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Drought conditions across much of western America are expected to worsen in the coming months.Credit:AP

Scientists have warned as climate change worsens,extreme weather events will only become more extreme. This was evident in the recent rain events that battered NSW and Queensland,with Sydney breaking its mean annual rainfall amountjust over three months into the new year.

The weather system contributing to the Australian wet is also exacerbating the American dry. CSIRO climatologist Dr James Risbey said the La Nina season had been responsible for the wet weather and that the underlying impacts of climate change were undeniable. While La Nina causes warmer than average sea temperatures off Australia’s coast which drive storms,it cools down ocean temperatures in the northern hemisphere which creates drier onshore weather.

“Over the US,when the water is cooler,it suppresses storms a bit,” Risbey said.

Part of the challenge for scientists is figuring out how much of our weather is caused by climate drivers,such as La Nina,and how climate change is making their effects worse. For scientists,figuring out what the world will look like in the coming years is one of the biggest hurdles.

Research scientist with the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in America Andy Hoell said due to the complexity of climate models,it is tricky to predict exactly how the world will look. However,despite their limitations,Hoell said they provide the most accurate view of how the world could look.

This is instrumental in planning how people will live,how society will change and what challenges we will face.

Already,this is being seen in the US where the west coast is suffering through itslongest dry spell in 1,200 years according to a r ecent paper published in the leading journalNature . Cities across America’s west are grappling with how they manage dwindling water supplies. Snowfall across much of the US was also below average in February.

In California,the statewide snowpack wasjust 38 per cent of the average as officials grow more concerned for the coming wildfire season.

The most recent summary of drought conditions in the US shows that April has seen heavy rains in some parts of the country,including the midwest and south,which has led to some recovery. But in the country’s west,many locations have set records for the driest January-to-March period on record. Across the US,about 69 per cent of the country is abnormally dry or in drought,and seasonal outlooks don’t show much relief.

Associate Professor of Real Estate Jesse Keenan from the School of Architecture at Tulane University in New Orleans,Louisiana said that throughout history,civilisations have adapted to a changing climate. Those that failed to do so didn’t survive. Keenan said populations across the world are following this same pattern now,but contending with a rapidly warming climate,rising sea temperatures and more intense weather extremes on a scale never seen before.

“There is nowhere that will escape climate change,nowhere is immune,they might just have higher and lower levels of risk,” he said.

While there has been some major adaptation in the way sectors perform,there’s still a long way to go. But Keenan says the key to adaptation is doing it at a pace that isn’t too fast or too slow. The former will create collateral consequences,while the latter will mean it’s too late to act.

“As a society,we’re making progress,but there will always be people always left behind,” he said. “Not everyone can afford to adapt ... for[people with] middle and upper-class incomes they will feel the pain of climate change on their wallets.”

“Climate gets backed into the economy at every level,it makes the world more expensive... The implication[of climate change] is that it will be harder for people to retire,there will be lower education outcomes,more debt,greater global inequality.”

“[Adaptation] requires a lot of stakeholder engagement,it requires translating climate science into decision-making where there is already so much uncertainty,but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t act. We need a lot more information from the bottom-up and top-down.[We] can never predict the future,but that doesn’t mean you can’t plan and develop a baseline to support action and decision-making.”

Last week,the latest report of the United Nations chief climate body warnedthe goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees is no longer likely to be achieved.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees would require global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest and fall by 43 per cent by 2030. Over the same time,methane would also need to be reduced by about a third.

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