Indicator /

Impacts of climate change

Indicator
CC2: Impacts of climate change

Climate is impacting on the ACT’s community, economy and the natural environment. Observed changes include reduced inflows to water storages, increased tree mortality, greater fire danger, and more algal blooms in Canberra’s lakes.

Condition & trend
  • Trending arrow Poor
  • Trending arrow Fair
  • Trending arrow Good
Data quality
Moderate
Indicator assessment legend
Condition
  • Poor
  • Fair
  • Good

Environmental condition is healthy across the ACT, OR pressure likely to have negligible impact on environmental condition/human health.

  • Poor
  • Fair
  • Good

Environmental condition is neither positive or negative and may be variable across the ACT, OR pressure likely to have limited impact on environmental condition/human health.

  • Poor
  • Fair
  • Good

Environmental condition is under significant stress, OR pressure likely to have significant impact on environmental condition/ human health.

  • Poor
  • Unknown
  • Good

Data is insufficient to make an assessment of status and trends.

Trend
Trending arrow

Improving

Trending arrow

Deteriorating

Stable

?

Unclear

Data quality
High

Adequate high-quality evidence and high level of consensus

Moderate

Limited evidence or limited consensus

Low

Evidence and consensus too low to make an assessment

N/A

Assessments of status, trends and data quality are not appropriate for the indicator

Background

This section assesses the current impacts of climate change on natural ecosystems, biodiversity, the urban environment, and human health and wellbeing.

Condition and trends

Attributing environmental changes to climate change alone is difficult due to the range of factors that affect the environment. However, available data suggest the following impacts from climate change:

There will be many other impacts which are not captured by data obtained for State of the Environment reporting. This is particularly the case for subtle changes that occur over long periods. For example, it is widely accepted that climate change is having a significant impact on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and the biodiversity they support. The repercussions of climate change on human health and wellbeing are also well documented.Watts, M.A. et.al., 2018, The 2018 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change: Shaping the Health of Nations for Centuries to Come, The Lancet, 392(10163): 2479–2514.

It is also difficult to determine climate change impacts at the local level, particularly for the natural environment. This is because the severity of changes depends on a range of factors including landscape types, elevation, and the sensitivity and resilience of ecosystems. This means that the implications of climate change will differ across the ACT with some areas and ecosystem types more affected than others.

Despite this, the broad impacts that climate change has on the ACT region are well known and are shown in the following figures.

Figure CC4: Impacts of climate change on human health and the urban environment

Infographic showing the impacts of climate change on the urban environment

Figure CC5: Impacts of climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem health

Infographic shows how climate change affects biodiversity

Figure CC6: Impacts of climate change on primary production

Infographic shows how climate change affects primary production