Impact of climate change on severe weather hazards, Australia.

Bibliography: p. 25-26

In May 1991, the Climatic Impacts centre at Macquarie University hosted a national workshop that explored how to quantify the costs and benefits to Australia of severe weather hazards during a period of global warming. Representatives from the atmospheric sciences, the insurance industry, disaster management, and environmental sciences formed discussion groups on floods, tropical cyclones, disaster management, severe storms, insurance, and El Nino-Southern Oscillation events, and considered the economic consequences of severe weather under both the present climate and a climate-change scenario. The participants concluded that a detailed literature survey of the costs of severe weather events would provide a clearer basis for assessing future costs. Nonetheless it appeared clear that Australia's vulnerability to severe weather hazards would increase in an era of greenhouse-induced climate change as a result of social, economic, and demographic factors, and that a large proportion of the total costs would continue to result from a very small number of extreme events. Still, improvements in warning systems, building codes, land-use planning, and particularly public education have the potential to dramatically reduce the direct and indirect costs of weather hazards under both current and anticipated climate regimes.