Darwin will get hotter and people will die thanks to climate change, scientists warn

DARWIN is going to get hotter and people will die as a result, a group of Australia’s leading climate scientists have warned

DARWIN is going to get hotter and people will die as a result, a group of Australian climate scientists have warned.

DARWIN is going to get hotter and people will die as a result, a group of Australian climate scientists have warned.

Scientists from the Australia Institute yesterday delivered to the NT Government a report which showed the number of Darwin days with a maximum temperature of 35C or above will reach 132 by 2030 “without drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions”. The number of 35C days has already increased fourfold from 5.6 days per year early last century to 22 days per year since 2012, according to their report.

Liz Hanna from the Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at Australian National University said lives would be lost should the CSIRO modelling prove accurate.

“It’s almost tantamount to suicide for a nation to keep making this situation worse by considering increasing the carbon dioxide we’re going to put in the atmosphere,” she said.

The effect on warm parts of the globe such as North Australia would be “devastating”, she said.

“This puts a real challenge on how people function. Can we work in a world as we know now in terms of going out shopping, working, picking up the children without putting lives at serious risk?”

TAI principal adviser Mark Ogge warned the Territory Government against opening up the NT for fracking.

“It’s a crazy idea to be opening up a massive amount of new carbon in shale gas in the NT,” he said.

“We think it would be really irresponsible to do that when the NT itself and the rest of the world is facing these incredible challenges with global warming.”

Mr Ogge said industries including tourism, construction, and agriculture would likely suffer in a warmer NT.

Former CSIRO atmospheric research chief Graeme Pearman said while Australia might be a small contributor to emissions globally, we should still play our part to reduce emissions. Prof Pearman said global warming would “absolutely” lead to more cyclones in the Top End, due to increased moisture in the atmosphere.

Storms would become more intense, he said.

Chief Minister Michael Gunner said Australia and the NT needed to “do our bit”.

The NT Government is expected to make a decision as to whether to lift its fracking moratorium early next month.