Regional Impacts: Australia

Abstract

The climate is changing, globally and across Australia. We address briefly the changes in temperature and rainfall and atmospheric factors that are already occurring in Australia and their consistency with future projections of change. These projections are generally for hotter and drier conditions across the main cropping areas. The existing high sensitivity of cropping activities to climate in Australia means that we would expect significant impacts from such climate changes, affecting enterprise productivity, rural communities and the national economy. A strong case can be made that there will be adaptive responses to these changes. However, the development of such adaptive responses from farm to policy level is at an early stage. We outline some of these adaptation options across the Australian grains, rice, sugarcane and horticulture industries and flag the need for increased inclusion of adaptation into the portfolio of agricultural and natural resource management research and development.