Climate Change Impacts on Australia

This assignment delves into the multifaceted impacts of climate change on Australia. It examines projected sea-level rise by 2090 across various emission scenarios, comparing it to historical data. Additionally, it analyzes changes in precipitation patterns using remote sensing techniques and explores their implications. The assignment draws upon reputable sources like the Garnaut Review and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide a comprehensive understanding of climate change's effects on Australia.

Climate change and your
home city

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................1
Changes in precipitation..............................................................................................................1
Changes in temperature...............................................................................................................2
Change in sea level......................................................................................................................2
Change in humidity.....................................................................................................................4
Change in wind...........................................................................................................................4
Social impacts.............................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Climate of a region can be simply defined as a regular or normal weather. Climate change
, therefore, is an alteration in the typical or ordinary weather of a city or region (Bambrick and et.
al., 2011). For instance, it can be change in the average yearly rainfall in a region. This can be a
modification in the average temperature of an area for a fixed period of time. The present report
is based on the climate change of Melbourne. In this project, the changes in precipitation,
humidity, sea level, temperature and wind.
TASK
Changes in precipitation
The changes in the climate system have been occurring in the Melbourne and are likely to
be continued. The international scientific community are accepting that increment in the gases of
green house due the activities of human have been the major cause of identified global warming
since the mid 20th century. The continuous emission of green house gases would cause further
more warming and alternation in all components of the climate system. Melbourne utilize or
enjoys a temperature climate with warmed and hot summer, spring and autumn are barmy and
moderate and the coolest winter (Pachauri and et. al., 2014) . The season of this place changes
suddenly , there is unbearable cold sometimes or unbearable hot temperature sometimes.
The reputation of rainfall in this city is statistically unfounded as it receives only 50 % of
the average rainfall in either Brisbane or Sydney. Possibly, it can sometimes a little uncertain to
predict about the weather of this city. In fact it is a good place of analysing the change in season ,
they are so distinctly described and so extremely visual within the several parks and orchards of
autumn and spring, give rise in natural beauty and charms. The Victorian snow report has
recorded 22 centimetres of snow fall at the Falls Creek for 24 hours and 20 centimetres at the
Mount Hotham on the morning of Saturday.
Projected alteration in the precipitation (i.e. snow fall and rain fall) are still ambivalent or
not certain in many parts of Australia. This is because rainfall is mostly changeable in space and
according to time (http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/climate/GCremote4.html, 2107). However,
models of climate continuously agree that there will be decrement in rain fall over much of
southern part of Australia and have the sterling security that this will occur for the south- west.
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Changes in temperature
Climate prediction represents that Australia is bearing for a more hooter future. The
magnitude or ratio of warming will relies on how people, globally, will survive in future. Scene
of future green house concentrations are formulated and will utilise to determine the change in
climate in future. If a high density scenario is considered and followed by 2090 Australia would
warmed by as much as 2.8 degree Celsius to 5.1 degree Celsius above the climate of 1986 to
2005. This level of heating is somewhat higher in comparison to global average warming of 2.7
degree Celsius to 4.9 degree Celsius which is projected by intergovernmental panel on climate
change (IPCC). However, if the emissions are minimum , then the increase in the temperature
will be lower and it will be around 1.5 degree Celsius to 2.6 degree Celsius (Stocker, 2014).
Alteration in the temperature would not be homogeneous in various regions of Australia.
Generally, inland regions are supposed to be warmed at a faster rate in comparison to coastal
areas. Warming along the coastal areas would be minimum in the south during winter season.
Change in sea level
Sea levels are emerging through out the globe and around the Australian coastline and
would be go on rising through this period of time and beyond. Consistent with global increment,
levels of sea have risen in Australia at an normal proportion of 2.1 mm per year over the
previous half century. Prediction of sea level rising indicates that the level of rising during the
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source 1: Remote Sensing: Precipitation, 2004

21st century would be greater than over the previous four decades for overall concentration
premises in Australia. Rising in sea – level precipitation for Australian coast by the ending of
century will be same or somewhat larger than 6 cm for the average increase world wide. The
possible estimation of sea- level rise in Australia is about 46-81 cm by 2090 which is much
higher than 1986- 2005 sea – levels (Sydeman and et. al., 2014). This estimation would be higher
if a tipping point will be reached in the global system which could be committed to land based
ice sheets, such as Green land ice sheet to permanent melting. Such an event consist of a low but
zero probability and hence cannot be neglected. The results could be catastrophic – overall
melting of the ice sheet of green land would contributing 6 m to global sea levels, but this will
take a long time period to happen. As per the IPCC, only the collapsing of marine based sphere
of the Antarctic ice sheet, if begin, can cause global mean sea level in rising considerably above
the probable range during the 21st century.
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Change in humidity
Humidity is the presence of content of moisture of the atmosphere or how much amount
of water vapour is present in the air. It shows the likeliness of precipitation, for or dew. Higher
percentage of humidity minimises the effectiveness of sweating in cooling the body by lowering
the rate of evaporation of moisture from the body or skin (Taylor. and et. al., 2013). Terrible or
violent storm are on the way for Melbourne and other parts of Victoria as humidity in the city is
soaring to a high level. People of this city had faced a tropical weather as last year the city had
broken the record of humidity and short term rain fall.
Change in wind
The city also faces continuous change in the conditions of wind. This has caused
turbulence in the air and on land . Large number of trees gets up rooted and due to that a lot of
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source 2: Sea-level change around Australia by 2090 (2081-2100) compared to 1986-2005 for
the four concentration scenarios (RCPs). Source: © CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology 2015

