AUSTRALIA STATE OF PLAY 2024: when repeated warnings are given concerning climate change-induced risk along vulnerable coastal shorelines and on floodplains but few in the three tiers of government appear to take heed

 

Almost two decades ago in 2009 the Australian Government's Dept. of Climate Change in a first pass assessment warned the nation:

"Over the last 6,000–7,000 years sea level around Australia has been relatively stable, which has generally allowed current landforms and ecosystems to persist without large scale modifications.

Since 1788 settlements have been built along our coast in expectation that sea level would remain broadly unchanged. Significant settlement of low-lying areas has occurred, and structures were designed and built to standards defined by a relatively narrow period of experience.

Those conditions are now changing. A new climate era driven by global warming will increase risks to settlements, industries, the delivery of services and natural ecosystems within Australia’s coastal zone."

At least a decade ago it was reported in the media that the Insurance Council of Australia considered that it would not be the high cost of repair to residential properties in the 7-10km wide coastal strip most at risk of inundation and/or land slippage which would make these homes uninsurable – it would be the fact that the land on which such housing was built had become worthless.

By 2011 Australian coastal local governments were acknowledging the issue of land valuation and future liability on residential lot owners.

"A number of respondents highlighted the potential risk to existing private homes and the possibility of future depopulation and disinvestment in exposed locations. Similarly, local planners expressed difficulties in evaluating decisions that may quarantine future development potential on private land.

“There’s a big social dilemma – how do you tell someone their land is worthless and they can’t develop it?” (local government participant, March 2011).

One climate change consultant described a bifurcation whereby site based assessments fail to consider issues of transport and services. This means that individual sites might be approved for development due to their elevation, but lack secure provisions for road access via existing or planned road reservations. It was suggested that servicing these sites may become a future liability for local government areas.

“The house might be safe but the road’s going to be underwater and it’s going to be unsafe for access. If local governments are going to accept development in the areas where this additional service cost to maintain access or service [will arise], they’ll have to have a strategy to suggest that they impose that additional cost on the residents who choose to live in these places, but that’s not yet been resolved” (private sector consultant, March 2011)."

[Syd Uni Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, Gurran, N et al in Report No. 4 for the National Sea Change Taskforce November 2011, "Planning for climate change adaptation in Coastal Australia: State of practice", pp 26-27]

Such warnings with regard to very real climate change risks to coastal urban areas have been repeated again and again in the years since.

In 2022 financial services and analytics firm CoreLogic announced that calculations based on 30 years of tidal & shoreline retreat data indicated $5.3 billion worth of properties were at very high risk within 800 metres of the shoreline, and another $19.5 billion were at high risk. With dramatic changes to vulnerable coastlines within the next 30 years.

By October 2023 the Australian Government National Emergency Management Agency and the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience had put their names to a warning that coastal properties with est. value of $25 billion were at "substantial risk" due to coastal erosion and inundation.

In particular noting: As calls from homeowners for greater protection from coastal erosion increase, the effects of bad decisions (e.g. building seawalls) will become more critical. Local governments needs to address coastal erosion adaptation and the equity between politics, private rights, environmental protections and public amenities of the beachfront.

Further noting: Australian coastal communities will become increasingly vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme weather events and many beachfront properties will become stranded assets due to loss of property values as well as insurance and banking sectors retracting from the coastal property market. The Reserve Bank of Australia modelled that the number of high-risk properties could grow by over 74,000 due to climate change (Bellrose, Norman & Royters 2021).

Despite these warnings state governments have stubbornly resisted meaningful changes to planning policy and legislation. While both state and local governments generally have further entrenched internal cultures highly resistant to curbing the ambitions of both small and large professional property developers and land speculators - particularly those in the approx.100km wide & 29,900km long mainland coastal zone (including Tasmania) with its est. 49 per cent of soft shore lines and associated coastal rivers, estuaries and flood plains.

Digital Earth Australia, Geoscience Australia-CSIRO mapping of incidence from 1988 onwards showing most pronounced coastal shoreline loss by m/year in gradients of pale pink to red.

When it comes to riverine or sea water inundation this latest warning is quite specific.

The Daily Telegraph, 15 June 2024:

The Going Under Report predicts the seaside holiday village, which was completely cut off during the floods in 2022, has a 56.63 per cent risk of becoming uninsurable by 2030.

The report analysed close to fifteen million addresses in fifteen thousand suburbs across Australia.

According to the report, by 2030 588,857 (or 21 one per cent) of Australian homes will ‘have exposure to some level of riverine flooding’ with NSW by far the most impacted.

