Warming In Queensland Would Make Brisbane Part Of The Tropics

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A PROJECTED temperature rise in southern Queensland that would effectively make the region part of the tropics could spell disaster for its grain industry, researchers suggest. However, the tropical conditions could also provide an opportunity to expand the sugar cane and ethanol fuel industries, Queensland University of Technology's Peter Grace said today.

Professor Grace, the director of QUT's Institute of Sustainable Resources, has recently been working with climate change expert Peter Jamieson, from the New Zealand Institute of Crop and Food Research. Dr Jamieson will tomorrow speak at a forum in Brisbane about his research into climate change across the southern hemisphere and its effect on food production.

“The climate forecast that Dr Jamieson has been looking at in New Zealand and across most of the southern hemisphere would be a shift of potentially anywhere between two and four degrees in climate,” Professor Grace said. “So it is like moving Brisbane up into the tropics.”

Professor Grace has previously warned rising temperatures and declining rainfall could wipe $1 billion a year off Australia's wheat industry within 30 years.

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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22608117-30417,00.html