The Southern (Antarctic) Ocean is our planet's primary storage of heat and carbon, and it's home to extraordinary life forms, from tiny algae and spineless creatures to penguins, seals and whales.
Absolute temperatures are expected to rise more slowly in the tropics than in higher latitudes and polar regions, but the combination of heat and rising humidity will make life more challenging.
The science to policy process that was developed to guide climate mitigation decisions can be applied to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, without having to be reinvented.
Left: 32˚C in Ilkley, Yorkshire on July 25. Right: flash floods in Grinton, Yorkshire, on July 31.
Danny Lawson / PA
Peter C. Doherty, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity
Scientific problems require evidence-led solutions. A new proposal to create a federal environmental decision-making body would take some of the politics out of climate policy.
A supercell thunderstorm in the US state of Oklahoma.
Hamish Ramsay
The amount of atmospheric energy available to thunderstorms will increase in response to climate change, putting the tropics and subtropics at risk of being lashed with more intense storms.
Nowhere to hide? With 2℃ of global warming, the stifling heat of January 2013 would be the norm for Australia.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
Global warming of 2℃, the higher of the two Paris targets, would see current record-breaking temperatures become the norm in the future, potentially bringing heatwaves to both land and sea.
The tropical Pacific has a large say in how fast the world warms.
GTS Productions/Shutterstock.com
Ben Henley, The University of Melbourne and Andrew King, The University of Melbourne
If the Pacific Ocean enters an 'El Tio' phase, it could speed the world towards 1.5 degrees of global warming, one of the crucial benchmarks of the Paris Climate Agreement.
CSIRO’s decision a decade ago to merge its marine and atmospheric research set the stage for a national climate research plan.
CSIRO/Wikimedia Commons
CSIRO was instrumental in creating a unified plan for all of Australia's climate research. The latest round of cuts would see that collaboration fall apart.
Simpler climate models could help more people understand the processes behind the predictions.
Pelfophoto/Shutterstock.com
Climate models are complicated - and necessarily so if they are to recreate our complex world. But a new, simpler climate model aims to take some of the mystery out of the art of climate modelling.
Maurice Newman, AC, is chair of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council.
AAP Image/Julian Smith
The state of the British summer has always been a constant source of fascination and irritation, if only for its fickle nature. Now the latest prediction is for more heavy summer downpours. Our study…