Dr Lilly Lim-Camacho: exploring adaptation of communities and organisations to climate change through communication and engagement

Dr Lilly Lim-Camacho is a social scientist focused on encouraging communities and organisations to mitigate and adapt to climate change through communication and engagement.

Dr Xiaoming Wang: better planning and management solutions for the built environment

Dr Xiaoming Wang is developing modelling, simulation, monitoring technology and optimal decision-making process in design and management for the built environment in response to climate change.

Exploring how the mining industry can adapt to climate change

Future climate variability and change is impacting on the Australian mining industry and its communities in different ways. CSIRO is working with mining enterprises and communities to explore climate adaptation strategies through the CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship, in association with both the CSIRO Coal Portfolio and the CSIRO Minerals Down Under Flagship.

Dr Mark Stafford Smith: Science Director, Climate Adaptation Flagship

Dr Mark Stafford Smith has worked on the impacts of climate variability in desert areas around the world since 1975, and is now playing a key role in the CSIRO Climate Adaptation National Research Flagship.

Climate Adaptation Flagship

Enabling Australia to adapt more effectively to the impacts of climate change and variability and informing national planning, regulation and investment decisions.

Climate Adaptation Engineering for Extreme Events Cluster

Australia is a continent subject to extreme weather events such as cyclones, storms, floods and heatwaves. The social and economic impact of these natural disasters totals billions of dollars per year.

Changing wave heights projected as the atmosphere warms

Climate scientists studying the impact of changing wave behaviour on the world's coastlines are reporting a likely decrease in average wave heights across 25 per cent of the global ocean.

Developing climate change resilient agribusinesses

CSIRO is working with primary producers to research practical management solutions to adapt to climate change.

Striking the balance - coastal development and ecosystem values

A CSIRO study has used economic modelling to help local governments prepare coastal ecosystems, public infrastructure and private dwellings for climate change.

Termites of the Top End poster

A poster detailing Northern Australia where the most diverse range of termite mounds can be found. (1 page)

Dr Andrew Sullivan: leading bushfire behaviour research

Dr Andrew Sullivan’s research interests are in bushfire behaviour, combustion dynamics, and firefighter safety.

Water vapour is the main greenhouse gas, so why worry about increases in other greenhouse gases that exist in much smaller concentrations?

While there is far more water vapour in the atmosphere than other greenhouse gases, the other greenhouse gases play an important role in influencing our climate. The increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases is largely responsible for the observed warming of 0.74 °C over the 20th century. This warming has had a ‘positive feedback’ as a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour – enhancing human induced warming by about 50 per cent.

Climate questions: Has global warming stopped?

All measurements of the climate system indicate the long term warming trend is continuing. It is inappropriate to use short term data sets to determine long term trends.

Climate questions: Is there an inconsistency between observed and modelled patterns of warming in the lower atmosphere?

It is commonly claimed that a predicted fingerprint of climate change – a warming (or hot spot) in the lower troposphere – is missing from the measurements. Recent reanalysis of the data has established that observations are not inconsistent with the modelled patterns of warming for the troposphere. Thus there is no ‘missing’ hot spot.

Climate questions: Can the warming of the 20th century be explained by natural processes?

It is often claimed that the observed warming of the climate system results from natural climate processes rather than being human-induced. However, there are no known natural factors that can explain the observed warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds it is very likely that most of the observed global warming since the mid 20th century is due to anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases.

Climate questions: How reliable are climate models?

The ability of climate models to project future climate is often questioned. There will always be a range of uncertainty in climate projections. Climate models, which are based on the laws of physics and thoroughly tested, provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change.

Climate questions: Understanding current climate change in a palaeoclimatic context

The Earth’s climate has varied naturally over hundreds of millions of years – why should we believe humans are causing current changes? Understanding past changes between glacial and interglacial periods helps us to understand how unusual the current warming is. For example, the linear warming trend over the past 50 years of 0.13 °C per decade is much more rapid than the rate of warming between ice ages and warm interglacial periods of around 0.01 °C per decade.

Dr Andrew Ash: Director, Climate Adaptation Flagship

Dr Andrew Ash leads CSIRO's research on adapting to life in a changing climate. As the Director of the Climate Adaptation Flagship, he oversees a large and diverse portfolio of research activities across Australia.

Managing species and natural ecosystems in a changing climate

CSIRO's Climate Adaptation Flagship research is developing and delivering adaptation options to protect from the impacts of climate change Australia's marine and terrestrial species, ecosystems and the services they provide.

Climate Adaptation Engineering for cities and coasts symposium 2013

The workshop will focus on integrating climate change science with engineering knowledge to support adaptation in the urban and coastal built environment.

The Climate Adaptation Flagship working paper series

An occasional series of technical papers sharing CSIRO's current 'work-in-progress' on the science of adapting to climate change.

CAF working paper 14 - A social science framework to guide multi-scale research for climate change adaptation strategies in agricultural communities

This working paper outlines the objectives, underpinning concepts and broad approach to guide research into the ability of rice farming households to adapt to climate variability and change in Cambodia, Laos, India and Bangladesh.

Dr James Risbey: synoptic climatology and climate uncertainties

Dr. James Risbey is a synoptic climatologist who works on the development and use of climate information for societal applications, and on the role of uncertainties in climate change.

Dr Mauro Rubino: researching dynamics of the global carbon cycle during the past 2000 years

Dr Mauro Rubino is a research scientist working on measuring variations of atmospheric trace gases concentration and isotopic composition in ice cores.

Flagship postgraduate scholarships

National Research Flagships offer full and top-up Flagship Postgraduate Scholarships to high quality students who wish to work on a Flagship research project.