Firefighters fight a brush fire in January 2020. -

SAEED KHAN / AFP

Australia on the front lines of climate change?

In this vast country, already struck by fires, drought and cyclones of rare intensity, disasters of much greater magnitude are to come, warn the main scientific and meteorological agencies of the country.

The Australian National Science Agency (CSIRO) and the Australian Meteorological Service released a report on Friday foreshadowing what awaits the country already ravaged in 2019-2020 by forest fires of an exceptional magnitude after having experienced the year the hottest and driest ever.

The fires have destroyed an area almost the size of the UK, killed 33 people and killed or displaced nearly three billion animals, costing the Australian economy around $ 7 billion (€ 6 billion ).

"We will say that 2019 was a normal year"

"Ten or twenty years from now, we won't say 2019 has been very hot - 2019 will just be normal," Jaci Brown, director of the CSIRO Climate Science Center, told ABC public television.

"In the next century, this decade will be considered cool," she added.

The climate report, published every two years, points out that rainfall is less abundant in southwest Australia as well as in the southeast, which has been ravaged by the fires, even though they are more numerous in the north, hit by extensive flooding and destructive cyclones in recent years.

Average temperatures have increased by 1.44 ° C since 1910, according to scientists who recall the goal of the Paris climate agreement which is to contain the rise in temperatures to 1.5 ° C compared to the era pre-industrial.

The oceans have experienced one degree warming on average over the same period, leading to their acidification and more frequent marine heat waves, according to the report.

Half of the corals in Australia's Great Reef have perished since 1995 as a result of this rise in water temperature.

Fears shared by 9 in 10 Australians

The report predicts sea level rise in line with international forecasts as tropical cyclones will be less frequent but more intense.

“Climate change is happening now and it will continue to happen,” Jaci Brown told the ABC.

CSIRO had previously called on Australia to become a "supplier of clean energy and technology" as the Conservative government is accused of delaying putting in place measures to fight climate change.

On several occasions Prime Minister Scott Morrison has played down the link between climate change and fires, remaining a staunch supporter of Australia's very powerful and lucrative mining industry.

Yet more and more Australians are worried about climate change.

For example, nearly 90% of Australians believe that global warming is a critical or significant threat, according to a recent survey by the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

For those interviewed, drought and fears of water scarcity amplified by climate change are the number one threat to the country, well ahead of the coronavirus pandemic and the global economic crisis.

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