Climate change hits Australia first, and hard

Floods, fires, droughts, disease, extinctions and a dying Great Barrier Reef may be a hint of things to come globally.

In the 1959 Gregory Peck classic

As Times staff writer Julie Cart reported Thursday, Australia appears to be experiencing the effects of climate change earlier and more dramatically than most of the other inhabited parts of the globe. A Southern Hemisphere continent that was already a land of climate extremes has become more so in recent years. Even as the tropical north is deluged by flooding and warmer ocean currents are spawning more powerful cyclones, the parched south and interior have turned into baking dead zones. The results: vast brush fires, killer heat waves, increased tropical diseases, ruined crops, loss of livestock, severe water shortages and quickening species extinction.

LA Times