A simple list of briefing note PDFs is available for download here.
Search our briefing notes:
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Urban Climates and Climate Change
Urban climatology studies how urbanisation and climate change shape local weather, with cities altering climates through heat-retaining surfaces and geographic factors like latitude and topography.
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Ocean Oxygen Loss: If Fish Could Talk
Ocean oxygen loss is widespread and accelerating in both coastal waters and the open ocean due to climate change and nutrient runoff, with profound consequences for ocean life and humanity.
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Understanding Net Zero
Achieving net zero emissions is essential to limit the impacts of climate change which are already being felt across the world. Once net zero is reached, global mean surface temperature will likely stabilise.
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Ocean Fronts
Ocean fronts act as hotspots for marine biodiversity and play an important role in regulating the Earth’s climate. As the oceans get warmer with climate change, the location, number and intensity of ocean fronts may change. This could have far-reaching implications for the climate system, marine ecosystems and global fisheries.
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Building Bridges Between Climate Scientists and Decision-Makers
Knowledge brokers work at the interface of academics and consumers of climate information, sharing knowledge with the goal of facilitating communication and achieving improved outcomes for all.
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Nature-Based Solutions
In recent years, nature-based solutions have gained considerable attention as a means to reach net-zero targets and many governments and companies are incorporating them in their net-zero strategies. Some sectors strongly advocate for these solutions while others criticise them.
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Working with Uncertainty in Climate Planning and Adaptation
Climate model simulations offer us information about possible future outcomes with varying degrees of uncertainty. Understanding uncertainty in climate projections is vital for making more informed decisions and planning adaptation responses.
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Climatic factors affecting the Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef has experienced six mass bleaching events and is currently experiencing its seventh bleaching event in 2024. What are the main drivers of coral bleaching and how is climate change affecting the reef?
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Australia’s Tinderbox Drought (2017 – 2019)
Understanding the causes of the prolonged drought that helped enable Australia’s Black Summer fire disaster.
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Projecting future heat stress in Australia using climate models
As the summer continues many of us are experiencing very hot temperatures. It is important to be prepared for extreme conditions which can lead to heat stress.
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Can we attribute extreme events in Australia to climate change?
Understanding the science around extreme weather attribution and the complex issues associated with it.
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What is detection and attribution?
Understanding the role of climate change behind costly or deadly impacts allows for mitigation and response systems such as building codes or public health resources to be sufficiently bolstered, particularly as the risk of impacts increases.
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What is El Niño’s impact on Australia’s weather and climate?
Climate models suggest that the rainfall decrease and temperature increase during El Niño will likely intensify in the future.
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Understanding the meteorological drivers of the Black Summer fire events using high resolution simulations
We used an atmospheric model from the Met office in the UK called the unified model to simulate one of the black summer bushfire events.
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Understanding how groundwater dynamics impacts droughts and heatwaves using a land surface model
The presence of groundwater in forested areas reduces rainfall loss in wet periods and maintains soil moisture in dry periods.
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Studying the ocean around Antarctica using ocean models
This study is an example how models help us to examine and understand how ocean currents behave and how they impact our environment.
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Climate modelling – an overview
There are many types of climate models, and they vary widely in complexity.
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A closer look at climate modelling
Climate models come in different forms and are used to understand the Earth’s future.
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What is ocean biogeochemistry?
The oceans’ biology and chemistry influence the climate because ocean, atmospheric and land processes are all interconnected.
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Using Machine Learning to Cut the Cost of Downscaling Global Climate Models
This research has the potential to create RCM emulators that can efficiently downscale multiple variables simultaneously, while preserving the physical relationships between them.
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High impact compound events in Australia
Almost all catastrophic events are the consequence of multiple drivers acting together.
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Atmospheric rivers in Australia
We are conducting research to determine if we can forecast changes in the probability of extreme rainfall events associated with atmospheric rivers 2-6 weeks ahead.
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The role of clouds in coral bleaching events over the Great Barrier Reef
Further understanding of the role of clouds may improve the knowledge of local atmosphere-ocean interactions, aiding the forecasting of coral bleaching events.
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Multi-year La Niña events
La Niña is an important cause of rainfall variability of Australia. A multi-year La Niña event can be particularly important for some climate risks. Some climate models are indicating that La Niña may continue for a third year through spring and summer 2022-23, increasing the chances of more rain and flooding.
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Understanding Australia’s rainfall
By bringing together researchers focussed on the large-scale modes of climate variability with researchers investigating weather and land surface processes, our goal is to improve the regional predictions of how rainfall extremes will change in the future.
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A new global picture of compounding weather and climate hazards
The difference in results between the high-skill and low-skill CMIP6 models highlights an urgent need to examine why some models work well and some don’t, and, ultimately, improve those with weaknesses.
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The impact of climate extremes on Australia’s marine environment
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes is working to understand marine heatwave predictability.
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Why research on compounding weather and climate hazards is important
Climate Extremes is leading research that will ultimately help businesses and governments better assess the risks posed by compound events.
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Climate change and tipping points
Tipping points exist in the climate system, and it is very unlikely that all tipping points are known. Different tipping points are understood with different levels of confidence, they operate on different timescales, can interact to trigger cascades of abrupt changes, and some tipping point changes are irreversible on timescales of centuries to millennia.
