Thursday 31 October 2024

Let’s be clear, Peter Dutton’s energy plan is more focused on coal and gas than it is on nuclear power.

Extract from The Guardian

Clear Air Energy


It seems reasonable to call the Coalition’s policy what it primarily is: a proposal to expand fossil fuels

Some news you may not have clocked last week while the focus was on important things like a royal tour: 44 of the world’s top climate scientists, including four decorated Australian professors, released an open letter warning that ocean circulation in the Atlantic is at serious risk of collapse sooner than was previously understood.

They said a string of studies suggested the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body backed by nearly 200 countries, had greatly underestimated the possibility that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation – or Amoc, a system of ocean currents that brings heat into the northern Atlantic west of Britain and Ireland – could in the next few decades reach a point at which its breakdown was inevitable. The cause? Rising greenhouse gas emissions.

This is consistent with what climate computer models have forecast but there are signs the circulation is weakening more rapidly than expected. Stefan Rahmstorf, from Germany’s Potsdam Institute, told my colleague Jonathan Watts that by his estimation the risk of crossing a tipping point this century so that collapse was unavoidable had increased from less than 10% to about a 50-50 chance.

If it happens, it will reshape the global climate, including cooling parts of north-western Europe so much that places such as Norway and Scotland could become unliveable while most of the planet gets hotter.

It is estimated that the northern Atlantic could rise an extra half a metre in addition to sea rise caused by global heating. Tropical rainfall would shift south, likely leading to rainforests suffering destructive droughts and regions that are now relatively dry being hit with flooding rains. Humanity would survive but the impact on ecosystems, lives and livelihoods would be, in the words of the 44 scientists, “devastating and irreversible”.

The trajectory of the Amoc echoes a similar story off Antarctica, where scientists have estimated the Southern Ocean overturning circulation, which also affects global weather patterns and ocean temperatures, has slowed by about 30% since the 1990s due to the melting of Antarctic glacial ice. This is also caused by – you guessed it – increasing temperatures linked to CO2 emissions.

I don’t raise this to suggest addressing the climate crisis is hopeless, though climate grief is real and understandable. The global effort to limit the climate emergency is not going well but amid the gloom there are some positive trends. And there is plenty of evidence that much more can be done quickly. As the mantra goes, every action – every fraction of a degree of heating avoided – counts.

I raise the warnings about the Amoc because the reality of what climate scientists are telling us is worth holding up against the energy debate in Australia, and particularly the Coalition’s nuclear power push. Too often it is completely missing from the discussion.

The central point is a familiar one: there are reams of evidence that emissions need to be cut as much and as rapidly as possible. There are other considerations that need to be met – primarily, making the project politically sustainable by ensuring energy reliability, affordability and dealing with social licence concerns. But, at the risk of stating the obvious, the overriding goal, the reason for doing any of this, is to cut pollution.

On this, the Coalition’s position fails spectacularly.

Despite all the oxygen dedicated to talking about it, the nuclear element of the opposition’s plan won’t – can’t – be more than a speculative side issue to the main game of how the country will get electricity over the next couple of decades.

The chair of the Australian Energy Regulator, Clare Savage, said in a parliamentary hearing last week it would take up to a decade to just get a nuclear regulatory framework in place. That takes us to 2035 before building even begins. The evidence from overseas is that construction of a large generator could then take twice as long again (the four nuclear plants completed in western Europe or north America this century took a minimum 18 years from announcement).

Small modular reactors? They still don’t exist, commercially.

But there are parts of the Coalition’s plan where Dutton and his climate change and energy shadow, Ted O’Brien, could move quickly – namely, limiting construction of large-scale renewable energy and instead burning more coal and gas.

Given that this is likely to be the early focus on the ground it seems reasonable to call the Coalition’s plan what it primarily is: a proposal to expand fossil fuels.

It is, of course, not the only pro-fossil fuel plan going around. The Albanese government has approved large expansions of export-focused thermal coal mines. Western Australia’s Labor government is taking the remarkable step of helping out the gas industry by no longer allowing its state Environment Protection Authority to consider climate pollution when it assesses fossil fuel developments.

But federal Labor and the Coalition are not the same on these issues. Labor has introduced some domestic climate policies, most significantly to push the country towards 82% renewable energy by 2030. In nearly every case, the Coalition supports Labor’s pro-fossil fuel plans but opposes its efforts to curtail emissions.

