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.
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.
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.
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes is working to understand marine heatwave predictability.
Climate Extremes is leading research that will ultimately help businesses and governments better assess the risks posed by compound events.
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.
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 country. Reliable forecasts of conditions in the Indian Ocean a season in advance would help us predict upcoming changes in the risk of climate extremes in some parts of Australia. However, producing such forecasts requires us to better understand, and more accurately model, relevant Indian Ocean climate processes. There is... View Article
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.
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 Tasmania-specific downscaled modelling undertaken by Climate Futures for Tasmania.
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?