Limiting warming to 1.5C has clear benefits for Australia, study says

Global temperature rise of 2°C could see Australia hit by heat extremes similar to the “angry summer” of 2012-13 in almost four out of every five years, a new study says. The risk is still sizeable at 1.5°C of warming, but it lowers to less than three out of every five years. “The impacts of heatwaves in Australia are already very substantial to date and ocean warming has just led to the biggest coral bleaching event at the Great Barrier Reef,” commented Climate Analytics’ physicist Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner. He added that the paper “illustrates the substantial benefits of limiting warming to 1.5°C for Australia, a country with currently inadequate climate policies to even limit warming to 2°C.”