Almost two dozen leading Australian health experts have blasted the Morrison government's "contemptuous dismissal" of the findings of the latest major climate report and called for a rapid phasing out of coal.

In a letter published on Thursday in The Lancet, a leading international health journal, the academics and health professionals said the government had ignored the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's special 1.5 degree impact report.

In doing so, it had disregarded "any duty of care regarding the future wellbeing of Australians and our immediate neighbours", the letter states.

Health experts have had their objections to the government's response to the IPCC report published in a leading health journal.

The letter's authors, including Nobel laureates Peter Doherty and Tilman Ruff, and Professor Fiona Stanley, said Australia was more vulnerable than any other developed nation to climate disruption, much of which would harm health and livelihoods.