accidents had occurred in the city. Such windy situation creates various problems to civilians on
the land.
Social impacts
Due to the bad weather or changes in the rate of precipitation, sea level, humidity, wind ,
etc. are impacting the whole society of the Melbourne. Some of the impacts are described below:
 Water supplies : Because of the day to day changes in the climate such as increment in
the level of sea, wind, humidity, precipitation, etc. are creating a lot of problems for all
people. The supply of water gets reduced (Zhang, Webb and Peng, 2012). Due to worst
weather, no one is able to go out and supply drinking water door to door. Because of that
common people suffer from the deficiency of water. Mostly people are familiar about the
conditions of changing weather, they used to store water in large quantity in advance so
that they will not face much issue regarding water in a bad weather or climate.
 Food supplies : As similar to the issue of water supply, people also suffer from low
supply of food in the city. During heavy rain fall, no one is able to go out in the city and
purchase the food materials for consumption. If there is a shortage of food in a family
while a worst climatic condition, then they have to survive without food. Due, to the
hight speed of rainfall, the food grains in the fields of farmers gets wasted as their crops
get up rooted from the soil or sometimes get completely sink in water. Due to that, all
farming or hard labour go in vein and besides cropping large quantity of crops, people
have to survive without food. As a result most of death occurred in the city only because
of this. People who know such situations, they buy large amount of food in advance so
that they spend their life easily even in worst weather.
 Refugee movements : Refugee are those person who leave any place due to the fear of
war, climatic conditions, natural disaster, etc. As natural disaster is very common in the
Melbourne, so refugee movements also occurs here very frequently (Zhang and et. al.,
2011). People often used to migrate to different other places where they feel safe and
secure. Floods, drought, cyclone, etc. and many other disaster occurs constantly in
Australia. Due to this, civilians have to move forcefully to other nations in order to save
their lives. Therefore, refugee movements are very common in this nation or city.
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CONCLUSION
From the above based report, it has been concluded that change in climate occurs
frequently in the Melbourne. This change includes the alteration of temperature, humidity,
rainfall, precipitation, wind and sea level. The changeable weather leads to the occurrence or
spreading of infections or diseases. A lot of people migrates to the other nation due to the natural
disaster like flood. The supply of water and food gets adversely affected and due to that people
faces many problems. They hardly survive in such a worst conditions.
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REFERENCES
Books & journal
Bambrick, H.J. and et. al., 2011. Climate change and health in the urban environment: adaptation
opportunities in Australian cities. Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health. 23(2_suppl).
pp.67S-79S.
Beggs, P. J. and Margaret Bennett, C., 2011. Climate change, aeroallergens, natural particulates,
and human health in Australia: state of the science and policy. Asia Pacific Journal of
Public Health. 23(2_suppl). pp.46S-53S.
Cleugh, H. and et. al., 2011. Climate change: science and solutions for Australia. CSIRO.
Garnaut, R., 2011. The Garnaut review 2011: Australia in the global response to climate change.
Cambridge University Press.
Hao, Z., AghaKouchak, A. and Phillips, T. J., 2013. Changes in concurrent monthly precipitation
and temperature extremes. Environmental Research Letters. 8(3). p.034014.
Hoffmann, B. and et. al., 2013. Abundance and distribution of leaf wax n-alkanes in leaves of
Acacia and Eucalyptus trees along a strong humidity gradient in northern Australia.
Organic geochemistry. 62. pp.62-67.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014. Climate Change 2014–Impacts, Adaptation
and Vulnerability: Regional Aspects. Cambridge University Press.
Pachauri, R.K. and et. al., 2014. Climate change 2014: synthesis report. Contribution of Working
Groups I, II and III to the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (p. 151). IPCC.
Stocker, T. ed., 2014. Climate change 2013: the physical science basis: Working Group I
contribution to the Fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. Cambridge University Press.
Sydeman, W.J. and et. al., 2014. Climate change and wind intensification in coastal upwelling
ecosystems. Science. 345(6192). pp.77-80.
Taylor, R.G. and et. al., 2013. Ground water and climate change. Nature Climate Change. 3(4).
p.322.
Zhang, W., Webb, D. J. and Peng, G. D., 2012. Investigation into time response of polymer fiber
Bragg grating based humidity sensors. Journal of lightwave technology. 30(8). pp.1090-
1096.
Zhang, X. and et. al., 2011. Indices for monitoring changes in extremes based on daily
temperature and precipitation data. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change.
2(6). pp.851-870.
Online
Remote Sensing: Precipitation. 2017. [Online]. Available through :
<http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/climate/GCremote4.html>. Accessed on 30th August
2017.
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