Hunt briefed on climate change effects

Environment Minister Greg Hunt reportedly knew of the effects of climate change on Australia ahead of an international interview in which he claimed his knowledge came from Wikipedia.

Speaking on the BBC's Newshour on October 23 last year, Mr Hunt appeared to use Wikipedia as his source of information to back Prime Minister Tony Abbott's dismissal of a statement by United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres on the link between bushfires and climate change.

However, confidential Bureau of Meteorology briefings reveal Mr Hunt was warned by senior officials prior to the interview that Australia's extreme 2013 temperatures were "unprecedented" and consistent with "a pattern of global warming".

Fairfax Media reports Mr Hunt was given subsequent advice in November that climate change had increased the odds of "severe weather conducive to severe bushfires occurring".

Mr Abbott has dismissed links between global warming and bushfires, while Mr Hunt told the BBC bushfires were frequent occurrences in Australia's hotter months, and that he had "looked up what Wikipedia says".

" ... we all have to be very careful. In talking with the senior people of the Bureau of Meteorology, for example, they always emphasise never try to link any particular event to climate change," Mr Hunt told Newshour when pressed.

The briefing papers released to Fairfax show that on October 3, weather bureau director Rob Vertessy told Mr Hunt the intensity, extent and duration of record high temperatures in the preceding month had been "unprecedented" since at least 1910, when records began.

While Dr Vertessy said "it is not possible to attribute any single weather event to global warming", he emphasised "recent extremes are consistent with the general pattern of warming".

"A number of more recent studies are drawing probabilistic links between more extreme seasonal heat records and climate change, including the Australian summer of 2012-13," he said.