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Fri 6 April 2007 (Updated Tue 10 April)

RAPID ROUNDUP: Australian Climate Change Authors Comment on new IPCC Report

Below, Australian Lead Authors, Review Editors and Contributing Authors of the IPCC Working Group 2 (WG2) Report comment on various aspects of the document released today in Brussels.

Feel free to use the quotes below in your stories. If you wish to speak to a climate expert, contact the AusSMC on 08 8207 7415.

Other Resources available:

• Further background notes
• Author availability over Easter (PDF)
• Media releases and fact sheets on the latest IPCC Report

Various Lead Authors also spoke at a national media briefing on Tuesday 10 April in Sydney. Click here for briefing details and audio of the speakers .



CHAPTER 11 – AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

Dr Mike Coughlan, Head of the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre and Review Editor.

"The IPCC WG-II Report brings the consequences of climate change much closer to home for us all. The somewhat esoteric predictions of global temperature rise and shifts in rainfall patterns that characterise the WG-I report are etched more sharply now in what they portend for fresh water availability, food security, species loss, health consequences and indeed the future habitibility of the planet."


Kevin Hennessy, Principal Research Scientist, Climate Impacts & Risk Group CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research and Coordinating Lead Author.

"The Summary for Policymakers clearly shows that human activities are already affecting some natural systems and projected climate change is likely to have major impacts across the world. Both adaptation and emissions reductions will be necessary for sustainable development".



Dr Bryson Bates, Director, CSIRO Climate Program and Lead Author.

“Adaptation to climate change is as important as the mitigation of greenhouse gases as further climate change is inevitable.
We need to undertake cost effective measures particularly in the areas of water resources, agriculture and biodiversity. For example there are cost effective adaptation measures that can improve the efficiency of water use in agriculture such as using water efficient irrigation equipment, transfer of water across farms and scheduling watering of crops.

This is a problem that confronts this generation as well as the next. Climate change is real and the time to act is short”.


Professor Lesley Hughes, Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University and a Lead Author.

“Most species of plants and animals are well adapted to short-term climate variability but are at risk from longer-term shifts and more extreme events. These stresses can also be compounded by elements such as invasive species and the fragmentation of their habitat.

The most vulnerable regions include the alpine regions, Wet Tropics and Kakadu World Heritage Areas, coral reefs, coastal and freshwater wetlands and regions such as south west Western AustraliApril 9, 2009ies.

Most species will probably not be able to adapt genetically to the climate changes expected, because the climate is changing too rapidly. However, there is a lot we can do to reduce other, non-climatic stresses and therefore help ecosystems to become more resilient. Reversing habitat loss and fragmentation is critical, and improving connectivity between existing habitats will help some species adapt to climate shifts by migrating to new areas. Dealing better with issues such as pests, and improving environmental river flows will also be very important.”


Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, The University of Queensland and the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) and a Contributing Author.

“If we don’t start dealing with rising emissions with serious reduction targets in mind, mass coral bleaching is likely to be an annual event on at least parts of the GBR, possibly by 2030, and almost certainly by 2050. Since it takes 10-50 years for a reef to recover from a severe bleaching event, these projections indicate that corals could become rare in tropical reef systems. Corals create the habitat for thousands of other organisms - if corals become rare, many other reef organisms will also become vulnerable. The consequences for subsistence usages of coral reefs as well as associated fishing and tourism industries could be substantial.

Protecting fish populations is one way that we can help coral reefs recover from mass bleaching events. A recent experiment done by ARC Centre for Excellence researchers has shown that reefs can recover three times faster if fish populations are left intact. This suggests that marine protected areas may be a critical tool. Another critically important tool is protecting water quality. These measures will have a big influence the survival of coral reefs in the coming century of change while we work to get greenhouse emissions under control.”


Dr Donna Green, Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. She is a Contributing Author.

