Annual rainfall in vital farming regions in this driest of all inhabited continents could drop by 40 per cent over the same period, the Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation (CSIRO) said in a report released yesterday.
Bushfires and intense storms will increase and pastures will become dustbowls if climate change follows its current trends, the report warned.
"The CSIRO research paints a frightening picture," said New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma, whose government commissioned the report. "That's why we need a national approach to climate change."
Australia is already in the grip of the worst drought in living memory, and Iemma and the premiers of two other south-eastern states will attend an emergency drought summit with Prime Minister John Howard today.
The country's most significant river system, in the south-eastern Murray-Darling Basin, could run out of water within six months after six years of drought, the government has warned.
About 30 rivers and hundreds of tributaries run across the basin, which provides for about 70 per cent of Australia's irrigated farmlands.
In the face of growing public concern over the country's environmental future, Howard has abandoned his previously sceptical response to the idea that pollution is driving climate change.
But he continues to refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which seeks to limit the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
Under a local emissions trading scheme proposed by state governments, greenhouse gas emissions from Australia's electricity industry would be capped at between 1997 and 2000 levels by 2035.
Electricity generators would require permits to emit greenhouse gases but would be able to purchase extra permits and offset emissions through forestry and capturing or storing carbon.
The CSIRO's warnings come a week after a report commissioned by the British government estimated that global warming would cost US$7 trillion in the next decade unless governments take drastic action soon.
The report by former World Bank chief economist Sir Richard Stern concluded that the world needed to spend about one per cent of global gross domestic product - equivalent to about US$349 billion (A$454 billion) - on the issue now, or face a bill up to 20 times higher than that in future.
