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.
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 to 1.5°C, regardless of whether that target remains feasible or not.
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 dioxide climate once equilibrium of the climate has been reached.
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.
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 dioxide than some previous estimates.
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.
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.
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 climate change and drought”.
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.
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.