In our first session for November, the sustainability group focussed on the latest State of the Climate Report. This eighth biennial report draws on the latest national and international climate research, encompassing observations, analyses and future projections to describe year-to-year variability and longer-term changes in Australia’s climate.
Observations, reconstructions of past climate and climate modelling continue to provide a consistent picture of ongoing, long‑term climate change interacting with underlying natural variability. Associated changes in weather and climate extremes—such as extreme heat, heavy rainfall, coastal inundation, fire weather and drought—exacerbate existing pressures on the health and wellbeing of our communities and ecosystems.
These changes in the weather and climate are happening at an increasing pace; the past decade has seen record-breaking extremes contributing to natural disasters that are exacerbated by anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change, including ‘compound events’, where multiple hazards and/or drivers occur together or in a close sequence, which intensifies their impacts.
In our second November session we had a free ranging discussion on a variety of topics sparked by articles published in the weeks before. These included the need for gas as part of our long-term transition to stopping use of fossil fuels for electricity production, the global biodiversity convention meeting of parties and the increasing movement of carbon tied in to the northern perma-frost.
Observations, reconstructions of past climate and climate modelling continue to provide a consistent picture of ongoing, long‑term climate change interacting with underlying natural variability. Associated changes in weather and climate extremes—such as extreme heat, heavy rainfall, coastal inundation, fire weather and drought—exacerbate existing pressures on the health and wellbeing of our communities and ecosystems.
These changes in the weather and climate are happening at an increasing pace; the past decade has seen record-breaking extremes contributing to natural disasters that are exacerbated by anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change, including ‘compound events’, where multiple hazards and/or drivers occur together or in a close sequence, which intensifies their impacts.
In our second November session we had a free ranging discussion on a variety of topics sparked by articles published in the weeks before. These included the need for gas as part of our long-term transition to stopping use of fossil fuels for electricity production, the global biodiversity convention meeting of parties and the increasing movement of carbon tied in to the northern perma-frost.