An Insurance Council of Australia spokesperson responded to the report findings stating the current risk to 230,000 Australian properties is a five per cent risk “of catastrophic flooding each year”.

“More than half of these (123,475) are in New South Wales, with the bulk of the remainder in Queensland and Victoria,” said the spokesperson.

NSW's most uninsurable towns

In NSW, 206,622 individual homes were identified as being at high risk of becoming uninsurable by 2030. This compares with 382,235 homes in all other states put together.

While the Climate Council’s Nicki Hutley told The Daily Telegraph the report findings were a reflection of updated climate science, the University of NSW (UNSW)’s Climate Research Centre Professor Andrew Pitman disagrees.

“The science behind this report isn’t robust but that doesn’t mean there aren’t risks from climate change and an imperative to act according to climate science risk.” he said.

Grafton’s Clarence Valley Council Councillor Greg Clancy told The Daily Telegraph that options for towns like Grafton, built when the river was used for transport, include relocation....

While these are an option for river towns like Grafton with existing residences, Mr Clancy raised concerns about new developments in flood prone areas such as a controversial application for a $48 million 284 lot subdivision at Mile Street in Yamba.

The Going Under Report predicts the seaside holiday village, which was completely cut off during the floods in 2022, has a 56.63 per cent risk of becoming uninsurable by 2030.

This concerns Mr Clancy who personally opposed the “flood plain development” application which is currently being determined by the Northern Regional Planning Panel, which assesses and determines regionally significant development applications.

“Basically, the developers would be creating islands, so the new houses are going to be on fill but will get cut off,” he said.

A spokesperson from the Insurance Council of Australia said that “in December 2022, National Cabinet tasked planning ministers to develop a national standard for considering disaster and climate risk and declaration that “the days of developing on flood plains need to end”.

“The ICA strongly supports the decision and has long been calling for governments to commit to stopping development in areas of high flood risk and commence work on planning reform with appropriate risk mitigation on flood plains,” the spokesperson said....

Coastal towns and villages on floodplains that empty into oceans are well aware of the triple threat climate change brings into their homes:

• the high volume concentrated rain dumps which create flash flooding, inundate low lying points within town/village boundaries and overwhelm the stormwater system;

• record breaking river flooding which stretches almost to breaking point both the community & local emergency services capacity to respond; and

• the dangers of a twin event where a strong sea storm surge meets a river flood front, forcing more water into the river or estuary at the same time the flood front unable to travel unimpeded out to sea spreads across coastal land increasing flood height and duration there.

Yesterday Northern NSW communities gave evidence at NSW Legislative Council's Portfolio Committee No. 7 – Planning and Environment Inquiry into the Planning system and the impacts of climate change on the environment and communities.

I listened via the live feed to the morning of that hearing day, as representatives of their communities from South West Rocks, Coffs Harbour, Yamba, Maclean and Evans Head spoke with authority and insight about the very real climate change-induced risks they already face, the increased dangers predicted to occur as the climate crisis deepens and, drew attention to the lack of political will within state & local government, absence of detailed strategic planning required to avoid or at least significantly mitigate against destructive changes to flood & stormwater behaviour frequently caused by inappropriate large-scale development and, need to cease further urban development on floodplains and in the immediate vicinity of vulnerable coastlines.

When the 17 June hearing transcript is posted on the NSW Parliament website, a summary containing the principal arguments and observations will be posted on North Coast Voices.

So how is agricultural production holding up in this new era of increased adverse weather disruptions to state & local supply

 

With the concepts of climate crisis and population resilience both becoming more frequently mentioned when discussing rural and regional Australia, perhaps a brief overview of aspects of the nation's agricultural inventory might be of interest as an indication of how the country is coping when it comes to food produce security.

Australian Bureau of Statistics, Latest Release, 14 June 2024:

Australian Agriculture: Horticulture

Statistics on the production and value of a range of horticultural crops

Reference period

2022-23 financial year

Released

14/06/2024

First release

Key statistics

• The local value of Australian fruit production (excluding wine grapes) was $6.3 billion in 2022-23 with 2.7 million tonnes sold in 2022-23

• Local value of vegetable production was $5.8 billion with 3.6 million tonnes sold

• Local value of cut flowers, nurseries and turf sold was $3.4 billion

• Local value of nut production sold was $721.2 million

• Local value of wine grapes was $983.1 million with 1.3 million tonnes crushed.

