The north Queensland city of Townsville would “almost certainly” surpass its annual rainfall record this week, just three months into 2025, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s senior meteorologist, Jonathan How.
In the dusty Queensland channel country, those old enough to remember still talk about the 1974 outback floods. For more than 50 years that has been the ultimate measuring stick for every downpour or trickle to flow through the central desert towards Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre.
On Sunday, in the tiny town of Jundah, in the heart of Queensland’s outback, the flood waters in some places measured 50cm higher than in 1974. Most of the town (including the pub) is still inundated. Surrounding towns are cut-off and could be isolated for weeks.
Anthony Albanese has confirmed the federal environmental protection agency he has promised to establish if elected would not be “the same model” as the one he promised but failed to legislate during this term of government.
In his first public comments about reviving the nature watchdog plan, Albanese confirmed Labor would pursue a different model in consultation with the states, industry and environmental groups.
The operators of Cadia goldmine have been ordered to pay $350,000 in fines and convicted of three offences after a prosecution by the New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority.
Cadia Holdings Limited, trading as Cadia Valley Operations, pleaded guilty to three offences under the environmental protection act relating to breaches of clean air regulations at the mine in central west NSW.
The thylacine might walk again. Or Lake Pedder might rise again. The possibility of ecological restoration in the island state plays into the appeal of going back in time
There is something about Tasmania that makes it a place where people want to restore the past, and not just because Tasmanians still regularly report seeing thylacines bounding off into the forest.
Certainly, it’s a retro kind of place. The landed gentry are still a thing, the powerful families of modern Tasmania tracing their ancestry back to the original squatters, who either took the land by force or bought it from the colonial government, no questions asked. Georgian mansions scatter the rural landscape; in Hobart, convict hewn stone is a building material of choice. Nearly 70% of Tasmanians had both parents born in Australia (the overall figure for the country is 47%), and more than 80% identify with a white ancestry (65% for Australia as a whole). If you ignore the giant cruise ships, the Teslas and the puffer jackets, you could imagine yourself in mid-century Australia.
A wet and wild weekend is on the way for much of Australia, as heavy rain in Queensland moves east and a tropical low off the coast of Western Australia threatens to develop into a cyclone.
Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra can all expect a washout on Saturday, with heavy rainfall expected to stretch from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast down to the Victorian border, including the potential for isolated falls of up to 100mm.
Wettest March day for 15 years in some parts of northern Australian state, while storms and hail hit Mediterranean
More heavy rain has hit Queensland, Australia, just weeks after the devastation of Cyclone Alfred. Much of north and central Queensland was put under severe weather alert for heavy rainfall earlier this week, as six-hourly rainfall totals of 30-60mm were anticipated, with the risk of seeing up to 120mm locally in this period.
In the north-west of the state, this rain caused the Haughton River to rise rapidly, with water levels reaching 2.68 metres on Wednesday night, exceeding the 2.5-metre major flood level.
Australian households will spend $1.03bn every year to suppress fire ants and cover related medical and veterinary costs, with about 570,800 people needing medical attention and 30 likely deaths from the invasive pest’s stings, new modelling shows.
The Australia Institute research breaks down the impact of red imported fire ants (Rifa) by electorate, with the seats of Durack and O’Connor in Western Australia, Mayo in South Australia and Blair in Queensland the hardest hit if the ants become endemic.
Controversial legislation to protect the Tasmanian salmon industry has passed parliament after the government guillotined debate to bring on a vote in the Senate on Wednesday night.
Government and Coalition senators voted in favour of the bill, which was designed to bring an end to a formal reconsideration by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, into whether an expansion of fish farming in Macquarie Harbour in 2012 was properly approved.
Heavy rainfall has closed nearly 200 roads and cut off multiple towns in Queensland as already saturated rivers risk more flooding.
The Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe weather warning for heavy rainfall across normally dry inland areas of central west Queensland, including parts of the Northern Goldfields and Upper Flinders, North West, Channel Country, and Maranoa and Warrego districts.
UN-backed research has found emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane coming from Glencore’s Hail Creek coalmine are probably between three and eight times higher than officially reported. Two aircraft with different types of monitoring equipment and flying at different altitudes looked for plumes of methane coming from the coalmine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin – a site highlighted in a previous study as a major emitter. Glencore has challenged the results, saying in a statement it had ‘significant doubts’ about the research, claiming it used ‘out of date’ data
Emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane at a Queensland coalmine were likely between three and eight times higher than officially reported, according to UN-backed research that flew aircraft over the site.
Queensland’s open-cut coalmines are known to be a major source of methane and experts are worried that official figures could be a gross underestimation of actual emissions.
Australia’s love-hate relationship with fuel-guzzling utes and SUVs is now a looming election issue, after the Coalition indicated it may rethink Labor’s vehicle emission standard.
On Tuesday the shadow transport minister, Bridget McKenzie, called Labor’s vehicle emission standard “poorly designed” and said the Coalition will have “more to say” about it when the opposition releases its own transport policy before the election.
The green hydrogen revolution wasn’t supposed to go like this. In September, the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, declared Australia “the green hydrogen capital of the world” with “50-plus companies on the ground” and a pipeline of investments worth $200bn.
The nascent industry has been touted as the start of a renewable energy revolution, with more than $8bn in support promised across federal and state governments. But just months on from Bowen’s announcement, several major proposals are either shelved or in serious doubt, prompting the question: is green hydrogen’s race over before it began?
A broad trough has dragged in warm, moist air and offers perfect ingredients for heavy rainfall and even supercells
Northern parts of Australia have been under a flood warning this weekend, with further flooding set to bring havoc to south-eastern parts of the Northern Territory and western Queensland early this week. A broad trough – an area of locally lower pressure – has been moving across northern Australia, dragging in warm, moist air from the Gulf of Carpentaria and providing the perfect ingredients for the formation of severe thunderstorms, and even supercells.
