By 2040, according to the report produced by the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR), a joint CSIRO and Bureau of Meterology initiative, what are now considered high temperatures and low rainfall will be common—in some areas, so common that they will become the new norm.

For the Federal Government, the report provides ample reason to overhaul the current drought EC criteria, which is based on past analysis of what constitutes a 1-in-25 year drought.

“If we failed to review drought policy, if we were to continue the neglect and pretend that the climate wasn’t changing, we would be leaving our farmers out to dry, well and truly,” Federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said earlier this week.

“And the reason is simple: what used to be regarded as a one in 20 to 25 year event in order to qualify for drought assistance is now going to hit far more often than it has before.”

On temperature, the report is unequivocal: by 2040, if not sooner, it’s likely to get extremely hot. (In line with current trends, that may not mean many more noticeably hotter days, but instead noticably fewer very cold days.)

Across the seven agricultural regions, “exceptionally hot years”—those with average annual temperatures in the top 5pc of hottest averages ever recorded—have occurred across about 4.5pc of each region between 1900-2007, and about once every 20 years.

That trend line began rising 40 years ago, steeply so in the mid-1980s.

Between 2010-2040, the CAWCR researchers calculate that exceptionally hot years will on average, begin to affect just over 60pc of NSW and Queensland, rising to about 76pc of Victoria and Tasmania, and more than 80 per cent of south-west Western Australia.

Rather than once every 20-odd years, exceptionally hot years are forecast to occur in parts of each region every two years, on a best-case scenario - but virtually every year on the worst-case scenario.