20150117_AB

Source: ABC

URL: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-17/2014-hottest-year-on-record/6022804

Date: 17/01/2015

Event: Will Steffen: hottest year trend is "pushing the climate system into a much warmer state"

Credit: ABC

People:

• Sarah Dingle: Reporter, ABC Radio Current Affairs
• Professor Will Steffen: Head of ANU's Climate Change Institute

Sarah Dingle: It's official: 2014 was the hottest year around the world since record keeping began in 1880. Overnight in the US, two of the most important monitors of the world's temperature, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, jointly announced the news. Professor Will Steffen is the head of the ANU's (Australian National University) Climate Change Institute and a member of the independent body the Climate Council. I spoke to him a short time ago. Professor Steffen, we've heard predictions that 2014 was the hottest year on record before, but how significant is this news?

Will Steffen: Well look, I think you need to put this in terms of longer-term trends and it's now the 38th consecutive year above the long-term average temperature, so the earth is heating up. For me, a really significant part of this record was that the oceans were, the sea surface temperatures were easily the warmest on record and this is a real cause for concern because 93 per cent of the excess heat because of the greenhouse gases were popping into the atmosphere, actually ends up in the ocean and when you start to see the ocean warming up as much as it is, you know there's a lot more heat down there that's going to come back to bite us.

Sarah Dingle: According to these agencies, 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have all occurred this century - are we starting to sail really close to the wind now?

Will Steffen: Look, I think we are in several ways. These records we're seeing 14 and 15 this century, 38 in a row above average, 2014 being the hottest on record. 2013 in Australia being our hottest, 2014 being our third hottest, the fact that these records are just coming one on top of another are telling us that this trend is just pushing the climate system into a much warmer state.

This matters for us because it's starting to affect things that happen on much shorter time scales. Here I'm talking about record hot days, heatwaves, bushfire danger, weather and so on. So it does have consequences and it isn't the meteorological record that scientists and geeks like to look at; it's actually affecting us on the ground, now.

Sarah Dingle: The Climate Council has released a report today; page one is "what to do in a heatwave". How dangerous is a hot decade for Australia?

Will Steffen: What we've seen in the past is how dangerous these things can be, we saw the 2009 heatwave in Melbourne which unfortunately took twice as many lives as the Black Saturday bushfires did. When you look historically in Australia, more people die from heatwaves than they do from any other type of natural disaster. It tends to be the very young people, the very old people, outdoor workers and so on who are the most exposed and vulnerable.

Sarah Dingle: The next global climate talks are scheduled for December this year in Paris; that's basically a year away, how confident are you that world leaders will heed this information and that it won't get lost by the time we come to the table in Paris?

Will Steffen: I terms of the Paris talks, I think we've already had a breakthrough leading up to them and that was the announcement by the USA and China that those two big emitters were prepared to take more vigorous action.

Will we get a big, legally binding agreement out of Paris? I doubt it, because that's very complex. However, what we're going to see is increasing action here, there and reach a level at national level, at city level and I will expect to see action building throughout 2015, and I think we probably will see more commitments coming out of Paris and so on. So it's going to be a very interesting year in terms of how the politics plays out.

Sarah Dingle: That was Professor Will Steffen from the Climate Council.