Extreme wet years are getting wetter and more common. This means Australia’s terrestrial ecosystems will play a larger role in the global carbon cycle.
Jeremy Bird, International Water Management Institute
The current climate talks in Morocco are a golden opportunity for making strides on the adaptation of African agriculture. African countries need the tools necessary to do so.
Droughts are much bigger and slower than other natural disasters that hit Australia - meaning that despite their huge impacts, we still haven’t figured out how best to protect ourselves.
The Grampians, like much of Australia, has swung from Millennium Drought to Big Wet and back again, putting animal populations on a rollercoaster that could get worse as climate change bites.
Australia’s deserts can be a harsh environment but plant life still survives there. So why not use them to develop the next generation of drought-resistant crops?
2015 was the world’s hottest year on record. The US State of the Climate report has rounded up the litany of temperature and other records that were broken all over the globe.
Toxic algal blooms were unheard of in Australia’s major waterways before 1991. Now the Murray River has been struck by four major events in less than a decade, with more likely in the future.
A new millennium-long record reveals that Australia has suffered longer droughts and wet periods than those recorded in the past century’s weather observations.
After some unusually wet years, our landscape and ecosystems have once again returned to poorer conditions that were last experienced during the Millennium Drought.
For the Barkindji people, the Darling River has been a symbol of Aboriginal survival since colonial times. Now, the once busy NSW town of Wilcannia is in danger of losing its water.
Extreme weather has an outsized impact on everyday life. Focusing on average weather patterns may make Americans dangerously complacent about how climate change is already affecting our lives.