"Many Australians are only just waking up to the reality of what living with climate change will mean. However, many Indigenous Australians living in remote communities in Northern Australia already know what it's like to live with more extreme weather, such as the severe storm surges that have recently flooded people's homes on some low-lying Torres Strait Islands.

Projected increases in temperature, flooding and storm surges are likely to disproportionately impact Indigenous Australians. As a consequence, significant long term adaptation activities need to be planned and implemented quickly."


CHAPTER 1 - ASSESSMENT OF OBSERVED CHANGES AND RESPONSES IN NATURAL AND MANAGED SYSTEMS

Dr David Karoly Williams Chair and Professor of Meteorology, School of Meteorology
University of Oklahoma. David is a Lead Author.

"For the first time, this IPCC assessment has concluded it is likely that warming due to human activity has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems. Earlier assessments concluded that increasing greenhouse gases have caused the increase in global average temperatures. Now, the impacts on plants and animals are clear; earlier flowering of plants, changes in migration patterns of birds and wild animals, and retreat of glaciers; and they are likely due to climate change due to increasing greenhouse gases."

Professor Terry Hughes, James Cook University and the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS). He contributed to sections dealing with changes to the Earth’s natural systems in this chapter.

"The take-home message from the IPCC Report, is that we have a narrow window of opportunity - no more than 20 years to achieve decisive cuts in greenhouse gasses - to protect coral reefs from massive degradation. If we wait too long, temperatures and ocean acidity will inevitably rise too high for most corals to survive. Do we want our children to experience coral reefs only from old books and movies?"

CHAPTER 2 - NEW ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGIES AND THE CHARACTERISATION OF FUTURE CONDITIONS

Dr Roger Jones, Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. He is a Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 2 and has been attending the IPCC meeting in Brussels. Roger will be speaking at a national media briefing in Sydney on Tuesday (April 10).

"This assessment is clearly demonstrating, perhaps for the first time, that coping with climate change is clearly a case of risk management. It is impossible to predict the future, in part because of what people do will change that future. That is the strength of risk management as an approach because we can now show what might happen in futures where little is done about the problem. We are also becoming able to show how climate damages can be reduced, delayed and avoided, both by adaptation to climate change and by mitigation.

However, this assessment is the first one that begins to illustrate this point clearly. We need to do a lot more work to begin to fill out this picture. How much can we adapt in our various activities, such as for water resources, coastal zones, agriculture and ecosystems? What are the limits of adaptation and how large can the benefits be?

This heralds a new era for research. Climate change is already happening and we need to adapt now to those changes and plan for the future. Scientists will have to change being the traditional neutral observer, to the neutral participant where we learn how to manage risk by taking part in assessments and by learning from them."

CHAPTER 6 – COASTAL SYSTEMS AND LOW LYING AREAS

Professor Colin Woodroffe, Coordinator, GeoQuEST Research Centre, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong. He is a Lead Author on the chapter focusing on coastal areas and low-lying areas (Ch 6).

"A large proportion of the Australian population lives along the coast and will experience the impacts of sea-level rise. The fourth IPCC assessment emphasises the significance of other coastal aspects of climate change, including extreme flooding events from storm surges, as well as coral bleaching due to thermal stress, which is already impacting the Great Barrier Reef. Australia probably encapsulates a wider range of coastal systems than any other nation, from the diverse reefs of the tropics, through a range of temperate shorelines, to its Antarctic territories, but many more people are likely to be threatened overseas, on low-lying atolls or coastal plains. The devastation that Hurricane Katrina caused in New Orleans provided an ominous warning, particularly for rapidly-expanding cities in the slowly-subsiding deltas of Asia."


CHAPTER 8 – HUMAN HEALTH

Dr Paul Beggs, Division of Environmental and Life Sciences at Macquarie University and a Contributing Author.

