According to IPCC forecasts, babies born today will be 22 years old when the temperature rises to 1.5 ° C. What will life look like? – Scientific news

Meet Casey X. She was born at Alice Springs Hospital on October 13, 2018.

She came into the world screaming, before projectiles vomited on the floor of the hospital and did not go to sleep.

Today, October 13, 2040, she is 22 years old and still lives in Alice Springs. But she is thinking more and more about leaving.

The extremely hot days in Alice Springs reached 48 degrees Celsius – almost 3 degrees Celsius higher than its first birthday. And the heat waves last much longer.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that in the year of its birth, the world would have a 1.5 ° C * warming compared to before the industrial revolution.

Which did not seem much, except that it was an overall average.

This did not capture the extremes in places like Alice Springs.

To save energy, it only starts air conditioning when the temperature exceeds 35 ° C. But it still has more than 110 days a year, about 20 more than it would have in its decade.

In the five largest cities of Australia, 475 people die each year from heat-related deaths, more than double their year of birth.

When she reviews the weather for spicks and spicks, there are fewer cities in the region on her map than she remembers.

Australia has a new temperature record: 53 ° C at Marble Bar.

Alice Springs is in the middle of a heat wave.

Keeping things alive in the garden at these temperatures is almost impossible. The plants are pushed beyond their thresholds and die of thermal shock. The animals that eat them go away shortly thereafter.

She was 14 years old the last time the Todd River sank. But when that happened, it was a raging torrent.

Apparently it's one thing. The warm air can hold more moisture. It therefore takes longer for it to be saturated enough for it to rain. But when that happens …

Especially if, it's just dry. Alice was already hot and dry, so it really does not have any other place to go than to get warmer and drier.

Cotton crops along the Murray-Darling in southern Queensland and New South Wales are not planted in drought. And the wheat belt suffers.

The wheat industry in Russia is gangbuster. Good for them.

More difficult growing conditions and lower productivity in Australia mean that Casey pays a premium for beer and bread during bad years.

His only true love, coffee, is also expensive.

And most of the small fruits and vegetables that she buys at the supermarket, like tomatoes and lettuce, are grown in temperature-controlled greenhouses.

Plan an escape

Casey loves the NT, but it's getting harder and harder to live here.

She could move to Tasmania with everyone – but it's cold. It is still snowing in Hobart, Victoria and New South Wales.

When it's cold or there's a lot of snow, commentators see it as proof that climate change has been exaggerated.

The ski areas still have good and bad years.

Perth is tempting. It is about 36 days above 35 ° C each year. Adelaide is around 26 years old.

Sydney is only about 5 days above 35 ° C, but its heat waves are bad. The record in Penrith is just under 50 ° C.

Moving to Darwin is out of the question. Just like northern Queensland. It is too hot and there are no jobs in the hotel industry. Tourism suffers with the reef.

Most of the reef is dead or dying in the north. Some of the most resistant coral species have survived, but the diversity and color have disappeared and no one wants to snorkel in the algae.

There are still some acceptable reef areas further south, but if the warming rises to 2 ° C, scientists say everything will be fine.

To escape the heat, his move to southeastern Queensland seems to be his best option.

It's a choice between gold and sun ribs, but the deadly jellyfish Irukandji appear more often in the summer on the Sunshine Coast.

The experts are still arguing over whether this is a new standard or a bad performance.

The Gold Coast is.

Life is not a beach

The proximity to the ocean is cooler and there is really cheap real estate on the water.

But not everything is caught on the Gold Coast either.

Like many cities all over the Australian coast, the lower houses of the Gold Coast are already submerged by storm surges.

If warming reaches 2 ° C, the sea level will reach 87 cm more than at birth.

So she will stick to the rental. Yes, real estate is cheap – but home insurance is not.

Noosa suffered the consequences of a Category 3 cyclone a few years ago.

A big storm on the Gold Coast, with rising sea levels, would engulf thousands of homes.

The house on Burleigh Heads Beach is right next to a fish and chips shop.

On the menu, farmed fish like barramundi, but no reef fish.

There is no longer any commercial fishing in the reefs. Most of the fish went with the coral.

But the news is that more and more tropical fish are coming south as well.

What is another half degree?

Most of the changes in Casey's life did not affect him too much. Certainly not as much as other people.

The people of the South Pacific Islands have lived very badly.

But she fears what will happen if the predictions about 2C come to fruition.

The Arctic has almost experienced its first summer without ice recently. If the world reaches 2 ° C warming, this should happen about once every 10 years.

And people are starting to worry about the refugees. At 2C, they say an additional 10 million people will be affected by sea level rise.

On Casey's television, a scientist and a politician argue. According to the scientist, everything worsens at 2 ° C.

It will be about 2 ° C warmer than it already does, and every year, twice as many people die from heat stress in Australian capitals.

She is happy to have left Alice Springs.

The scientist says that they are starting to have cases of malaria in Cairns and that someone has dengue in Townsville.

And under 2C, even the southern reefs will go, he says.

But the politician says that he is alarmist.

"It's only half a degree, how bad can it become?"

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This story is a hypothetical scenario, based on data from the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): Global warming at 1.5 ° C, IPCC special report on global warming impacts of 1.5 ° C compared to pre-industrial levels and associated pathways for greenhouse gas emissions, as part of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, published on October 8, 2018, Incheon, Korea.

* The IPCC predicts that warming will likely reach 1.5 ° C above preindustrial levels between 2030 and 2052 if it continues on the current trajectory.

Extremely hot days in mid-latitudes should warm up to 3 ° C with a global warming of 1.5 ° C and about 4 ° C to 2 ° C.

The sea level is expected to increase from 26 to 77 cm by 2100 for a warming of 1.5 ° C and an additional 10 cm for a warming of 2 ° C. The sea level is expected to continue rising after 2100, even if the heating is stabilized at 1.5 ° C.

** 51cm is the average of the high and low forecasts for sea level warming in 2100 with a warming of less than 1.5 ° C.

Data on heat waves come from the National Center for Research on Climate Change Adaptation (NCCARF).

Additional information is from interviews with Professor David Ellsworth (UWS), Professor David Tissue (UWS), Dr. Jatin Kala (Murdoch), Richard Kidd (AMA) and an IPCC presentation with Professor Ove Hoegh Guldberg (UQ), Professor Peter Newman (UQ), Curtin), Professor Mark Howden (ANU), Associate Professor Bronwyn Hayward (Canterbury) and information available on the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) website.

The Coastal Risk 2100 flood mapping is based on the year 2100 and an increase in sea level at high tide of 0.74 m.