What do the recent Townsville floods and Tasmanian heatwave have in common? Both were caused by weather systems that stayed put for days or weeks on end. And global warming could worsen that trend.
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Articles on heatwaves
Displaying 1 - 20 of 48 articles
Mass wildlife die-offs, such as those wrought by Australia's recent heatwaves, make for grim headlines. But the wider effects of extreme weather are more complex, and can be remarkably long-lasting.
Air conditioning changed both building design and people's active management of home temperatures. A return to houses designed for our climate can keep us comfortable and cut energy use and emissions.
Much of Australia is sweltering due to a high pressure system parked over the Tasman Sea – and there's no sign it's moving any time soon.
The summer forecast from the Bureau of Meteorology predicts a hot, dry summer.
Pollutants from fossil fuel combustion cause thousands of premature deaths nationwide every year. This is just one way our climate change policies impact on the nation's health.
The forecast arrival of El Niño may mean the east coast of Australia will experience an exceptionally hot and dry summer, but does this mean there will be fewer mosquitoes buzzing about?
Climate change poses a threat to our mental health. Building connected communities is one way to combat a rise in suicide rates as global temperatures increase.
With New South Wales suffering winter bushfires and temperature records tumbling around the globe, our leaders in Canberra have picked a bad time to jettison climate policy in favour of political bickering.
Heatwaves can cause a large number of deaths, especially when vulnerable groups are unprepared and are not acclimatised to hot temperatures.
Heatwave deaths this summer make it clear: climate change is a severe public health threat, and those who live alone are at greatest risk.
From Greece, to the UK, to Japan and even Sweden, a slew of places in the Northern Hemisphere are suffering extreme heat. And the chances of extreme heat records tumbling are growing all the time.
How to move beyond the warm words about tackling urban heat islands to doing something about them.
Commonly used surfaces in play areas, such as "soft fall" materials and Astroturf, can heat up to 80-100°C in the sun. This makes them a hazardous design choice, especially as the climate gets hotter.
A survey of recent global trends in temperature and rainfall – and a lesson for Mr Trump on the difference between weather and climate.
In an unchanging climate, we would expect record-breaking temperatures to get rarer as the observation record grows longer. But in the real world the opposite is true - because we are driving up temperatures.
Aged-care units can be a lottery of comfortable versus uncomfortable temperatures, depending on the building's construction and where you live within it. That needs to improve.
Future extreme heat is worse and coming sooner than you might think. Unless we mitigate and adapt we face increasing death rates.
The idea of a hot and sunny land is so baked into our thinking about Australia that we've failed to design and build houses that protect us from the cold.
As summer heatwaves intensify across Canada, smaller cities need to follow the lead of Toronto and Vancouver - to protect vulnerable citizens from injury, disease and death.
Top contributors
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ARC Future Fellow, UNSW
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ARC DECRA fellow, University of Melbourne
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ARC DECRA Fellow, UNSW
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Honorary Senior Fellow, Australian National University
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Professor emeritus, School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University
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Professor of Climate Change and Mental Health, University of Sydney
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Adjunct Professor of Environmental Geography, CQUniversity Australia
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Research Fellow in Climate and Water Resources, University of Melbourne
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PhD Student, New York University
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Professor, University of Melbourne
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Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Melbourne
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Professorial Research Fellow, Victoria University
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Senior Lecturer - Energy, Queensland University of Technology
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Climate scientist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology
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Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University
