Climate change impacts
Global climate change will have significant impacts across NSW. The best estimate of annual warming over Australia by 2030 is around 1.0 degree Celsius, with warmings of around 0.7-0.9 degrees Celsius in coastal areas and 1-1.2 degrees Celsius inland, according to the 2007 report Climate Change in Australia, prepared by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology.
Probable effects include:
- hotter, drier conditions which will put crops under greater heat and water stress
- rivers are likely to decline and extreme weather events are likely to become more frequent
- in the coastal zone, storms may combine with a rise in the sea level to worsen coastal erosion
- bushfires are likely to become more frequent and intense
- the area, depth and duration of snowfields are likely to decline.
The impacts of climate change cut across all sectors of the NSW environment, society and economy, and present significant risks and some opportunities. Impacts will often be regionally specific as NSW has diverse climatic conditions, some of which are found nowhere else in
To effectively respond to climate change in NSW we need to understand how priority sectors could be affected. Priority sectors include human settlements and infrastructure, coastal regions, health, biodiversity, agriculture and water supply.
DECC is developing regionally specific information to understand the impacts of climate change in NSW.