It’s very important that we do whatever we can to help slow climate change, even if some of the climate effects are unavoidable.

But to answer this, let’s focus on a few key variables. By 2040, no matter what we do – aggressively reduce emissions or not – the amount of warming will be about 1.5 to 1.6°C. With this warming will come some changes in rain. It is predicted that southwest and eastern Australia will be drier, Tasmania probably about the same. Heat waves will happen about twice as often, and when they do occur, they will be hotter. Sea level will likely be about 10cm higher than it is now, but this is difficult to predict.

This is not very good news, but the important thing to realise is that anything we do now, will start to make climate change less worse after 2040.

Yes. In fact, since records began about 100 years ago, the average Australian temperature has warmed but about 1.4°C. By 2050, Tasmania is projected to experience an increase in temperature of at least 1.5°C. We say at least because the real amount depends on what happens to CO2 emissions between now and then. By 2100, Tasmania is projected to experience an increase of 1.5°C to 3°C in temperature across all locations, and more than 4°C in mountain regions.

But this is the average across the year. There will also be changes in temperature extremes, like heat waves. For example, for 1961-1990, Launceston had an average of 29 days per year over 25°C. For 2070-2099, we predict that Launceston will average 75 days per year over 25°C.