*****

Key results for 2022-23 include:

Fruit:

• The local value of Australian table grapes was $918.6 million, with 233,000 tonnes sold

• Apples had a local value of $647.0 million with 285,200 tonnes sold

• Bananas had a local value of $583.3 million with 374,300 tonnes sold.

Vegetables:

• Potatoes had a local value of $1.0 billion nationally with 1.5 million tonnes sold

• Leafy salad vegetables had a local value of $736.5 million with 75,700 tonnes sold

• Tomatoes had a local value of $570.6 million with 321,700 tonnes sold.

Nuts:

• Almonds had a local value of $523.4 million with 103,400 tonnes sold

• Macadamias had a local value of $104.0 million with 48,400 tonnes sold.

*****

Macadamias experimental estimates

In 2022-23:

• Australian production was 48,400 tonnes

• Local value was $104 million

• Total crop area was 40,800 hectares

• The bearing area was 24,300 hectares.

In 2022-23, 60% of the national macadamia crop area was bearing. Queensland had the largest planting area 24,700 hectares, of which only 11,500 hectares (or 46%) was bearing. This reflects that there is a significant area of younger plantings in Queensland. New South Wales has the second largest planting area with 16,000 hectares of which 12,800 hectares (or 80%) was bearing.

*****

In 2022-23, Queensland produced 70% (34,100 tonnes) of Australia’s macadamias followed by New South Wales with 29% (14,200 tonnes).

In 2022-23, Queensland macadamia production had a local value of $73 million, followed by New South Wales with a local value of $31 million.

NOTE: Value refers to local value which is the farm gate value that farmers receive for their products. This is lower than the gross value which includes transport and marketing costs.

Queensland's production is highly concentrated in the Bundaberg region. In 2022-23 the two largest Statistical Area 2 (SA2) regions were Bundaberg Surrounds (North and South), which accounted for 44% of national production sold. In New South Wales, Lismore Surrounds and the adjacent Ballina Surrounds were the largest producing SA2s, accounting for 21% of national production.

*****

In the Northern Rivers region in 2022-23 macadamia produce by in-shell weight was:

Lismore Surrounds - 5,203 tonnes

Ballina Surrounds - 4,994 tonnes

Bangalow - 1,539 tonnes.

Lismore Surrounds came in at 3rd place in the Top Ten macadamia production areas of Australia, with Ballina Surrounds following at 4th place and Bangalow in 6th position.

Elsewhere BOM noted:

The value of livestock disposals declined one per cent to $23.3 billion in 2022-23. Cattle was the largest contributor at $13.9 billion, a drop of 2.4 per cent while poultry bucked the trend, increasing by 15.6 per cent to $3.6 billion.

At 30 June 2023 there were 29.9 million head of cattle, a 4 per cent increase on the previous year.

“This is the largest cattle herd in the past five years as rainfall and favourable conditions supported farmers rebuilding their herds....

In 2023 the New South Wales cattle herd estimates stood at 6.14 million cattle. With beef cattle comprising 5.87 million head and dairy cattle 268,000 head.

According to ABS local value of all NSW cattle disposals was $3.11 billion in 2022-23.

Lower rainfall through the early stages of 2023 reduced producer confidence and may have affected livestock disposals generally.

ABS does not publish herd estimates at NSW regional or district level so it is not possible to compare Northern Rivers cattle numbers.

However, a University of Technology Sydney (UTS) June 2023 report did suggest the possibility that beef cattle dominate agricultural gross value product (GVP) in two of the seven local government areas - Clarence Valley & Kyogle. With beef cattle agricultural GVP being a significant factor in Richmond, Lismore & Tweed local governments areas. While dairy cattle agricultural GVP also contribute to the agricultural GVP mix in four of the local governments areas - Clarence Valley, Lismore & Byron.

Is The Bureau of Meteorology Marching Australia Into Even More Danger As Climate Change Risks Increase?

 

No-one who lived through the catastrophic combination of weather systems which flooded est. 600 kilometres of Australia’s east coast in 2022 would be in doubt that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) was failing in its primary function.

Particularly here in the NSW Northern Rivers region, where the erratic & contradictory forecasting by BOM during the eight days of 23 February to 2 March 2022 saw at least four people drown in preventable deaths.

Months after that record-breaking flood event ABC News reported on the findings of a NSW parliamentary inquiry:

information from the State Emergency Service (SES) and Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) was "incorrect and out of date", leaving the community with "no other option but to ignore government advice and save lives"....It urged the weather bureau to review its rain data infrastructure and flood modelling tools.

