PLEA Network

4 June 2018, The Guardian, ‘No doubt our climate is getting warmer,’ Malcolm Turnbull says. Malcolm Turnbull, on a tour of drought-stricken areas in New South Wales and Queensland, has declared there is “no doubt that our climate is getting warmer”. Flanked by Nationals on Monday in Trangie, Turnbull acknowledged climate change remained a live political debate but he said: “I don’t know many people in rural New South Wales that I talk to that don’t think the climate is getting drier and rainfall is becoming more volatile.” The minister for agriculture, David Littleproud, said the last agricultural ministerial council had agreed to help transition farmers into a changing environment and a changing climate. The south-east of Australia this year has experienced record high temperatures during an unseasonably dry and hot autumn, prompting fire bans and warnings from authorities. In its latest winter outlook, the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting warmer and drier than average conditions across large parts of the country. It suggests winter rainfall is likely to be below average for NSW, South Australia, northern Victoria and western parts of Western Australia. The bureau says the dry is likely to be particularly intense in areas around the Murray-Darling Basin and in eastern NSW, with a 70-80% chance of below average rainfall. “Elsewhere around the country, the chances of exceeding average rainfall are roughly 50%,” the new forecast said. Read more here