Steven's investigation into drought started as a six-week project and ended up becoming two years of research, conference presentations and more – and that was before he even graduated.
While Chaucer wrote “The love of money is the root of evil” there is a growing recognition that how money flows through the national and global economy, how investors choose to prioritise investments, and how statutory authorities such as the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) regulate business around climate risk all have the potential to help solve the climate problem.
The Northern Australia Climate Program (NACP) is an innovative drought and climate variability research, development, and extension (RD&E) program to enhance business resilience and build capacity to manage climate risk across the northern Australian red meat industry.
Julie Potgieter was looking for a better way to explore potential careers when an e-mail came through about working on a climate-related research project for undergraduate students. She jumped at the opportunity and was fortunate enough to be accepted into the program.
On 16 May 2018, CLEX staff, students and affiliates on our mailing list received a rather curious email with the subject line Hump Day Tip. Since then, the Centre’s Diversity and Culture Committee has sent roughly 140 more messages with that same subject heading. What started as a bit of a gamble has turned into an important part of CLEX culture that is appreciated and deeply valued by many.
As part of CLEX’s engagement with the agricultural sector, Chief Investigators Ailie Gallant and Andrea Taschetto presented an overview of some of the Centre’s relevant research interests to the monthly meeting of the Forewarned is Forearmed Community of Practice (FWFACoP) group in June 2021.
One of CLEX’s aims is to promote climate and weather science to secondary school students of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects. We do this by bringing together secondary teachers and climate scientists in Climate Classroom workshops that develop teaching resources using climate science that can be used in the Australian secondary school curriculum.
The Weather and Climate Interactions Research Program is now bedded down, and work is beginning apace. We have also started to see our researchers bring their expertise to a range of stakeholders, peer networks, and the broader community.
Sadly, once again as I write this, staff and students across CLEX are in varying degrees of lockdown as community transmission of the Delta variant of COVID continues to interrupt many aspects of our lives.
The ocean extremes research program is underway with regular meetings, split between marine heatwaves meetings on the first Friday of the month and ocean biogeochemistry meetings every fortnight. We have also been engaging externally with industry stakeholders and our peer networks.