Future climate change
Our climate has already changed, and further changes are likely as concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to increase. Decision-makers rely on model-based scenarios of future climate to inform planning decisions.
National climate change projections: Climate Change in Australia
A comprehensive set of climate projections developed for Australia are available on the Climate Change in Australia website, released by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology in early 2015.
The climate change projections use up to 40 global climate models driven by four greenhouse gas and aerosol emission scenarios and are presented for eight regions of Australia which will be affected differently by climate change. Results have been prepared for 21 climate variables (both on the land and in the ocean) and for four 20-year time periods (centred on 2030, 2050, 2070 and 2090).
The website includes 14 interactive tools for exploring the data at different levels of complexity, to help improve accessibility, useability and relevancy of the projections for the Australian public. The tools range from the Regional Climate Change Explorer, a tool which presents statements of projected change for each region, through to a projections data download facility, the Climate Futures Tool. Climate Change in Australia hosts a “Climate Campus” for learning more about climate science and using projections in climate change impact assessments.
Global climate projections
New global projections were released as part of the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report during 2013 and 2014.
The IPCC Fifth Assessment report states that ‘Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and oceans, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climatic extremes’. The report found that:
- Global mean temperatures are projected to rise from 0.3-1.7 degrees Celsius under low emissions scenarios to 2.6-4.8 degrees Celsius under high emissions scenarios;
- Hot days and heat waves are projected to become more frequent and cold days less frequent;
- Rainfall is generally projected to increase at high latitudes and near the equator and decrease in regions of the sub-tropics, although regional changes may differ from this pattern. Rainfall extremes are projected to become more intense and more frequent in most regions; and
- Global mean sea level rise is projected to increase from between 26-55 cm under low emissions scenarios to 45-86 cm under high emissions scenarios by 2080-2100 relative to 1986-2005. Past 2100, sea levels will continue to rise, and could increase by between 1 to 3 meters, depending on future global emission levels.
In Australia, CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology produce projections for Australia’s climate. The latest projections were released in 2015 and are available from Climate Change in Australia. These projections provide a regional breakdown of Australia’s projections in greater detail than any previous projections.
More localised projections have been produced for some areas of Australia by state agencies. These are available from: