Federal funding for advanced climate modelling has cheered scientists who say the investment will help refine predictions for everything from fire-generated thunderstorms to worsening urban heat islands. Buried in this year’s budget was the provision of $7.6 million […]
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An international review of IPCC reports since 2001 has found that as the science has improved with each report, a trend has appeared showing climate-related impacts like heatwaves, the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and coral […]
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If you’ve ever logged on to a website or bought something online, you’ve probably had to do a reCAPTCHA to prove you’re human. reCAPTCHAs are photos of everyday scenes where you have to select all the squares that […]
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Drought is a slowly evolving phenomenon whose modulating mechanisms stem from complex interactions of atmospheric, land surface and oceanic processes. As drought manifests in different ways, it can be difficult to define. Ideally, the best way to assess […]
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An analysis of new climate model projections by Australian researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes shows southwestern Australia and parts of southern Australia will see longer and more intense droughts due to a lack […]
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Understanding how energy and water are distributed at the Earth’s surface is a key part of predicting climate extremes such as drought, heatwaves, and flooding. Depending on the landscape and prevailing conditions, rainfall might join rivers, get stored […]
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It has been estimated that as the Earth warms the atmosphere will be able to hold around 7% more moisture for each degree of global warming. As a result, it is expected extreme precipitation events will vary in […]
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A report outlining the current state of climate processes research in Australia was recently put together for the National Climate Science Advisory Committee. What follows is the Executive Summary – you can read the full report here. This […]
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New international research has found a worrying change in the Indian Ocean’s surface temperatures that puts southeast Australia on course for increasingly hot and dry conditions. The work led by The Australian National University (ANU) and the ARC […]
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Drought is a complex phenomenon due to its underlying physical interactions between the land surface and the atmosphere. Its creeping nature and potentially large spatial extent make drought a long-lasting and costly natural hazard. However, the onset of drought can unfold on […]
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Despite widespread interest in hydrologic variability, there is currently no general climatology of the variability of the water cycle over land. This has limited the development of the underlying science of hydrologic extremes. This paper uses a recently […]
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With projected increases in temperature in the future, the amount of water vapour that can be held at saturation increases exponentially. This increased capacity by the atmosphere to hold water (or increased vapour pressure deficit), has important implications […]
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Globally the cooling of the atmosphere by radiation is balanced by its heating from condensation and heat transfer from the Earth’s surface. This study is the first to investigate this so-called Radiative Convective Equilibrium – or RCE – […]
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As heat extremes become more commonplace, understanding the physiological response of the vegetation to temperature becomes more important. Recent experimental evidence – including collaborative work done between Western Sydney University, CLEX and other institutes – has shown that […]
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Most people imagine that as temperature rises, evaporation increases. While that is true under specific circumstances, in general this is not the case. This is because when evaporation increases it causes a surface to cool and thereby reducing […]
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Convective organisation refers to convective systems that cover a larger area and last longer than an individual convective cell. Tropical extreme rain is closely related to convective organisation, but it is unclear how it influences extreme rainfall and […]
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The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant and most consequential climate variation on the planet. Answering the question of how ENSO may change under greenhouse warming has been plagued for decades by a persistent lack of inter-model […]
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