In 2008, I and my colleagues published a study which appeared to confirm that current global warming could cause large losses of species and a loss of biodiversity. Four years later and a new approach…
I sometimes wonder what planet this country of ours is on. The environmental debate we are having seems to be in a parallel universe to the rest of the world. Having spent the last four years running one…
Over the past several decades, scientists have studied the climate of the world and how that is changing. These studies have built on the recognition, made over 150 years ago by John Tindall, that certain…
A study of tree-ring data recently found that in some regions temperatures during Roman times (21AD to 50AD) were 1.05 degrees Celsius higher than the 1951-1980 mean. The paper’s lead author, Professor…
Severe droughts, floods and landslides devastated parts of the world last year as carbon dioxide concentrations climbed to the highest levels in recorded history, according to a global report on climate…
Climate change is causing the leaves of at least one subspecies of Australian plant to narrow in size, a team from the University of Adelaide has found. Their study shows that the leaves of the Narrow-leaf…
Melting glaciers and ice sheets have contributed more to rising sea levels in the past decade than expansion from warming water, according to modelling in the latest report by the Antarctic Climate and…
We price carbon. This is nothing new. The first time this explicitly happened, Vanilla Ice hit number one in Australia, and Bryan Adams was topping the global charts with “(Everything I do) I do it for…
You’ll doubtless have heard Australia is introducing a “carbon tax” this Sunday to reduce “carbon pollution”. What is being controlled is not just any carbon but emissions of a specific gas, carbon dioxide…
With increasing global greenhouse gas emissions, and no clear internationally-agreed path for emission reductions, we are faced with a global climate that will be at least two degrees warmer than today…
Update October 2012: The manuscript “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium” by Joelle Gergis, Raphael Neukom, Ailie…
Who would have thought the Melbourne Theatre Company would get into bed with Andrew Bolt? The MTC’s new play The Heretic, which premieres on 17 May, tells the story of climate scientist Dr Diane Cassell…
The cycle of evaporation and rainfall over the past 50 years has intensified at twice the rate predicted by climate change models, according to a report by US and Australian scientists of ocean salt levels…
Chief Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes; Deputy Director for the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science; Deputy Director for the Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, Australian National University