“There is considerable evidence of impacts of climate change on allergens such as pollen. These impacts include increases in the amount of pollen produced by plants such as ragweed, and an earlier start and lengthening of the pollen season. Such changes could have serious adverse impacts on human health, and in particular on diseases such as asthma and hay-fever. It has also been found recently that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide results in poison ivy that is more toxic. This plant has been introduced and become invasive in Australia, so the stage is set for dermatitis from contact with this plant to become more of a problem in the future.”


Professor Tony McMichael, Director of the National Centre for Epidemiology & Population Health at the Australian National University and is a Review Editor of Chapter 8.

"This latest IPCC report updates, and clarifies in more detail, the diverse risks to human health from climate change -- and how these risks will increase over coming decades and impinge unequally around the world. Some anticipated future benefits to health are also noted.

The report reinforces a crucial insight that had begun to emerge from previous IPCC assessments. That is, while the UK 'Stern Report' has highlighted the serious risks posed by unconstrained climate change to our economic system, much of this IPCC WG2 report indicates that the greatest long-term risk is to the world's life-support systems: forests, fisheries, freshwater circulation, agriculture, coastal zones, and diverse ecosystems. In the long run our health, safety and survival depend on those systems.

This fourth IPCC assessment report provides updated details about the health risks posed by heatwaves and other extreme events, by climatic influences on food yields and nutrition, and by changes in patterns of infectious diseases.

It also draws new attention to the health risks posed by droughts and by freshwater shortages in many regions of the world. In Australia, researchers have recently drawn attention to the long-term risk to the health of rural communities, particularly in southern regions, as drier conditions emerge. Mental health risks are inevitable, along with health risks from various physical hazards (extremes of heat, dust, fire-smoke, etc.), freshwater shortages, nutritional risks and behavioural changes.

In the Asia-Pacific region there is a growing risk to social stability, wellbeing and health from the contributions of climate change to environmental degradation, coastal vulnerability, impaired crop and fisheries yields, and to lost livelihoods and associated mental stress and the health consequences of poverty. This may have major implications for Australia, including via increases in geopolitical insecurity, greater mobility of infectious diseases, and the flow of environmental refugees."


CHAPTER 15 – POLAR REGIONS (ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC)

Professor Harvey Marchant is former head of Biology at the Australian Antarctic Division and a Lead Author.

“Carbon Dioxide is having a disturbing effect on Southern Ocean ecosystems. Many planktonic species such as sea snails, some algae and some single-celled animals rely on calcium carbonate for their shells to develop. The more carbon dioxide taken up by the ocean the more acidic it becomes, inhibiting calcium carbonate formation and leaving species vulnerable.
The changes can also affect the chemistry of dissolved nutrients, potentially causing large scale changes in the structure and dynamics of marine ecosystems, with a knock-on effect to other larger species such as fish and squid that rely on these organisms to survive.

Carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere continue to rise, putting a greater strain on the world’s oceans which are forced to absorb more emissions than ever before with potentially catastrophic effects.”


CHAPTER 19 – ASSESSING KEY VULNERABILITIES AND THE RISK FROM CLIMATE CHANGE

Dr Barrie Pittock, is one of the world's leading scientists in atmospheric research. He was a senior scientist with CSIRO for over 30 years where he led the Climate Impact Group in the 1990s until his retirement. He is a Lead Author.

“This report (on climate change risk and adaptation) needed to focus on policy-relevant advice to decision-makers as to what possible risks from climate change must be avoided. In the IPCC report these are termed ‘key vulnerabilities’.

It therefore needed to focus not just on the most probable outcomes, but on those possible outcomes that should be avoided because they would be damaging. Observations published since the WG1 and WG2 reports were finalised already indicate that greenhouse gas emissions, global average temperatures and sea level rise are all tracking near the top of the model-generated range of possibilities. Rainfall changes in Australia may already be reflecting this higher-than-expected rate of change. This means that key vulnerabilities are already starting to occur. It makes action to reduce emissions more urgent, not based on theory, but on actual observed changes. We have been warned!”