Report warns Australia of severe climate impacts

By Rob Taylor

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia, slowly emerging from its worst drought in a century, will suffer killer heatwaves, bushfires and floods as global warming intensifies, a draft report by international climate scientists said on Friday.

Already the world's driest inhabited continent, Australia's outback interior will see temperatures rise by up to 6.7 degrees Celsius (12 Fahrenheit) by 2080, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said.

"An increase in fire danger in Australia is likely to be associated with a reduced interval between fires, increased fire intensity, a decrease in fire extinguishments," sections of the report leaked to Australian media said on Friday.

The study will increase pressure on Australia's conservative government, which refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol, to do more to combat climate change ahead of elections later this year. Global warming is shaping as a major issue.

The draft is the second of four to be completed this year by IPCC climate experts and will be released for discussion in Brussels on April 6.

The first study said there was almost 90 percent certainty that humans were changing the world's climate and causing global warming, mostly through reliance on burning fossil fuels.

The draft second report said sea levels would rise due to glacial melt, causing havoc for coastal-dwelling Australia and New Zealand with "greater coastal inundation, erosion, loss of wetlands and salt water intrusion into freshwater sources."

Rising temperatures would also hit the Great Barrier Reef with "catastrophic mortality of coral species annually." The first report by the IPCC said the reef would be "functionally extinct" in 40 years.