Sea levels are expected to rise and snow and rainfall to decrease as average temperatures in some areas rise by as much as five degrees Celsius within 70 years, according to the report by government scientists.

"By 2030 we are looking at an increase in temperature of about one degree," said one of the report's authors, Penny Whetton.

"If you go out to 2070, what happens then depends on what happens to our global emissions of greenhouse gas.

"There is the risk of warming as high as four or five degrees by 2070 in parts of Australia," she said.

Whetton, from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, said temperatures in Australia overall would likely rise by between 2 and 3.5 degrees by 2070, but could go higher or lower depending on the level of greenhouse gas pollution.

These gases, produced by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, are contributing to the so-called greenhouse effect by blanketing the Earth's upper atmosphere and trapping heat inside.

The report, "Climate Change in Australia," found that rainfall would decrease by between 10 and 30 percent by 2070, particularly in the major agricultural zones in southeastern Australia.

Drought months could increase by 40 percent in eastern Australia and by 80 percent in the country's southwest by 2070, it said.

Whetton said there would also be changes in extreme weather events, meaning more days when the temperature topped 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), fewer frosts, more intense tropical cyclones and a higher risk of bushfires.

Scott Power, from the Bureau of Meteorology, said Australia's average temperature had already increased by 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1950 while oceans were warmer and sea levels had risen.

"We are more certain than ever before that these changes can be largely attributed to human intervention," he told a press conference.

Parts of Australia have been in the grip of drought for more than six years, threatening the country's major agricultural zone, while water restrictions are in place in most state capitals.

But Whetton said Australia was no worse than most other places on earth at a similar latitude in terms of the impact of global warming.

"Everyone will experience warming," she said.

"Very broadly, if you look around the world, it's sort of a pattern of dry areas getting drier and wet areas getting wetter."

Whetton said the planet would be hotter by 2030 even if carbon gas emissions were dramatically cut immediately but the sooner action was taken, the greater the ability to limit the future warming.

"But some warming is inevitable."

Tim Flannery, noted scientist and global warming campaigner, said despite the prognosis he was optimistic humans would become "planetary engineers" to make their environment liveable.

"The only reason that we would act on any of this at all is to preserve ourselves from dangerous climate change," he told a conference in Sydney.

"It's not to make money from the carbon trading floor or anything else, it's simply to give our global civilisation a chance at surviving the 21st century."

Flannery urged Australia, which with the US has refused to ratify the UN-supported Kyoto Protocol, to tackle greenhouse gases by changing its tack.

"It's abundantly clear there's no time to forge another global treaty on this issue. Kyoto at the moment is it," he said.

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