Heatwaves will become hotter, longer and more frequent the later net zero emissions is reached globally, new research suggests.<\/p>\n
Scientists at the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather<\/a> and Australia\u2019s national science agency, the CSIRO, simulated how heatwaves would respond over the next 1,000 years, examining the differences for each five-year delay in reaching net zero between 2030 and 2060.<\/p>\n The research, published in the journal Environmental Research Climate<\/a>, found that for countries near the equator, delaying net zero until 2050 would result in heatwave events that break current historical records at least once yearly.<\/p>\n The study also suggests that heatwaves will not revert back towards preindustrial conditions for at least a millennium after net zero is reached, which \u201ccritically challenges the general belief that conditions after net zero will begin to improve for near future generations\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing with net zero and heat waves is: we\u2019re damned if we do, but we\u2019re completely stuffed if we don\u2019t,\u201d the study\u2019s lead author, Prof Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of the Australian National University, said. \u201cWe\u2019re already locked into a certain amount of warming.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton\u2019s Clear Air column as a free newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n Stabilising global heating at 1.5C or 2C would still result in impacts \u201cthat we haven\u2019t yet experienced, including worse heatwaves\u201d, she said. \u201cThe thing is, if we delay net zero \u2013 up to 30 years and even longer \u2013 those impacts are only going to get worse. We\u2019re already locked into some, but the longer we leave net zero, the worse it\u2019s going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c[In Australia] you have the Coalition basically saying<\/a>: net zero is useless, it\u2019s pointless, it\u2019s not worth it, it\u2019s going to cost us too much money,\u201d she said. \u201cWell, it\u2019s going to cost us even more if we don\u2019t even get to net zero by 2050.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe silver lining to this sort of study, if there is one, is that we have time to adapt \u2026 so when these heatwaves occur, we\u2019re as prepared for them as possible,\u201d she said. \u201cWe know the impacts of heatwaves \u2013 there\u2019s so much understanding about the health impacts, ecosystem impacts, impacts on financial services.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat those adaptation strategies look like \u2013 that remains to be seen,\u201d she said. \u201cThose conversations can start now.\u201d<\/p>\n The modelling was done using Australia\u2019s global climate simulator, known as Access, and defined a heatwave as at least three consecutive days where temperatures are above the 90th percentile for maximum temperature.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Clear Air Australia<\/p>\n Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Prof David Karoly, a decorated climate change scientist and councillor with the Climate Council, who was not involved in the research, said the findings were not surprising.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a clear relationship between the cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global mean temperatures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Karoly added that the study\u2019s results were interesting but one caveat was that there were uncertainties in the modelling relating to potentially important processes such as rainfall changes, because the geographical representation of Australia and other regions in the Access model was of a lower resolution than for other climate simulators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heatwaves will become hotter, longer and more frequent the later net zero emissions is reached globally, new research…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-139222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}