On coal, O’Brien accuses Labor of planning to force plants to shut early. As evidence, he points to an Australian Energy Market Operator “step change” scenario under which about 90% of coal plants will close by 2035. O’Brien says this differs markedly from the closure dates previously announced by coal plant owners.

In reality, the coal closure dates announced by companies generally don’t mean a great deal. Australia’s coal generators are becoming less reliable as they age – 26% of capacity was offline late last week – and experts including Savage have made clear their view is that the coal fleet just cannot last until a nuclear industry would be possible.

On the other, if it is possible to shut 90% of the coal fleet in a decade by accelerating renewable energy and firming support technology – as Aemo and others have suggested it is – then this is clearly good news. And a strange thing to oppose.

And, for all their rhetoric, the Coalition and its backers are yet to produce compelling evidence that explains why they think Aemo is wrong.

  • Adam Morton is Guardian Australia’s climate and environment editor

Hezbollah special forces leader Mustafa Ahmad Shadadi killed as Israel strikes Lebanon.

 Extract from ABC News

Smoke billowing over a town in the Middle East following an airstrike.

Israel has continued with airstrikes on parts of southern Lebanon as its operation against Hezbollah continues. (Reuters: Karamallah Daher)

In short:

Israel says it has killed Mustafa Ahmad Shadadi, the deputy leader of Hezbollah's special forces.

Hezbollah's new leader has vowed to continue fighting Israel, vowing his organisation is not taking orders from Iran.

A further 20 people have been killed in strikes in Gaza on Wednesday, Palestinian medics say.

The Israeli army says it has killed the deputy head of Hezbollah's special forces unit during an "intelligence-directed" strike in Lebanon.

In a post on X, a spokesperson for the Israeli military said Mustafa Ahmad Shadadi had been killed in the country's south.

It added that he was second-in-command of Hezbollah's Radwan Force and was responsible for operations in Syria and overseeing terror attacks in southern Lebanon.

The announcement came as the Israeli army issued a warning to residents in the southern Lebanese region of Nabatieh to evacuate their homes.

It was the second evacuation request in Lebanon on Wednesday, after Israeli authorities issued a warning to residents in the northern Lebanese town of Baalbek.

It is the first time residents in the country's north have been warned to leave their homes.

Baalbek's mayor later reported strikes had hit the city and its outskirts.

Lebanon's health ministry said 11 people were killed and 15 others injured after strikes in eastern Lebanon.

The Israeli military said the strikes targeted fuel reservoirs within Hezbollah military complexes.

Hezbollah said it also launched drones and missiles at three military positions in northern Israel, claiming it had bypassed Israeli defences.

A local civil defence representative said following the alert, there had been "panic" as people attempted to leave.

New Hezbollah leader vows war with Israel to continue

The killing of Ahmad Shadadi came a day after Hezbollah elected Naim Qassem to succeed Hassan Nasrallah as the new leader of the terror group.

On Wednesday, Qassem committed the organisation to continuing its war with Israel.

He added the movement "was not fighting on anyone's behalf", adding that Iran "supports us but doesn't want anything" in return.

Lebanon's Hezbollah new leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivers a TV address with a photo of his predecessor behind him.

Lebanon's Hezbollah new leader Sheikh Naim Qassem vowed his organisation was not doing Iran's bidding. (Reuters: Al Manar TV)

On Tuesday, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said Qassem's appointment would be "temporary".

As Israel's operation in Lebanon continues, US mediators are working on a proposal for a 60-day ceasefire in the country, according to Reuters.

The newsagency cited two sources, including a senior diplomat in Lebanon.

"There is an earnest push to get to a ceasefire, but it is still hard to get it to materialise," the diplomat told Reuters.

It would involve adopting measures to keep southern Lebanon free of arms outside of state control.

Two officials from the White House are expected to arrive in Israel on Thursday.

A similar push for a ceasefire in Gaza is also reportedly underway.

Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 20

Israel also continued operations in the Gaza Strip, with Palestinian medics saying 20 people were killed on Wednesday.

It follows a strike on Tuesday in northern Gaza, which left at least 93 people killed or missing.

