Climate change making extreme events worse in Australia

 Country faces more frequent and more severe weather events if it fails to make deep and swift cuts to carbon emissions

• Damian Carrington
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 April 2013 11.50 EDT

Bushfires at Grampians national park, Victoria, Australia. Extreme weather can lead to more severe and frequent disasters.

The report states that the number of record hot days in Australia has doubled since the 1960s, with the summer of 2012/2013 including the hottest summer, hottest month and hottest day on record. In a previous heatwave in southeastern Australia in 2009, Melbourne experienced three consecutive days at or above 43°C in late January, the report notes, leading to 980 heat-related deaths, three times the average mortality. Hot records are now being broken three times more often than cold records, the report found.