Adam Morton, Ben Cubby, Tom Arup and Nicky Phillips
Sydney Morning Herald
Click on the map to see what awaits if global temperature continues to climb above pre-industrial levels. Graphic: Francisca Sallato | Sources: Met Office, IPCC, Garnaut Climate Change Review, UNEP
IT’S 2100. A sci-fi movie version of the future is finally here – flying cars, robots, choking pollution. Oh, and the planet is 5 degrees hotter than it was at the turn of the millennium. It’s nearly 90 years since scientists warned (again) that the planet could warm by between 4 and 6 degrees if we didn’t cut greenhouse gas emissions. We didn’t, and it did.
The average global temperature, for night and day, is now 19 degrees, up from 14 degrees at the turn of the 20th century.
The best scientific estimates suggest that the last time it was this hot was during the Eocene, more than 30 million years ago, and long before humans turned up. Back then, temperatures rose gradually over many thousands of years. We’ve watched it happen in 100.
What is life like? Australia is both unrecognisable and strangely familiar. In the south-east, where the population is increasingly concentrated, it is hot and dry. If the average day is warmer, the warmest days are that much hotter again. Daily temperatures above 35 degrees are more frequent: there are twice as many of these scorchers in Sydney and Melbourne than a century ago.Meanwhile, the colder days have melted away like the snow at Thredbo and Mount Buller. This is a relief in winter, but not much fun in summer, unless you live in Tasmania, which has inherited Sydney’s climate. Sydney is more like Rockhampton: too hot and humid for too much of the year.
Weather similar to Victoria’s summer of 2009 – when scientists estimated that 374 people, mostly elderly, died due to heat stress as the temperature topped 43 degrees three days straight – has become more common. And people now die because of heat-related stress
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