The US State Department described the strike as "horrifying" and urged Israel to explain its actions.

Palestinians search through the rubble of a destroyed concrete house.

Rescue efforts are continuing in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, a day after an Israeli airstrike. (AFP)

A doctor at a local hospital said a lack of medical supplies and damaged hospitals meant healthcare workers were struggling to help people presenting with injuries from air strikes and gunfire.

The Israeli military assault that has laid waste to the Gaza Strip and killed tens of thousands of people shows no signs of slowing as Israel wages a new war in Lebanon and its backer the United States tries after a year of failed attempts to broker ceasefires for both.

Northern Gaza, where Israel said in January it had dismantled militant group Hamas' command structure, is currently the focus of the military's assault.

Reuters/AFP

Israel's ban on UNRWA continues a pattern of politicising Palestinian refugee aid – and puts millions of lives at risk.

Extract from ABC News 

Analysis

The Israeli parliament's vote on October 28, 2024, to ban the United Nations agency that provides relief for Palestinian refugees is likely to affect millions of people. It also fits a pattern.

Aid for refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees, has long been politicised, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, has been targeted throughout its 75-year history.

This was evident earlier in the current Gaza conflict, when at least a dozen countries, including the US, suspended funding to the UNRWA, citing allegations made by Israel that 12 UNRWA employees participated in the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023. In August, the UN fired nine UNRWA employees for alleged involvement in the attack. An independent UN panel established a set of 50 recommendations to ensure UNRWA employees adhere to the principle of neutrality.

The vote by the Knesset, Israel's parliament, to ban the UNRWA goes a step further. It will, when it comes into effect, prevent the UNRWA from operating in Israel and will severely affect its ability to serve refugees in any of the occupied territories that Israel controls, including Gaza. This could have devastating consequences for livelihoods, health, the distribution of food aid and schooling for Palestinians.

It would also damage the polio vaccination campaign that the UNRWA and its partner organisations have been carrying out in Gaza since September. 

Finally, the bill bans communication between Israeli officials and the UNRWA, which would end efforts by the agency to coordinate the movements of aid workers to prevent unintentional targeting by the Israel Defense Forces.

Refugee aid, and humanitarian aid more generally, is theoretically meant to be neutral and impartial. But as experts in migration and international relations, we know funding is often used as a foreign policy tool, whereby allies are rewarded and enemies punished. In this context, we believe Israel's banning of the UNRWA fits a wider pattern of the politicisation of aid to refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees.

What is the UNRWA?

The UNRWA, short for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was established two years after about 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes during the months leading up to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war.

Prior to the UNRWA's creation, international and local organisations, many of them religious, provided services to displaced Palestinians. But after surveying the extreme poverty and dire situation pervasive across refugee camps, the UN General Assembly, including all Arab states and Israel, voted to create the UNRWA in 1949.

The Nakba is not an anniversary, it is repeated every day across the West Bank, Gaza, Israel, the refugee camps, in the diaspora. Seventy years of bearing witness.

Many Palestinians left their homes after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Since that time, the UNRWA has been the primary aid organisation providing food, medical care, schooling and, in some cases, housing for the 6 million Palestinians living across its five fields: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, as well as the areas that make up the occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The mass displacement of Palestinians — known as the Nakba, or "catastrophe" — occurred prior to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which defined refugees as anyone with a well-founded fear of persecution owing to "events occurring in Europe before 1 January 1951". Despite a 1967 protocol extending the definition worldwide, Palestinians are still excluded from the primary international system protecting refugees.

While the UNRWA is responsible for providing services to Palestinian refugees, the United Nations also created the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine in 1948 to seek a long-term political solution and "to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation."

As a result, UNRWA does not have a mandate to push for the traditional durable solutions available in other refugee situations. As it happened, the conciliation commission was active only for a few years and has since been sidelined in favour of the US-brokered peace processes.

UNRWA ban means 1.5m to go without food amid starvation

Is the UNRWA political?

The UNRWA has been subject to political headwinds since its inception and especially during periods of heightened tension between Palestinians and Israelis.

While it is a UN organisation and thus ostensibly apolitical, it has frequently been criticised by Palestinians, Israelis as well as donor countries, including the United States, for acting politically.

