Australia’s ecosystems are crumbling amid soaring temperatures – and politicians are finally taking notice Bruce Tyrell was looking at ways to save the grapes in one of the country’s oldest vineyards from searing 40°C plus temperatures

It’s always been hot Down Under. But climate change is taking things to another level; from sunburnt vines to dried up rivers and bleached coral, record temperatures are changing the way

of life in Australia.

When Bruce Tyrell was looking at ways to save the grapes in one of the country’s oldest vineyards from searing 40°C plus temperatures, he turned to a solution that he used to protect himself.

“We are spraying the vines with sunscreen,” he told i from his base in the Hunter Valley, 75 miles north of Sydney.

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Mr Tyrell uses a kaolin clay based sunscreen to protect the precious fruit on his family-owned vineyard, which includes one of the oldest Chardonnay vines in the country, from the ravages of the antipodean sun.

“Once the temperature hits 40°C, the vines shut down,” he said. “That’s when your fruit and chemistry can get out of balance.”

New solutions

But in a sign of the impact of a record heatwave on one of Australia’s most renowned exports, Mr Tyrell says the agricultural sunscreen sold out across the country at the beginning of summer last December.

Since then, Aussies have sweated through the country’s most intense summer on record.

The scorching weather means winemakers, and other industries, will have to come up with new solutions.

“We’ll have to adapt what we do,” Mr Tyrell said. “It’s adapt or die.”

According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the 2018–19 summer was the hottest ever by 0.86°C with January breaking records by almost 1°C across the nation. To put these figures in context, the Bureau estimates Australia’s climate has increased by just over 1°C since 1910.

“Even taking into account the sustained long-term warming trend of a degree or so over a century, this is certainly at the far end of expectations,” says the Bureau’s senior climatologist, Blair Trewin. In a clear pattern, both 2018 and 2017 were the country’s third and fourth hottest overall.

Ecological disasters

Hot weather is nothing new in Australia. The continent was mythologised by early 20th Century poet Dorothea Mackellar as “a sunburnt country” and a land “of drought and flooding rains”.

But in the past three months, natural disasters have become more common. Large parts of Australia are parched by drought, the northern city of Townsville was inundated by the worst floods in a century and World Heritage-listed firests in Tasmania were scorched by bush fires.

The extremes are creating an unprecedented number of ecological disasters.

More than a million rotting fish floated to the surface of the Darling River in January, believed to have been killed by algae blooms in waterways depleted by searing temperatures.

And just weeks ago, the Australian government declared a rare marsupial, the Bramble Cay melomys, officially extinct – the first species to fall victim of a warming climate.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been scarred by bleaching from warmer oceans and increasing acidification.

Lobby group the Climate and Health Alliance has warned that indigenous Australians face “higher risks of emergency and respiratory admissions” after heatwaves and “higher rates of mental illness associated with loss of land and culture through climate change”.

Feeling the heat

The impact is being felt in almost every walk of life – from the changes to the harvest at Mr Tyrell’s winery to increasing demand for air conditioned comfort in suburban homes.

Melbourne, the country’s second largest city, was hit with power outages after electricity use spiked during the January heatwave.

One of the most contentious debates ahead of last week’s state election in New South Wales was which of the two major political parties would guarantee to air condition every classroom in taxpayer-funded schools. In the north-eastern state of Queensland, the opposition conservative party has made a similar pledge. The state’s teachers union president Kevin Bates declared “no new learning can occur” in areas like Ipswich, west of Brisbane, where classroom temperatures exceeded 43°C.

Hospital A&E departments are feeling the pressure from heat-related injuries and the Red Cross is helping record numbers of pensioners and other vulnerable people.

Political change

For the past decade, both of Australia’s major political parties have struggled to come to a consensus on climate change policy. But with so much concerns about extreme weather, this is finally changing. Even former conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who signed Australia up to the Paris climate agreement and later advocated abandoning the emissions reduction targets, recently re-embraced the international accord.

For Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel, political change is much needed.

“The fact remains that Australia’s emissions per person are some of the highest in the world,” Dr Finkel said in a missive on climate change late last year.

“Sitting on our hands while expecting the rest of the world to do their part is simply not acceptable.”

If nothing else, the record breaking summer has put climate change at the top of many Australians’ concerns.