on doing it," he said.