Climate change could trigger rising global temperatures that lead to a major jump in "lethal heat" up north, Environment Centre NT executive director Kirsty Howey warned delegates.
The sobering assessment was delivered on Friday in Darwin at Australia's Great North Conference, which has focused on environmental threats to the region.
The Northern Territory was a cultural and national wonder, Dr Howey said.
However, it faced a threat that was laid "absolutely bare in excruciating detail" this week in the first National Climate Risk Assessment, which painted a catastrophic vision of Australia's future if global warming goes unchecked.
"We are looking at heat-related deaths in Darwin increasing by 423 per cent, 70 per cent of Territorians living in high-risk or very high-risk areas susceptible to climate change and lethal heat that is simply not compatible with human life," she told AAP.
Recent research found much of northern Australia could experience unliveable conditions if global temperatures increased by about 3C, which could become a reality within 40 years, Dr Howey told the conference.
Such extreme conditions were found in 0.8 per cent of the planet, mostly in the Sahara Desert.
The federal government's 2035 climate target, unveiled on Thursday, aims to bring emissions down by between 62 and 70 per cent in the next decade, based on 2005 levels.
Dr Howey said her centre was very disappointed with the Albanese government's target.
She said it needed to be 75 per cent to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and in particular, warming of more than 1.5C.
"But instead we don't have a target, we have a cop out and it's a cop out in service of fossil fuel industry interests, capitulation to those interests," she said.
Dr Howey said the new targets sacrificed northern Australian communities and First Nations places that had been cared for spanning thousands of years.
"We can't look away any longer. This is just a couple of decades away and we need urgent action."
That meant better climate targets and not opening up huge new fossil fuel reserves such as fracking in the Northern Territory's Beetaloo Basin, which could increase Australia's emissions by 20 per cent, Dr Howey said.
"These projects are not compatible with the safe, liveable future for northern Australia," she said.
17°C