However, the worry began for me long before that, when in 2016 I read this:

Dr Johnson has a Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Honours) and PhD from the University of Queensland and a Masters in Public Administration from the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where he was a Rotary Foundation Scholar. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technical Sciences and Engineering and the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

And realised there was no indepth formal meteorological training in his background.

Worries about BOM under Dr.Johnson have been bubbling to the surface in the media since his installation as Director and this below is only the latest.....

"I'm told a nationwide data centre outage on Friday affected observations ~across the entire country~ Missing min and max temps, wind speeds for Friday and Sat at every single obs. station with the exception of the airports which are not yet auto" [Rick Morton

@SquigglyRick, 10 June 2024]

The Saturday Paper, June 8 – 14, 2024 | No. 503:

Inside the Bureau of Meteorology’s forecast failings

As the Bureau of Meteorology pulls back on its international obligations, increasing automation and a lack of experienced staff has made forecasts less reliable.

By Rick Morton

Bureau of Meteorology chief executive Dr Andrew Johnson turned up to Senate estimates last month without his right-hand man, Peter Stone, many of the bureau’s other executives and, apparently, his briefing notes.

Johnson, who is also the director of meteorology, appointed to the now $533,000 a year job in 2016 by former environment minister Josh Frydenberg, claimed not to be able to answer basic questions about BoM processes. At one stage, he even attempted to prevent his chief operating officer from speaking.

“So, you have no familiarity? Don’t you come prepared for Senate estimates?” Liberal Senator Jonathon Duniam said after asking basic questions alongside Greens Senator Barbara Pocock about how the BoM handles cost overruns and contract delivery delays.

“I am shocked at the lack of capacity to answer questions of that nature even in a general sense. This is astounding.”

It was less astounding to senior Bureau of Meteorology staff who have watched a $1 billion-plus technology transformation project at the agency, called ROBUST, slide off the rails over several years. And less surprising still to the meteorologists at the forecaster, who have witnessed a centralisation of the BoM’s remaining qualified staff to a “national production” model based in Melbourne and Brisbane while being told not to change automatic local forecasts they know to be wrong.

“The philosophy was ‘near enough is good enough’,” a former meteorologist says.

“When the director would come around spruiking the centralisation, that was the actual quote. You know, if you’re saying it’s going to be wet and it’s super wet, that’s not life-threatening. He wants to focus on ‘high-impact events’ but they are not going to be a problem because they’ve got specialised teams.

“But, for a farmer, five millimetres [of rain] as opposed to 20 millimetres is a massive big deal.”

The noticeable slip in forecast quality, especially where meteorologists have been prevented by resourcing constraints or internal policy from correcting known errors in the automatic model outputs, was first confirmed by The Saturday Paper and stems in part from a broader cultural shift at the Bureau of Meteorology. According to sources, this shift has seen a massive restructure of talent and the removal of internal voices of dissent.

“You can warn them about quality but they will straight up tell you black is white and then move on, expecting you to get with the program,” one forecaster says. “And then they wonder why the wheels are falling off.”

Since Johnson came to the role eight years ago, eight members of the small executive team who report directly to him have left. The turnover in management ranks below has been much greater.

Meanwhile, forecasters – including those who work on floods or bushfires in addition to the meteorologists – have increased by just five positions. The work required of these highly qualified people, however, has become more demanding and more complex.

Poor planning and management practices at the weather agency have exacerbated resource constraints. Like the weather they forecast, these issues operate in a tightly interconnected system of feedback loops.

Take the now abandoned plan to move the national forecast grid to a three-kilometre resolution. After years of effort, the project was deemed “too hard” and shelved in late 2021, returning the nation to a six-kilometre grid in every state and territory, including Victoria and Tasmania, which were already successfully running at the sharper resolution.

At the same time, however, a new Australian Fire Danger Rating System (AFDRS) was already in development with prototypes tested by the BoM and the New South Wales Rural Fire Service. The royal commission into the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires recommended it be fast-tracked.

Among other features, this new system was designed on a three-kilometre grid. The race to have it launched suffered as “all Graphical Forecast Editor (GFE) development resources” were dedicated to making the grid change happen, pushing back delivery timelines on the new fire-warning system.

At the other end of delivery, new delays were added. Aborting the three-kilometre grid project resulted in the need to translate BoM’s six-kilometre resolution data to the fire grid via additional “workarounds” from forecasters.

Testing of the AFDRS has now also been compromised by a six-year delay in upgrades to the Bureau of Meteorology supercomputer, Australis II.

