Remote Northern Australian Communities Face Growing Climate Vulnerability

CANBERRA, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Remote communities in northern Australia face escalating risks from extreme heat as climate change intensifies, with new research warning that place-specific adaptation strategies are essential to maintain habitability.

A study by Australia's Charles Darwin University's (CDU) Northern Institute projects that remote northern towns will experience an average of 166 days above 35 degrees Celsius annually by the end of the century, up from around 130 days in the 2020s, according to a CDU statement released on Thursday.

Heat is already the leading cause of death in northern Australia and is set to worsen, with hot days in the Top End more than doubling and cooler, drier winter days declining under climate change, said the study published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

Researchers assessed vulnerability across warming, population decline and ageing, finding that over half of remote towns are at risk from rising temperatures, more than a third from population decline, and about a quarter from ageing.

Inland towns in the northern state of Queensland face combined risks from rising temperatures and population decline, with the remote town of Bouila also marked by an ageing population, while coastal areas show fewer vulnerabilities, the findings showed.

The study highlights disparities in socio-economic capacity, with aging communities often better equipped to afford heat-resilient housing and access to healthcare and social services.

"Place-specific strategies should be aligned with regional development and public health and wellbeing policies, particularly in relation to health equity and socio-economic outcomes for Indigenous people," said the study's lead author, David Karacsonyi, adjunct research fellow at CDU. 

--NNN-Xinhua