Climate Change

To avoid dangerous climate change there is a finite amount of greenhouse gas emissions, in particular CO2, that we can add to the atmosphere – our global carbon budget. If we use our budget wisely, we have until about 2050 to transition to zero net emissions. But how do we get there? For Australi...

This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series here. Strong action on climate change is vital if Australia is to thrive in the f...

Australia’s east coast is recovering from a weekend of wild winds, waves and flooding, caused by a weather pattern known as an East Coast Low. Tragically, several people have died in flooding. Parts of New South Wales have received more than 400mm of rain since Friday morning. Some places such as...

Over the past year, carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels in the atmosphere have risen faster than any period in the past 55 million years. That’s the finding of my study published in Global Change Biology. From April 2015 to April 2016, CO₂ levels rose by 4.6 parts per million (ppm), reaching a level ...

Mongolia’s grasslands have sustained the nomadic people whose long history of raising livestock is legendary. But climate change, urbanization and bureaucracy are threatening the very existence of their herder culture, Nathan VanderKlippe reports Gantumur rides a stocky white horse out onto the s...

No one’s surprised that last month was the hottest April on record. And, it turns out, not even climate change deniers would bet against it. In April, Bill Nye bet two prominent climate change deniers $20,000 each that this year will be among the top 10 warmest years recorded and our current deca...

It’s been almost a month since the paper I co-authored on the synthesis of research into the scientific consensus on climate change was published. Surveying the many studies into scientific agreement, we found that more than 90% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. ...

Sea-level rise, erosion and coastal flooding are some of the greatest challenges facing humanity from climate change. Recently at least five reef islands in the remote Solomon Islands have been lost completely to sea-level rise and coastal erosion, and a further six islands have been severely erode...