“The attitude there now seems to be ‘what’s in it for us?’ despite the fact the BoM is a big player in the Pacific region with climate change and tropical cyclones.”

Last month, BoM researchers led by Paul Gregory and Naomi Benger released a report analysing the seasonal outlooks produced as part of the new rating system.

“Currently the outlooks cannot be verified in realtime as there are no sources of gridded, realtime, AFDRS observations,” the paper says.

“This lack of realtime observations also prevents the Bureau from providing any post-event analysis using AFDRS. This service gap can be filled by integrating the AFDRS computational modules into the Bureau’s National Analysis System (NAS), and the realtime BARRA-2 reanalysis system.

“Both of these systems are currently in trial and are awaiting the upgrading of the Bureau’s supercomputer (Australis II) for deployment.”......

Forecasters who spoke to The Saturday Paper, on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals, have attributed at least some of their deep unhappiness at the BoM to the management culture.

One persistent issue is the decision to launch the massive Public Services Transformation project alongside the ROBUST technology investment. While the former might have had some appeal from an efficiency point of view, the parallel nature of the two vast projects created substantial backlogs and catastrophic delays.

“To be honest, we have never recovered from either program,” another employee says.

“We have just been crunched. And at the same time, the country has faced some of its worst ever flood and fire events one after another. I feel like the accountability has gone out the window.”

ROBUST was in part inspired by a cybersecurity incident, and its funding, provided by the former Coalition government, was labelled “cabinet in confidence” and has never been officially revealed.

At Senate estimates late last month, Andrew Johnson told the parliament his executives were accountable to him but that he did not have a performance agreement personally.

“My performance agreement in a sense is the corporate plan that I table to the minister and which is tabled to the parliament, but I personally don’t have a performance agreement, and I’ve not had one since I commenced in 2016,” he said.

Under Johnson’s leadership, the Bureau of Meteorology has stopped meeting all of its World Meteorological Organization obligations, cutting back substantially on the frequency of upper atmosphere soundings.

Content now removed from the BoM website states the “benefits” in data sharing under the World Meteorological Organization are “substantial but also impose a responsibility for Australia to also contribute to the international system”.

As one meteorologist told The Saturday Paper: “The attitude there now seems to be ‘what’s in it for us?’ despite the fact the BoM is a big player in the Pacific region with climate change and tropical cyclones.”

Domestically, quality suffers in subtle but important ways. Overnight shifts on the national production desk can shrink to four people who are responsible for an entire country’s forecasting. Almost all of this is model output, but changes still need to be made and there are only so many available to perform the work.

Now even the capital city airports – a fiercely protected domain by aviation forecasters at the BoM – are subject to automation with a $3.3 million, one-year contract issued by the weather agency in the middle of May.

Last weekend, in Perth, the BoM’s Saturday night forecasts were accurate but the Sunday forecast predicted “armageddon” – despite the fact the weather had all but cleared.

“And the issue that comes out early in the morning, that’s the four o’clock issue, it’s done from Melbourne,” a meteorologist says. “The forecasters come in at 6am and then have to look at what mess they’d been left with, basically, and try and make sense of it.”

Early Sunday morning, the BoM was still predicting 25 to 50 millimetres of rain in Perth, with thunderstorms that were possibly severe.

“It had all gone overnight Saturday and into Sunday morning,” the forecaster says.

“So by eight o’clock Sunday, you were left with a few residual showers before the forecast got changed at nine o’clock, and reflected what it should have been. They had the rainfall totals down to about seven millimetres, but the app continued to show 20 to 50 millimetres.”

Such an approach to forecasting nationally is not without consequences. Farmers in the Western Australian wheat belt were furious. Organisers of a WA Day celebration event in Burswood cancelled the festival in advance, based on forecasts that showed “even heavier rainfall” throughout the long weekend.....

The Bureau of Meteorology said in a statement that Peter Stone, who earlier this year was found by a Federal Circuit Court judge to have engaged in a deliberate attempt to mislead the court regarding a BoM workplace case, was sick during the week of Senate estimates.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on June 8, 2024 as "Inside the BoM’s forecast failings".

Read the full article at:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2024/06/08/inside-the-boms-failings-they-will-straight-tell-you-black-white

The chance of a La Niña event this year remains a flip of the coin as behaviour of major climate drivers becomes harder to predict

 

Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM)

Sea Surface

Click on images to enlarge

Overview - Climate Influences

Global sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have been warmest on record for each month between April 2023 and April 2024, with May 2024 SSTs on track to be warmer than May 2023.....The global pattern of warmth is affecting the typical historical global patterns of sea surface temperatures associated with ENSO and IOD, meaning inferences of how ENSO or IOD may develop in 2024 based on past events may not be reliable.

Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Climate Driver Update, 28 May 2024, excerpts:

The ENSO Outlook is currently at 'La Niña Watch', meaning there are some signs that a La Niña might form in the Pacific Ocean later in 2024. A La Niña Watch does not guarantee that a La Niña will develop. Climate models suggest that SSTs in the central tropical Pacific are likely to continue to cool over the coming months. Four of seven models suggest SSTs are likely to remain at neutral ENSO levels, with the remaining three models showing SSTs cooling to La Niña levels from August.

La Niña Watch

La Niña spectrum is the grades of blue

The chance of a La Niña developing in the coming season has increased.

NOTE:

Australia's climate has warmed by 1.50 ± 0.23°C between 1910 and 2023, leading to an increase in the frequency of extreme heat events. In recent decades, there has been a shift to drier conditions across the south-west and south-east in the cool season (April to October) due to natural variability on decadal timescales and changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation caused by an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

When science speaks and governments refuse to hear, the world enters a dark and perilous place

 

“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.” [The Guardian, online, 8 May 2024]

When science speaks of what world governments and their peoples once thought of as an impossibility and, the vast majority of Australian politicians still refuse to admit the extent of the perilous situation situation we find ourselves in, then as a society we have entered a dark place.

The Guardian, 8 May 2024:

Climate crisis

World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target

Exclusive: Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results for humanity, poll of hundreds of scientists finds

‘Hopeless and broken’: why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair

Damian Carrington Environment editor

Wed 8 May 2024 19.00 AEST

Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed.

Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit would be met.

Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.

Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.

“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”

But many said the climate fight must continue, however high global temperature rose, because every fraction of a degree avoided would reduce human suffering.

Peter Cox, at the University of Exeter, UK, said: “Climate change will not suddenly become dangerous at 1.5C – it already is. And it will not be ‘game over’ if we pass 2C, which we might well do.”

The Guardian approached every contactable lead author or review editor of IPCC reports since 2018. Almost half replied, 380 of 843. The IPCC’s reports are the gold standard assessments of climate change, approved by all governments and produced by experts in physical and social sciences. The results show that many of the most knowledgeable people on the planet expect climate havoc to unfold in the coming decades.

The climate crisis is already causing profounddamage to lives and livelihoods across the world, with only 1.2C (2.16F) of global heating on average over the past four years. Jesse Keenan, at Tulane University in the US, said: “This is just the beginning: buckle up.”

Nathalie Hilmi, at the Monaco Scientific Centre, who expects a rise of 3C, agreed: “We cannot stay below 1.5C.”

The experts said massive preparations to protect people from the worst of the coming climate disasters were now critical. Leticia Cotrim da Cunha, at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said: “I am extremely worried about the costs in human lives.”

The 1.5C target was chosen to prevent the worst of the climate crisis and has been seen as an importantguiding star for international negotiations. Current climate policies mean the world is ontrack for about 2.7C, and the Guardian survey shows few IPCC experts expect the world to deliver the huge action required to reduce that.

Younger scientists were more pessimistic, with 52% of respondents under 50 expecting a rise of at least 3C, compared with 38% of those over 50. Female scientists were also more downbeat than male scientists, with 49% thinking global temperature would rise at least 3C, compared with 38%. There was little difference between scientists from different continents.

Dipak Dasgupta, at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, said: “If the world, unbelievably wealthy as it is, stands by and does little to address the plight of the poor, we will all lose eventually.”

The experts were clear on why the world is failing to tackle the climate crisis. A lack of political will was cited by almost three-quarters of the respondents, while 60% also blamed vested corporate interests, such as the fossil fuel industry.

Many also mentioned inequality and a failure of the rich world to help the poor, who suffer most from climate impacts. “I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south,” said a South African scientist, who chose not to be named. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.”

About a quarter of the IPCC experts who responded thought global temperature rise would be kept to 2C or below but even they tempered their hopes.

“I am convinced that we have all the solutions needed for a 1.5C path and that we will implement them in the coming 20 years,” said Henry Neufeldt, at the UN’s Copenhagen Climate Centre. “But I fear that our actions might come too late and we cross one or severaltipping points.”

Lisa Schipper, at University of Bonn in Germany, said: “My only source of hope is the fact that, as an educator, I can see the next generation being so smart and understanding the politics.”