The UNRWA performs state-like functions across its five fields, including education, health and infrastructure, but it is restricted in its mandate from performing political or security activities.

Initial Palestinian objections to the UNRWA stemmed from the organisation's early focus on economic integration of refugees into host states.

Although the UNRWA officially adhered to the UN General Assembly's Resolution 194 that called for the return of Palestine refugees to their homes, UN, UK and US officials searched for means by which to resettle and integrate Palestinians into host states, viewing this as the favourable political solution to the Palestinian refugee situation and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this sense, Palestinians perceived the UNRWA to be both highly political and actively working against their interests.

In later decades, the UNRWA switched its primary focus from jobs to education at the urging of Palestinian refugees. But the UNRWA's education materials were viewed by Israel as further feeding Palestinian militancy, and the Israeli government insisted on checking and approving all materials in Gaza and the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967.

While Israel has long been suspicious of the UNRWA's role in refugee camps and in providing education, the organisation's operation, which is internationally funded, also saves Israel millions of dollars each year in services it would be obliged to deliver as the occupying power.

Since the 1960s, the US — the UNRWA's primary donor — and other Western countries have repeatedly expressed their desire to use aid to prevent radicalisation among refugees.

In response to the increased presence of armed opposition groups, the US attached a provision to its UNRWA aid in 1970, requiring that the "UNRWA take all possible measures to assure that no part of the United States contribution shall be used to furnish assistance to any refugee who is receiving military training as a member of the so-called Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) or any other guerrilla-type organisation".

The UNRWA adheres to this requirement, even publishing an annual list of its employees so that host governments can vet them, but it also employs 30,000 individuals, the vast majority of whom are Palestinian.

Questions over links of the UNRWA to any militancy has led to the rise of Israeli and international watch groups that document the social media activity of the organisation's large Palestinian staff.

In 2018, the Trump administration paused its US$60 million contribution to the UNRWA. Trump claimed the pause would create political pressure for Palestinians to negotiate. President Joe Biden restarted US contributions to the UNRWA in 2021.

While other major donors restored funding to the UNRWA after the conclusion of the investigation in April, the US has yet to do so.

'An unmitigated disaster'

Israel's ban of the UNRWA will leave already starving Palestinians without a lifeline. UN Secretary General António Guterres said banning the UNRWA "would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster". The foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the UK issued a joint statement arguing that the ban would have "devastating consequences on an already critical and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, particularly in northern Gaza".

A crowd of densely packed Palestinian people in distress reach for an open bakery window

Palestinians gather to buy bread from a bakery in central Gaza. (Reuters: Ramadan Abed)

Reports have emerged of Israeli plans for private security contractors to take over aid distribution in Gaza through dystopian "gated communities", which would in effect be internment camps. This would be a troubling move. In contrast to the UNRWA, private contractors have little experience delivering aid and are not dedicated to the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality or independence.

However, the Knesset's explicit ban could, inadvertently, force the United States to suspend weapons transfers to Israel. US law requires that it stop weapons transfers to any country that obstructs the delivery of US humanitarian aid. And the US pause on funding for the UNRWA was only meant to be temporary.

The UNRWA is the main conduit for assistance into Gaza, and the Knesset's ban makes explicit that the Israeli government is preventing aid delivery, making it harder for Washington to ignore. Before the bill passed, US State Department spokesperson Matt Miller warned that "passage of the legislation could have implications under US law and US policy".

At the same time, two US government agencies previously alerted the Biden administration that Israel was obstructing aid into Gaza, yet weapons transfers have continued unabated.

Nicholas R Micinski is an assistant professor of Political Science and International Affairs, University of Maine. Kelsey Norman is Fellow for the Middle East, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University. This piece first appeared on The Conversation.

Sections of this story were first used in an earlier article published by The Conversation US on February 1, 2024.

Researchers uncover world's oldest tadpole, a 161-million-year-old giant.

Extract from ABC News

A rock with the outline of tadpole features.

The fossil of a tadpole found in Argentina is so well preserved that eyes and nerves are visible.  (Credit: Chuliver et al., Nature, 2024)

In short:

Scientists have found a fossil of the earliest known tadpole, which lived around 161 million years ago, during the Jurassic period.

The large Argentinian fossil suggests that many features of tadpoles today have remained stable for millions of years.

What's next?

