CANBERRA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Climate Council of Australia (CCA) warned on Wednesday that the effects of climate change will only get worse in Australia after 2016/17's summer season was dubbed the "angry summer".
More than 200 weather-related records were shattered in Australia during the summer just gone, and Professor Will Steffen from the CCA said it was indicative that the local environment was struggling to "cope".
He said the records were not all just heat-related. Some parts of the nation experienced record-breaking levels of rainfall during the three summer months from December until the end of February.
"These are rates of change and temperatures that are so high that the environment can't cope with or adapt fast enough," Steffen told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Wednesday.
"If you look at the east of Australia, particularly New South Wales and Queensland, the records that have been tumbling there are heatwave-type records, but over in the west, in Perth and up in the Kimberley, they've been setting extreme rainfall records."
A climate report released by the Bureau of Meteorology last week showed the nation's capital, Canberra, and major cities Sydney and Brisbane all experienced their hottest summer seasons on record. Steffen said that the trend was set to continue well into the middle of the century.
"We'll see even more records set in five and 10 years' time and that's because of the momentum in the climate system. Even if we could magically cut emissions to zero tomorrow, we would still have another decade or two where the climate plays out its built-in momentum," he said.
"We're pretty much going to see an increase in extreme weather until the middle of the century."
