Article on 9 NSM today
Move north to escape climate change
05:01 AEST Mon Jan 19 2009
3 hours 44 minutes ago
By Cathy Alexander
Worried about climate change? Move to Darwin.
New research shows the top half of Australia will be little affected by climate change, while from Brisbane south the effects will get stronger and stronger.
Dr Tim Barrows, from the Australian National University, has prepared a hit-list of the cities which will be most affected as the climate warms up.
Canberra tops the list because it doesn't have the ocean to moderate temperatures.
Next come Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth.
Sydney and Brisbane will fare a little better, although their climates will still change significantly.
And the north will escape the worst of climate change, although it will get wetter.
Dr Burrows predicted people - and farmers - would move northwards as the climate changed in the south. But he cautioned against an immediate move to Darwin.
"It'll still be hot," he said.
Dr Burrows' findings are presented in an article in the journal Nature Geoscience, issued on Monday.
As a palaeoclimatologist he studies how the climate has changed over tens of thousands of years. He bases his conclusions on how Australia's climate changed during the last ice age, which he measured by studying plankton fossils and sediment from the sea floor.
He found tropical areas like Australia's north were less affected by climate change because they had plenty of clouds, which acted as a buffer by keeping out the sun.
"The tropical areas tend to be remarkably insensitive to climate change."
Dr Burrows draws a distinction between naturally-occurring climate change and human-induced change.
Climates do change over time - there were glaciers and icebergs around Australia during the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Temperatures rose by as much as ten degrees when the ice age ended, Dr Burrows said, and that was not caused by humans.
Recent debate has focussed on whether humans are now causing the world to warm by releasing lots of carbon dioxide.
Dr Burrows said this was not his area of expertise, but there was more research to be done on how much of the recent warming was caused by humans.
"I'm not a climate change denier but we need to be cautious about what does change our climate," he said.
Dr Burrows said the climate should be cooling as the world headed for another ice age in 20,000 years time. So if temperatures were rising, that was alarming.
"If we put enough CO2 in the atmosphere we'll prevent an ice age happening."