The area where the tadpole was found has not been heavily investigated, and may contain other interesting fossils.

Millions of years ago, a 16 centimetre tadpole met an untimely end, sinking to the bottom of a pond where it would stay for millennia. 

Research on the Jurassic amphibian, which has today been published in Nature, found that the resulting fossil from Patagonia, Argentina, is the earliest known tadpole specimen ever found. 

It has been dated to around 161 million years old, close to the start of the earliest frog and toad species discovered. 

The finding sheds new light on early frog evolution, suggesting that even at their earliest evolutionary stages, frogs and toads had a tadpole life stage, according to John Long, a palaeontologist at Flinders University who was not involved in the new research.  

"Frogs metamorphose from tadpoles … that's one of the most dramatic transformations in the life history of any backboned animal on the planet," Professor Long said.

"And this new fossil is just spectacular because it proves that frogs were transforming from tadpoles way back in the early Jurassic." 

Giant tadpoles

The tadpole is a juvenile of the extinct species Notobatrachus degiustoi, and likely lived in shallow ponds which would dry out and reform with the seasons.

The adult frog would have looked extremely similar to frogs today. 

They likely ate insects and lived along the tadpole ponds, according to Mariana Chuliver Pereyra, palaeontologist from Universidad Maimónides and the lead author of the new paper.

Image of a tadpole fossil.

The tadpole was surprisingly large, stretching 16 cm from tip to tail. (Supplied: Santiago Miner)

"The adults were bulky toads, inhabiting ephemeral ponds in a typical tropical habitat," Dr Chuliver Pereyra said. 

Fossils of the frogs found nearby in earlier digs showed that the creature grew to between 9 and 15cm in size. 

But the newly found tadpole is even bigger than this. The specimen measures 16cm from tip to tail, and the team suggest it may have died just before its frog metamorphosis. 

Giant tadpoles aren't particularly unusual. Paradoxical frog tadpoles — yes, that's actually the name of a type of frog that still lives in South Ameria today — grow up to 27cm, double the size of the fossil tadpole, before shrinking back down to a normal-sized frog. 

A drawing of two tadpoles, two frogs and a dinosaur like creature in the background.

The tadpoles and adults both likely lived in and around shallow ponds.  (Credit: Gabriel Lío)

But the adult frogs of N. degiustoi are also classed as "giant", and this together is unusual. The team aren't yet sure how this might have effected the evolution of the species.

"Having a giant tadpole might have had consequences for adults," Dr Chuliver Pereyra said. 

The tadpole specimen was extremely well preserved, with even some soft tissues being imprinted into the fossil in dark marks on the rock.

"It's like a Mona Lisa. It's a masterpiece of evolution's artistry," Professor Long said. 

"We get this snapshot of a delicate creature with beautifully preserved soft tissues. Not just the skeleton, but there's nerves, there's eyes."

The researchers analysed these soft tissues and were able to confirm that many features of tadpoles today — like being filter feeders — existed even during the Jurassic period.

Before this discovery it was assumed that frogs millions of years ago also started life as tadpoles, but this is the first proof from such an ancient frog species.

"One of the most groundbreaking aspects of this finding is that it provides the first evidence for the presence of a tadpole, followed by a drastic metamorphosis … from the very beginning of the evolutionary history," Dr Chuliver Pereyra said. 

A new frog fossil sight

The team discovered both the tadpole fossil and the adult frog fossils from the La Matilde Formation in the Santa Cruz Province of Argentina. 

Scientists have found other fossils from the Middle and Late Jurassic period in the formation, but until now most of the fossils discovered were dinosaurs and plants, not frogs. 

"A team of palaeontologists from [Argentina and China] were excavating in a quarry looking for small dinosaurs" Dr Chuliver Pereyra said. 

"During this excavation they found several adult specimens of the fossil frog N. degiustoi and after many days of digging, one team member found a stone with a particular imprint on it, and it was a fossil tadpole!"

Person holding a split rock with two fossilised frogs at a fossil site.

Fossils of adult N. degiustoi frogs were also found at the site. (Supplied: Nicolas Chimento )

For Professor Long, the location is one of the most exciting parts of the research, as most of the best fossil finds come from a small number of sites. 

"I haven't heard of this site before, so it's it's really exciting to see that there are other sites with such incredible preservation," he said. 

