The report has a clear message – the world is sick, it's...

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    The report has a clear message – the world is sick, it's addicted to fossil fuels and the only way to bring the temperature down is to get off them.

    "I'm a bit like a doctor and I just have to say, 'hey, this is what's going on … You need to get to net zero as quickly as possible,'" Dr Braganza says.

    "That's a little bit like telling someone who's got a large drinking habit or smoking habit, 'you need to quit that as soon as possible.'"

    Just like a patient with a drinking problem some of the damage is already baked in, with the report outlining that projected warming up to 2040 is largely determined by greenhouses gases that have already been emitted.


    Scientists can roughly say how much the world is going to warm over the next decade, but what impact that will have on extreme weather is unpredictable.

    "It means that climate change and the rate of change in particular is probably holding some surprises in terms of the impacts that it has across Australia," Dr Braganza says.

    But by kicking our habit of producing dangerous greenhouse gases as quickly as possible, the damage can start to be repaired.

    "Obviously making that change is really hard. It can't just happen overnight," Dr Braganza says.

    "It involves the economic system, the social system, the engineering systems.

    "We're grappling with how do we reduce to net zero as quickly as possible."

    There's a predictability to reports documenting the increase in global temperatures in line with greenhouse gas emissions, making them depressing reading.

    But there is one figure that has surprised scientists over the past two years, according to Dr Braganza.

    "The increase in ocean temperatures has been something really significant for the climate science community," he says.

    "There are changes that are many standard deviations above the mean over the last couple of years."

    Dr Braganza says high ocean temperatures are having flow-on effects across the climate system.

    "Things like record low sea ice or record high ocean temperatures is really significant for us [at the BoM] because it means that relying on past history as an analogue for what might happen in the next few months is increasingly less confident.

    "The rate of setting records in the climate system both in the Australian region and globally is something that's really significant."

    aBc Lonk
    Last edited by Scott th Ratbag: Thursday, 15:47
 
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