Far from being “politicised science”, as a Trump advisor has claimed, NASA’s satellite monitoring has been a crucial help in understanding the planet we live on.
Residents of Collaroy, NSW, got a painful lesson in the power of the ocean in June.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
Many Australians live on the coast, but how much do we know about the risks? While average sea levels are relatively easy to gauge, the risk of flooding also depends on weather, landscape, and climate.
More heatwaves in store, but the exact effects on people are harder to predict.
AAP Image/Joe Castro
Heatwaves are Australia’s deadliest type of natural disaster. But while we know a lot about the weather patterns behind them, more research is needed to forecast accurately their impacts on people.
Looks like paradise – but how did the first people get there?
Global Environment Facility
Researchers ran computer simulations that take into account environmental variability and geographical setting to investigate how early explorers made it to these tiny, remote islands in the Pacific.
Australia’s had a cooler and wetter winter, but the rest of the world has been hot.
AAP Image/David Mariuz
Economic growth alone won’t end hunger. Good policies and programmes are needed, too. Scientists and researchers have a role to play in these initiatives.
Victoria was one of several states to suffer bushfires as temperatures soared in late 2015.
AAP Image/David Crosling
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.
Fields showing little signs of plant emergence at a late stage of the season, indicating a near total crop loss in Zimbabwe.
Chris Funk
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.
Despite increases in some areas, Australia’s tree cover is at its lowest level in 40 years.
Tree image from David Lade www.shutterstock.com
After some unusually wet years, our landscape and ecosystems have once again returned to poorer conditions that were last experienced during the Millennium Drought.
Australia’s mountains may be small but each year they deliver enough snow for winter sports.
Andrew Watkins
This summer has seen Tasmania suffer through drought, bushfires, floods and the worst marine heatwave on record. Is this what life under a climate-changed future will be like?
Professor Morgan Pratchett surveys bleached corals on Australia’s GBR.
Cassy Thompson, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
Bleaching has hit a huge swathe of the Great Barrier Reef, with many corals in the reef’s remote northern reaches now expected to die as a result of warm waters linked to this summer’s El Niño.
Spencer Gulf at sunset in South Australia.
Australian Bureau of Meteorology
Authorities have moved the Great Barrier Reef onto its highest alert level in response to widespread coral bleaching. Months of monitoring will now be needed to assess the ongoing damage.