"Hopefully there'll be more exciting discoveries coming out of that site in the future."

BOM and CSIRO State of the Climate report 2024 predicts more extreme weather as warming increases.

 Extract from ABC News

Overseeing Australia's two-yearly report card on the State of the Climate might seem like demoralising work, with the outlook heading in one direction – hotter, more extreme and more unpredictable.

But reflecting on what it's like to compile this report, the Bureau of Meteorology's (BoM) manager of climate monitoring Dr Karl Braganza has a surprising response.

"Certainly sobering is a word that comes up, sometimes I also think that maybe my job isn't so difficult," he says.

Portrait of Dr Carl Branza
Dr Karl Braganza is the national manager for climate services at the Bureau of Meteorology.  ()

The report has a clear message – the world is sick, it's addicted to fossil fuels and the only way to bring the temperature down is to get off them.

"I'm a bit like a doctor and I just have to say, 'hey, this is what's going on … You need to get to net zero as quickly as possible,'" Dr Braganza says.

"That's a little bit like telling someone who's got a large drinking habit or smoking habit, 'you need to quit that as soon as possible.'"

Just like a patient with a drinking problem some of the damage is already baked in, with the report outlining that projected warming up to 2040 is largely determined by greenhouses gases that have already been emitted.

A line graph showing Australia's warming climate
We already know what future warming is going to look like - what's less clear is how that will play out in our weather.()

Scientists can roughly say how much the world is going to warm over the next decade, but what impact that will have on extreme weather is unpredictable.

"It means that climate change and the rate of change in particular is probably holding some surprises in terms of the impacts that it has across Australia," Dr Braganza says.

But by kicking our habit of producing dangerous greenhouse gases as quickly as possible, the damage can start to be repaired.

"Obviously making that change is really hard. It can't just happen overnight," Dr Braganza says.

"It involves the economic system, the social system, the engineering systems.

"We're grappling with how do we reduce to net zero as quickly as possible."

There's a predictability to reports documenting the increase in global temperatures in line with greenhouse gas emissions, making them depressing reading.

But there is one figure that has surprised scientists over the past two years, according to Dr Braganza.

"The increase in ocean temperatures has been something really significant for the climate science community," he says.

"There are changes that are many standard deviations above the mean over the last couple of years."

Dr Braganza says high ocean temperatures are having flow-on effects across the climate system.

"Things like record low sea ice or record high ocean temperatures is really significant for us [at the BoM] because it means that relying on past history as an analogue for what might happen in the next few months is increasingly less confident.

"The rate of setting records in the climate system both in the Australian region and globally is something that's really significant."

What do the numbers mean for our weather?

The State of the Climate 2024 states that Australia’s climate has warmed by 1.51 degrees since 1910, while sea surface temperatures have increased by an average of 1.08 degrees since 1900.  

The report shows we are already living in a 'new climate' with increased frequency of extreme heat events over land and oceans, longer fire seasons, more intense heavy rainfall and sea level rise.  

It also unpacks what the weather of our future will look like as warming increases.

Heat extremes

While the average temperature has increased in Australia and globally, so too has the frequency of extreme heat events.

2019 remains Australia's warmest year on record, while eight of the nine warmest years on record have occurred since 2013.

The report warns extreme heat has caused more deaths in Australia than any other natural hazard and has major impacts on ecosystems and infrastructure.

The report found that there were fewer heat extremes from 2020 to 2023, thanks to La Niña conditions, but the numbers were still high when compared to the years prior to 2000.

"Largely, that variability is driven by rainfall," Dr Braganza explains.

"Wet periods in Australia tend to have less extreme heat days and dry periods and drought periods tend to have more."

But the overall trend is stark.

"The rate of change in this graph also points to how rapidly our climate system is changing," Dr Braganza says.

"That really means that the climate of the 1980s and the 1990s is very different to the climate that we're experiencing today."

Shifting currents

Climate research manager at the CSIRO Dr Jaclyn Brown says warming oceans are also impacting the patterns of ocean currents.

For example, the East Australian Current now extends further south, creating an area of more rapid warming in the Tasman Sea, where the warming rate is now twice the global average.

