Science Source

Climate Change in Australia - Technical Report

Provides an assessment of observed climate change in Australia and its causes, and details projected future changes over the 21st century
Finds Australian average surface air temperature has increased by 0.9 °C since 1910, and increasing greenhouse gases have contributed to this rise
Finds that since 2001, the number of extreme heat records in Australia has outnumbered extreme cool records by almost 3 to 1 for daytime maximum temperatures and almost 5 to 1 for night-time minimum temperatures
Observes an intensification of the subtropical ridge (the high pressure belt over Australia), an expansion of the Hadley Cell (a circulation in the northsouth direction connecting tropical and mid-latitude areas), and a trend to a more positive Southern Annular Mode (a hemispheric mode of variability associated with weaker than normal westerly winds and higher pressures over southern Australia)
Finds heavy daily rainfall has accounted for an increased proportion of total annual rainfall over an increasing fraction of the Australian continent since the 1970s
Finds Australian average rainfall has been increasing since the 1970s, mainly due to an increase in wet season rain in northern Australia
Observes that for 1966 to 2009, the average rate of relative sea level rise from observations along the Australian coast was 1.4 ± 0.2 mm/year, and 1.6 ± 0.2 mm/year when the sea level variations directly correlated with the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) are removed