More droughts, floods for Australia as globe heats up*

SYDNEY, Oct 2 (AFP) Oct 02, 2007

Floods and droughts will become more frequent in Australia and cyclones
more intense, as the world's driest inhabited continent heats up due to
global warming, a new scientific report warned Tuesday.

Sea levels are expected to rise and snow and rainfall to decrease as
average temperatures in some areas rise by as much as five degrees
Celsius within 70 years, according to the report by government scientists.

"By 2030 we are looking at an increase in temperature of about one
degree," said one of the report's authors, Penny Whetton.

"If you go out to 2070, what happens then depends on what happens to our
global emissions of greenhouse gas.

"There is the risk of warming as high as four or five degrees by 2070 in
parts of Australia," she said.

Whetton, from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation, said temperatures in Australia overall would likely rise
by between 2 and 3.5 degrees by 2070, but could go higher or lower
depending on the level of greenhouse gas pollution.

These gases, produced by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, are
contributing to the so-called greenhouse effect by blanketing the
Earth's upper atmosphere and trapping heat inside.

The report, "Climate Change in Australia," found that rainfall would
decrease by between 10 and 30 percent by 2070, particularly in the major
agricultural zones in southeastern Australia.

Drought months could increase by 40 percent in eastern Australia and by
80 percent in the country's southwest by 2070, it said.

Whetton said there would also be changes in extreme weather events,
meaning more days when the temperature topped 35 degrees Celsius (95
degrees Fahrenheit), fewer frosts, more intense tropical cyclones and a
higher risk of bushfires.

Scott Power, from the Bureau of Meteorology, said Australia's average
temperature had already increased by 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1950
while oceans were warmer and sea levels had risen.

"We are more certain than ever before that these changes can be largely
attributed to human intervention," he told a press conference.

Parts of Australia have been in the grip of drought for more than six
years, threatening the country's major agricultural zone, while water
restrictions are in place in most state capitals.

But Whetton said Australia was no worse than most other places on earth
at a similar latitude in terms of the impact of global warming.

"Everyone will experience warming," she said.

"Very broadly, if you look around the world, it's sort of a pattern of
dry areas getting drier and wet areas getting wetter."

Whetton said the planet would be hotter by 2030 even if carbon gas
emissions were dramatically cut immediately but the sooner action was
taken, the greater the ability to limit the future warming.

"But some warming is inevitable."

Tim Flannery, noted scientist and global warming campaigner, said
despite the prognosis he was optimistic humans would become "planetary
engineers" to make their environment liveable.

"The only reason that we would act on any of this at all is to preserve
ourselves from dangerous climate change," he told a conference in Sydney.

"It's not to make money from the carbon trading floor or anything else,
it's simply to give our global civilisation a chance at surviving the
21st century."

Flannery urged Australia, which with the US has refused to ratify the
UN-supported Kyoto Protocol, to tackle greenhouse gases by changing its
tack.

"It's abundantly clear there's no time to forge another global treaty on
this issue. Kyoto at the moment is it," he said.