Researchers from Australian National University (ANU) have declared 2019 the nation's worst environmental year "in a century or more."

The team, led by Albert van Dijk from ANU's Fenner School of Environment and Society, found that record heat and devastating drought impacted Australia's environment on an "unprecedented scale."

The Australia's Environment report scored environmental conditions in Australia every year from 2000 to 2019 on a scale from zero to 10 based on seven indicators; the number of hot days, vegetation growth, leaf area, soil protection, tree cover, inundation and streamflow.

Of the years rated 2019 was the worst, scoring a 0.8 out of 10.

Van Dijk told the Guardian Australia that environmentally 2019 was "probably the worst in a century or more" on account of unprecedented bushfires, low vegetation growth and 40 new additions to the threatened species list.

"This is not the new normal - this is just getting worse and worse," he said.

"You start to see ecosystems fall apart and then struggle to recover before the next major disturbance."

The next-worst year was 2005, which was in the midst of the worst drought in recorded history, while 2010, one of the wettest years on record, was the best.

Van Dijk said the number of days over 35 degrees Celsius in 2019 was 36 percent higher than the previous 19 years and river flows were 43 percent below the 2000 to 2018 average, resulting in mass fish deaths in the Murray-Darling Basin.

They found that the Great Barrier Reef did not experience a mass coral bleaching event in 2019 but remained in poor condition overall.

(Cover photo via VCG)

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