More than 70mm (2.75in) of rain fell in an hour under the slow-moving storms over the weekend in what is usually an arid, low rainfall zone with a desert/grassland climate classification. Some parts of the region have sparse observation data, but some local stations have been able to record more than 100mm within 24 hours, with 132mm of rain at Marion Downs, Queensland.
Cities lose thousands of mature trees a year. On Overbury Drive, neighbours were determined to protect a solitary giant dying red gum – stuck right in the middle of their road
It’s a striking image; in a suburban landscape where nature has been largely pushed aside to make way for roads, houses and driveways, the thick craggy trunk of a towering river red gum tree stands defiantly in place, forcing the bitumen to squeeze and buckle around it. Bang in the middle of the street.
Barely a day goes by without the residents of Overbury Drive noticing a carload of tourists or curious locals pulling up in their quiet cul-de-sac, cameras at the ready.
It has been half a century since governments around the world, faced with overwhelming evidence, started banning early generations of what we now call forever chemicals. Industrial chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and the notorious pesticide DDT had been widely used – DDT is credited with saving millions of lives from insect-borne disease, while PCBs were vital in electrical safety – before it was understood that they were serious environmental toxins.
“The problem with these legacy contaminants,” environmental scientist Chantel Foord says, “is that they’re amazing in our products because they don’t break down, but they’re equally devastating in our environment because they don’t break down.”
Last year, Earth experienced its hottest year on record ? for the fourth year in a row. Rising temperatures are changing the way water moves around our planet, wreaking havoc on the water cycle.
The 2024 Global Water Monitor Report released today shows how these changes are driving extreme events around the world. Our international team of researchers used data from thousands of ground stations and satellites to analyse real-time information on weather and water underground, in rivers and in water bodies.
We found rainfall records are being broken with increasing regularity. For example, record-high monthly rainfall totals were achieved 27% more frequently in 2024 than at the start of this century. Record-lows were 38% more frequent.
Water-related disasters caused more than 8,700 deaths and displaced 40 million people in 2024, with associated economic losses topping US$550 billion (A$885 billion). The number and scale of extreme weather events will continue to grow, as we continue pump greenhouse gases into an already overheated atmosphere. The right time to act on climate change was about 40 years ago, but it’s not too late to make a big difference to our future.
Humanity in hot water
Warmer air can hold more moisture; that’s how your clothes dryer works. The paradoxical consequence is that this makes both droughts and floods worse.
When it doesn’t rain, the warmer and drier air dries everything out faster, deepening droughts. When it rains, the fact the atmosphere holds more moisture means that it can rain heavier and for longer, leading to more floods.
Ferocious floods
Torrential downpours and river floods struck around the world in 2024.
In Papua New Guinea in May and India in July, rain-sodden slopes gave way and buried thousands of people alive. Many will never be found.
In southern China in June and July, the Yangtze and Pearl Rivers flooded cities and towns, displacing tens of thousands of people and causing more than US$500 million (A$805 million) in crop damages.
In Bangladesh in August, heavy monsoon rains and dam releases caused river flooding. More than 5.8 million people were affected and at least one million tonnes of rice were destroyed.
Meanwhile, Storm Boris caused major flooding in Central Europe in September, resulting in billions of euros in damage.
Across western and central Africa, riverine floods affected millions of people from June to October, worsening food insecurity in an already vulnerable region.
Other parts of the world endured crippling drought last year.
In the Amazon Basin, one of the Earth’s most vital ecosystems, record low river levels cut off transport routes and disrupted hydropower generation. Wildfires driven by the hot and dry weather burned through more than 52,000 square kilometres in September alone, releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gases.
In southern Africa, drought reduced maize production by more than 50%, leaving 30 million people facing food shortages. Farmers were forced to cull livestock as pastures dried up. The drought also reduced hydropower output, leading to widespread blackouts.
A rapidly changing climate
Over recent years, we have become used to being told the year just gone was the warmest on record. We will be told the same thing many times more in years to come.
Air temperatures over land in 2024 were 1.2°C warmer than the average between 1995 and 2005, when the temperature was already 1°C higher than at the start of the industrial revolution. About four billion people in 111 countries – half of the global population ? experienced their warmest year yet.
The clear and accelerating trend of rising temperatures is speeding up an increasingly intense water cycle.
Further change is already locked in. Even if we stopped releasing greenhouse gases today, the planet would continue warming for decades. But by acting now we still have time to avoid the worst impacts.
First, we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible. Every tonne of greenhouse gas we do not release now will help reduce future heatwaves, floods and droughts.
Second, we need to prepare and adapt to inevitably more severe extreme events. That can mean stronger flood defences, developing more drought-resilient food production and water supplies, and better early warning systems.
Climate change is not a problem for the future. It’s happening right now. It’s changing our landscapes, damaging infrastructure, homes and businesses, and disrupting lives all over the world.
The real question isn’t if we should do something about it — it’s how quickly we still can.
The following people collaborated on the 2024 report: Jiawei Hou and Edison Guo (Australian National University), Hylke Beck (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi-Arabia), Richard de Jeu (Netherlands), Wouter Dorigo and Wolfgang Preimesberger (TU Wien, Austria), Andreas Güntner and Julian Haas (Research Centre For Geosciences, Germany), Ehsan Forootan and Nooshin Mehrnegar (Aalborg University, Denmark), Shaoxing Mo (Nanjing University, China), Pablo Rozas Larraondo and Chamith Edirisinghe (Haizea Analytics, Australia) and Joel Rahman (Flowmatters, Australia).
Albert Van Dijk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
