Oz on the Barbie!

The draft UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warns that temperatures in Australia would rise by 6.7 degrees Celsius before the end of the century, the ABC and Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The report, due to be released on April 6, said rising temperatures would cause more intense bushfires and lead to deaths from heatwaves.

It also predicted rising sea levels would push the coast back 110 metres [120 yards] in some Sydney beachside suburbs, swamping some of the city's most exclusive real estate.

It said tropical cyclones would become more common on Australia's east coast, where most of the population lives, while 80 percent of the Great Barrier Reef would be bleached by 2030.

Keep in mind that this is the IPCC report. They have an upper range of 4.8 C (average) temperature rise for the world. The tracking of the ice melt in Greenland vs the IPCC shows that it's following the highest level prediction: that tells me at least they need to adjust the error bars some.

The locals here have been saying we're going to get a 5+ C hike which is 4% higher than the worst case scenario that the IPCC has been saying. Assuming that's the case, and we oversimplify a tad, Oz gets about another .3 C more than the IPCC predicts. That puts them at a toasty +7 C.

Doug was just asking about the Oz temps. There ya go. Roasty and toasty. Probably NOT good for the local ecologies. I'd need to see the precipitation #s to make more of a generalization though.