Extreme weather events linked to climate change have the potential to disrupt Australia’s summer sports obsession at elite and grassroots level, the Climate Council warns.

Its latest report – Weather Gone Wild, released on Wednesday – says climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of events such as extreme heat, intense rainfall, droughts, tropical cyclones and bushfires.

It comes amid unprecedented flooding in north Queensland and out of control bushfires in Tasmania.

The Riveaux Road fire burning near the Cracroft River in Tasmania on Saturday. Photograph: Luke Tscharke/Climate Council

Australia had its third warmest year on record in 2018 and the mean temperature was up by 1.14C, the report said.

The report noted that parts of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and eastern South Australia were affected by drought and annual rainfall was 11% below average.

You can’t really work safely outside if it’s 47C Lesley Hughes, Climate Council

It paints a snapshot of Australia’s extreme weather events in 2018 such as cyclone Marcus’s landfall over the Northern Territory in March which was the strongest to hit Darwin since cyclone Tracey in 1974. December’s severe storms in Sydney and the NSW central coast that brought golf ball-sized hail and were the most expensive event for insurance companies in 2018.

The council’s Lesley Hughes said Australia’s beloved summer sports calendar – which includes the popular Big Bash cricket series, AFLW games, the Tour Down Under cycling race, the Australian Open tennis and A-League football – could face potential disruptions in the future.

Data from the Bureau of Meteorology Annual Climate Statement 2018. Photograph: Climate Council

“I do think that as climate change continues to bite over the next few decades, sporting bodies are going to have to look at changing the timing of events that are commonly held in summer,” Hughes said.

“It’s not just the big international events, it’s kids’ sporting events as well.”

Temperature records were broken around the globe in 2018. January was New Zealand’s hottest month on record, and 3.1C above the national average from 1981-2010. Europe had its hottest April in 2018 since records began in 1910. The US experienced its hottest May since record-keeping began in 1895 but more recently has been in the grip of the polar vortex.

The number of natural catastrophes worldwide has been rising since the 1980s.

Photograph: Climate Council/ Munich RE 2018

The Macquarie University professor said that during the last drought community ovals and sports grounds became so dry they were deemed too dangerous for children to play on.

The Australian Open brought in a new extreme heat policy in 2019 following complaints in previous years about player welfare. Matches have been called off and the roof has been closed because of high temperatures.

Hughes said Australians would have to make dramatic changes to work life too which impacted on productivity. “You can’t really work safely outside if it’s 47C,” she said.

State governments are also going to have to ramp up resources to firefighting services. Previously Australia used to share firefighting equipment with places like California because the seasons were different but now they are overlapping.

“The really expensive water-dumping aircraft are leased in the northern hemisphere during one season and the southern hemisphere during the other season,” Hughes said. “Now there’s quite a lot of competition to get those aircraft.”

The window for hazard reduction in cooler months is getting smaller, Hughes said.

She said some rainforests in Queensland that had never burnt before are drying out and being ravaged by fire. “We’re seeing things we haven’t experienced before.”

Fire damage around Eliza Plateau walking track near Lake Pedder in southern Tasmania. Photograph: Luke Tscharke/Climate Council

She pointed to Tasmania’s hottest and driest January ever: 2.5C above average. “You’ve got massive destruction of commercial forests in Tasmania, huge health impacts of smoke, really significant stress on communities,” she said.

On Tuesday the prime minister, Scott Morrison, toured flood-ravaged Townsville but declined to say much about climate change.

“I’m not engaging in broader policy debates today. I’m engaging in the needs of people here on the ground, people in evacuation centres,” he said.

Hughes said politicians needed to wake up. “It’s a question of facing the facts, accepting the science and actually forming a climate policy,” Hughes said.

FAST FACTS

The past four years have been the hottest on record for global surface temperature.

Nine of the 10 hottest years on record in Australia have occurred since 2005.

There were 12 times more hot temperature records than cold temperature records in Australia between 2000 to 2014.

Rainfall has declined by around 11% in south-east Australia since the late 1990s.

The atmosphere contains more energy than 50 years ago which means more extreme weather events.

Insurance companies in Australia paid out more than $1.2bn in claims last year.