A GIF of colour coded ocean maps indicating a warming trend over the past 12 decades
The ocean warming is changing the East Australian current further south, affecting marine life in the Tasman sea.()

But it's also leading to feedback loops that scientists don't fully understand.

"The East Australian Current is shifting further south because of changes to the winds and the winds change because of changes to the surface temperature of the ocean," Dr Brown explains.

"There's these feedbacks between the atmosphere and the ocean as they talk to each other.

"As one thing changes, it changes something in the other one which feeds back to the atmosphere."

Warming of the ocean leads to more frequent and intense marine heatwaves, with devastating effects on marine ecosystems, including depleting kelp forests and seagrasses.

Hot oceans are also contributing to sea level rise, with the report stating globally mean sea levels have risen by around 22 centimetres since 1900.

"Things, when they're warmed, expand and that's true for water as well, Dr Brown says.

"About a third of the sea level rise that we're seeing is purely from the oceans warming up."

But sea level rise isn't something you can necessarily see at your local beach, and doesn't happen evenly around the globe.

A map of sea level rises
Sea levels are rising around Australia and are increasing the risk of inundation and damage to coastal communities.()

"Why does it vary? It doesn't just go up like a bathtub," Dr Brown says.

"There's a lot of other factors in what happens with sea level. One of them is the ocean currents.

"The rest of the sea level rise is due to ice melting over Antarctica and Greenland and a change in the amount of water over land."

Extreme rainfall on one end, drought on the other

The other significant takeaway from the report is that changes to rainfall are inconsistent, with some places experiencing extreme rainfall and others drought.

In the south-west of Australia, there has been a decline of around 20 per cent of rainfall from May to July since 1970.

South-east Australia has also seen a decrease in cool season rainfall of about 9 per cent since 1994.

In contrast, the wet-season rainfall in northern Australia has increased by around 20 per cent since 1994.

"We're seeing a shift in circulation as the planet warms," Dr Braganza says.

"We're getting less rain from those systems over the cooler months of the year. Conversely, over northern Australia, it's been wetter over the last 30 years."

"The intensity has increased by around 10 per cent or more in some regions, particularly in the north, and that's associated with the increased moisture-holding capacity of the atmosphere."

The fire season is also becoming longer and more intense.

"We are now starting to see fires almost every year occur in late winter and early spring, it's also pushing later into autumn as well. " Dr Braganza says

"2023 was one of Australia's biggest bushfire seasons in terms of area burned, and that's largely due to the fuel growth that we've seen in some of the northern parts of the continent over the years preceding last year."

A colour coded map of Australia indicating extreme fire danger across large swathes of the country
There has been an increase in the annual frequency of dangerous fire days across Australia.()

Greenhouse gas emissions

So how do we stop things from getting worse? To go back to Dr Braganza's drinking analogy, it won't stop warming until we stop emitting greenhouse gases.

"Our ecosystems can adapt and they've adapted for millions of years as climate changes," Dr Jaclyn Brown from the CSIRO says.

Dr Jaclyn Brown
Dr Jaclyn Brown is the Director of the Climate Science Centre at CSIRO.()

"But the speed from anthropogenic [human-caused] climate change means that these changes are happening very quickly.

"And so the ecosystem can't re-establish itself or move or regenerate somewhere else."

The Paris Agreement, which Australia and the world have signed up to, aims to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible to prevent "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".

Because greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere, we've got a set amount we can emit before the world crosses that threshold leaders have set for themselves. But how long it takes to reach it isn't set in stone.

It's like having a set amount of money in the bank; how quickly you spend it determines how long it will last. The more CO2 we emit each year, the closer the date we have to stop gets.

According to Dr Brown, we've got about seven years if we keep emitting at current rates.

"It's the rate of change that has slowed down. We're seeing the same amount of greenhouse gases now coming out year by year, but that's adding to the total," Dr Brown says.

"At our current rate of emissions, if we keep emitting the same amount as we are at the moment, we'll exceed our limit in seven years if we're going to stabilise at 1.5 degrees.

"So, seven years to really do something about the amount of carbon dioxide that we're emitting."

If emissions start to drop now then that number could grow, but while the world may have passed peak global emissions, we're not yet on track to reducing them.

Australia lags behind much of the world when it comes to reducing emissions, so if our summers and winters are to stay recognisable, along with the world, we need to quit fossil fuels.