Six years ago, a catastrophic flood unfolded in the Lockyer Valley in southeast Queensland. The floodwaters then spread on January 11 2011 across the Brisbane River floodplains, inundating the Brisbane CBD and inner suburbs, and bringing the state’s […]
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For Australia’s climate, 2016 was a year of two halves. The year started with one of the strongest El Niño events on record in place in the Pacific Ocean, and the opening months of 2016 were generally hot […]
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Climate change made some of Australia’s 2015 extreme weather events more likely, according to research published today in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. As part of an annual review of global weather extremes, these studies focused […]
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The annual review of extreme weather and climate events published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society today highlights how climate change is influencing the events that affect us the most. This table summarises each event and […]
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Back in 2010-11 Australia “greened”, as record-breaking rains triggered a boom in plant growth that removed huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stored it as carbon in the landscape. But what happened after that? Our […]
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Bob Walker, an adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump, has set alarm bells ringing by recommending that NASA’s climate monitoring programs be axed. But his dismissal of the “politicised science” at NASA’s Earth Science Division shows an ignorance […]
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Storms, wind and hail do a lot of damage to Australians and their property. The 1999 Sydney hailstorm, for instance, cost A$1.7 billion in insured losses. That makes it the biggest single insurance loss in Australian history; in […]
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Australia is a huge continent, but a coastal nation. About 80% of Australians live within 50km of the coast, and a sea-level rise of 1.1 metres (a high-end scenario for 2100) would put about A$63 billion (in 2008 […]
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2016 is set to be the world’s hottest year on record. According to the World Meteorological Organization’s preliminary statement on the global climate for 2016, global temperatures for January to September were 0.88°C above the long-term (1961-90) average, […]
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Fire has been a driving force across Australia for millennia. Indeed, the health of many of our ecosystems is intrinsically dependent on fire. But bushfires are also one of our most frequent natural hazards, with a total […]
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Australia is no stranger to heatwaves. Each summer, large areas of the continent fry under intense heat for days on end, causing power outages, public transport delays, and severe impacts to human health. The estimated impact on our […]
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Recent floods in New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria have reminded us of the power of our weather and rivers to wreak havoc on homes, business and even, tragically, lives. The journal Climatic Change has published a […]
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Generation Y has grown up in a rapidly warming world. According to the US National Climate Data Centre, every month since February 1985 has seen above average global temperatures, compared with the twentieth century. I have no memories […]
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These days, after an extreme weather event like a cyclone, bushfire, or major storm, it’s common to find people asking: was it climate change? We also often hear people saying it is impossible to attribute any single weather […]
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Bushfires have been the most common natural disaster in New South Wales over the past decade, according to our study published today in Nature’s Scientific Reports. Our study, the first of its kind, looked at disaster declarations in […]
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The Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO have released their fourth biennial State of the Climate Report. State of the Climate 2016 provides an update on the changes and long-term trends in Australia’s climate. The report’s observations are […]
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According to data released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) this week, September 2016 was the second-hottest September on record globally. Until then, every month since April 2015 was the hottest for its month on […]
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Do you ever feel that the weather is worse on the weekend? Well you might be right! Our research, published in Environmental Research Letters, shows that in Australia’s biggest cites, the temperature is on average up to 0.3℃ […]
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Northern Australia is likely to experience an average or above-average number of tropical cyclones this summer, according to the Bureau’s annual Tropical Cyclone Season Outlook, issued last week. Given current climate drivers, that means we’re likely to see […]
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Tasmania has had a damaging year, with the island state hit by a series of bushfires and floods. Now a comprehensive new assessment of Tasmania’s exposure to natural disasters shows that bushfire remains the number one hazard to […]
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