Sydney sitting on climate timebomb

Scientist Martin Cope yesterday warned delegates at an important global warming conference in Perth, Greenhouse 2009, that higher summer temperatures, less rainfall and pollution from bushfires and vehicles would turn Sydney, Australia into a health risk in 50 years time.

Cope, from the state financed Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), said people with heart problems or asthma and the aged would be in danger from heat stress.

He forecast that three times more people would be hospitalised because of breathing difficulties and said that it is important to develop a strategy to manage these problems.

He recognised that if Sydney residents and industries emitted less carbon the situation might not become so difficult.

Cope’s group at the Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research at CSIRO used computer analysis to forecast the weather in Sydney, to investigate the impact of 1 to 4 degree rises in temperature over the present yearly maximum.

He said the analysis shows an increase of 20 percent in the number of days above 30C and a 100 percent increase in days at very high temperatures, that is more than 40C.

Cope said there may be double the number of people who are 65 or more by 2060, putting more of the population in danger from pollution and high temperatures and so, perhaps double the number of deaths from heat stress.

The air in Sydney will be covered in haze and it will become more toxic due to polluting activities, including lawn mowing, paints and exhaust gases of carbon monoxide, and higher temperatures.

Sydney would probably become drier and suffer from more frequent dust storms and droughts, and weather that could increase the risk of fires, all of which will make the conditions of the smog even more harmful by 2060.

Nonetheless, the computer analysis pointed to the ways of reducing the effects with better insulation in buildings and cutting Sydney’s heat-atoll impact.

The modelling showed that a change to hybrid or electric vehicles would be beneficial.

We can bring down pollution in the air by limiting emissions of carbon, which is the key element in our plans, Cope said.