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Could understanding the Indian Ocean improve climate predictions for Australia?
Conditions in the Indian Ocean can affect the risk of Australia experiencing droughts, floods, marine heatwaves and bushfires and alter the prospects for rainfed agriculture in some parts of the… View Article
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IPCC AR6 Working Group 1 report: conclusions on the evolving risk of drought
Drought is a major risk to Australia with extended periods of drought affecting our social, economic and environmental systems. The newly released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contains significant new assessments of the science and future projections of drought.
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The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: What does it mean for Tasmania?
To better understand the implications of the latest climate science for Tasmania, this brief combines information from the IPCC AR6 WG1 report, with regional assessments that contributed to the UTAS Blueprint for a climate-positive Tasmania, and expertise from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX). The regional information is based on…
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What is left in the global carbon budget?
The Paris Agreement requires countries to commit to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to ensure that the global average temperature remains well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. But how likely are we to meet these targets?
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Special briefing: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report
Australian researchers in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes have made major contributions to the 2021 IPCC Working Group 1 report, through the authorship of the report, review and the many scientific papers cited in the report.
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Briefing note 15: Can we limit global warming to 1.5C°?
Irrespective of tipping points, climate change adaptation efforts will be less costly and disruptive to society – and will stand a better chance of success – if warming can be limited to 1.5°C rather than 2°C or higher. We therefore in no way advocate for policies that forgo pursuing the ambition to limit global warming…
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The latest global climate models present challenges for generating climate projections
Climate sensitivity describes how sensitive the Earth’s temperature is to a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. One measure of climate sensitivity for projections of future climate is the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS). ECS is the increase in the global average temperature between the pre-industrial era and a future doubled carbon…
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How might Australia contribute to a next-generation global climate modelling facility?
The Royal Society has called for an international next-generation climate modelling centre (pdf), based on new cutting-edge high-performance computing and data services to support efforts toward net-zero emissions and to enable effective climate adaptation.
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How sensitive is the Earth’s temperature to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
A landmark new international review of climate sensitivity led by ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes researcher Prof Steven Sherwood has reduced the uncertainty in Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity. Estimates of likely values now vary by less than a factor of two. The new assessment concludes that the climate is more sensitive to atmospheric carbon…
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Research on the Antarctic stratospheric polar vortex is important for Australia’s seasonal forecasts
Research has established a link between Antarctic stratospheric winds and an increased risk of weather conducive to bushfires from late spring to early summer. Further research on the relationship between winds and ozone in the Antarctic stratosphere could improve seasonal forecasts for Australia.
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Research on heatwaves and droughts by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes supports a major international report on Climate Change and Land
This research brief examines how research from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes informed the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land.
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Does global warming cause droughts, drying or increased aridity?
In an hour-long talk to a business forum, Andy Pitman said: “there is no link between climate change and drought”. Given the audience were not climate scientists, or interested in the physics of the climate, this statement was one word too brief. Andy fully admits he should have said: “there is no direct link between…
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Briefing note 008: Global crop yields are strongly affected by extreme climate conditions
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes has contributed to a new scientific study that reveals that extremely hot and cold temperatures, drought and heavy rainfall strongly affect the year-to-year variation in the total global yield of four important crops.
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Recent El Niño behaviour is unprecedented in the last 400 years
In a world first, CLEX researchers have produced a 400-year-long record of El Nino activity. This gives us an entirely new insight into the behaviour of these high impact events and reveals unprecedented changes over the past 30 years.
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Briefing note 006: The extreme rainfall in northern Queensland during January and February 2019
Large areas of northern Queensland experienced extreme rainfall and severe flooding in late January and February 2019. This briefing note examines the impacts and some of the likely causes of the event.
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Briefing note 005: Heatwaves in the ocean threaten marine ecosystems across the world
Marine heatwaves are becoming longer and more frequent. A global assessment of marine heatwaves has concluded that they have “the capacity to restructure entire ecosystems and disrupt the provision of ecological goods and services in the coming decades”.
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Future weather and climate extreme events
Weather and climate extremes occur on a wide range of time and space scales. Weather extremes occur on shorter timescales and are regionally or locally specific while climate extremes tend to be on longer timescales and can impact a region through to the whole globe. This note provides a statement on what we know about…
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Briefing note 003: Why are we uncertain about how extremely wet conditions will change in Australia in the future?
Computer models used to simulate global climate agree the climate will warm in response to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases. However, a recent paper by Bador et al. (2018)1 includes results that highlight our uncertainty about exactly how extremely wet conditions will change in Australia. Further development of Australia’s national climate model, ACCESS, may help reduce…
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How useful are the Australian FLUXNET (Ozflux) data?
The Australian FLUXNET data provide perhaps the world’s most valuable observations for building and evaluating the land models needed for projecting future droughts and heatwaves.
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Briefing note 001: What is the chance of global warming exceeding 1.5°C in the next 5 years?
An international group of scientists has now forecast the likelihood global warming will exceed 1.5C over the next 5 years. This is one of the thresholds of the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement, which aims “to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2°C…