"The current heatwave – in terms of its duration, its intensity and its extent – is now unprecedented in our records. Clearly, the climate system is responding to the background warming trend. Everything that happens in the climate system now is taking place on a planet which is a degree hotter than it used to be," the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's manager of climate monitoring and prediction, David Jones, told the Age.
Experts warn of the increasing risk of bushfire risk, rising sea levels affecting infrastructure and, by the end of the century, a significant drop in food production in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Liz Hanna, convener of the human health division at the Australian National University’s Climate Change Adaptation Network warned: "We are well past the time of niceties, of avoiding the dire nature of what is unfolding, and politely trying not to scare the public. The unparalleled setting of new heat extremes is forcing the continual upwards trending of warming predictions for the future, and the timescale is contracting."