Our new media strategy following our mid-term review, which aims to reach out to stakeholders beyond academia, is already bearing fruit. And this new focus received a real boost with the release of the IPCC Working Group 1 report.
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.
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.
In February CLEX took part in the 28th Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society annual conference. Ian Macadam reports on the conference, which was packed full of plenaries, panel discussions and parallel sessions and incorporated around 400 presentations, many presented by CLEX researchers.
This time last year Kim Reid was planning a Euro-adventure where she would attend a summer school in the Swiss Alps, attend EGU, visit Reading and the Met Office and explore some castles on the side. Now she and her supervisor joke that if case numbers stay low, Kim might be able to visit a university in the same city.
There is a great deal of misuse of climate model projections emerging in business. Climate models are being used for some purposes that are simply inappropriate leading to assessments of the physical risks to business that are of no value. However, there are ways to use climate model data that has value and can help business robustly assess some specific climate related risks.
A constant stream of research has seen some major papers receive international coverage, Kim Reid has shown how to attract opportunistic media, and an online media workshop may be on the cards.
The first comprehensive worldwide assessment of heatwaves down to regional levels has revealed that in nearly every part of the world heatwaves have been increasing in frequency and duration since the 1950’s. The research has also produced a new metric, cumulative heat, which reveals exactly how much heat is packed into individual heatwaves and heatwave seasons.
Between bushfires, droughts and new research, CLEX had a strong few months before COVID-19 saw Australia's coverage of climate issues drop by 61%. We have also found a great new video app perfect for workshops and added an outstanding blog pos to our website.
CLEX researchers found that regions where there is a larger drying trend tend to be more sensitive to land water availability and have more heatwave days. They found that the effect of dry soils before a heatwave varies considerably across Australia.