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.
Christina Druery-Chiconi opened the farm north of Brisbane to families in her neighbourhood, including children with autism, trauma and speech impediments.
Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) appear to be declining not just in North America but also in Australiasia. Could this be a consequence of global change, including climate change, the intensification of agriculture, and urbanisation?
We need more citizen scientists to monitor what is really going on.
Insect populations, even species that seemed impervious, are in decline globally. Monarch butterflies exemplify the problem. Once a very common species, numbers have declined dramatically in North America, engendering keen public interest in restoring populations.
The monarch butterfly is an iconic species. It is usually the species people recall when drawing a butterfly and observations are shared frequently on the online social network iNaturalist.
This is partly because monarch images are used in advertising, but the butterflies are also a species of choice for school biology classes and television documentaries on animal migration.
Monarchs in the southern hemisphere
Monarchs expanded their range to reach Australia and New Zealand during the mid-1800s.Kathy Reid, CC BY-SA
The monarch butterfly’s ancestral home in North America is noted for an annual mass migration and spectacular overwintering of adults in fir forests in a few locations in Mexico, at densities of 50 million per hectare, and at multiple sites in Southern California. These sites are monitored to track the decline.
What is not as well known is that this butterfly greatly extended its range, spreading across the Pacific in the mid-1800s to reach Australia and New Zealand by riding on storms that blew in from New Caledonia.
The species is now part of the roadside scene in these countries and was once known as “the wanderer” – reflecting its propensity to fly across the landscape in search of milkweed plants (known as swan plants in New Zealand). In both countries, monarchs lay eggs on introduced milkweed species for their caterpillars to feed and develop. They take up the plant’s toxins as part of their own defence.
Interestingly, in their expanded range in the southern hemisphere, monarchs have adapted their migration patterns to suit local conditions. They have established overwinter sites – places where large numbers of adults congregate on trees throughout winter.
Need for citizen science
In Australia, the late entomologist Courtenay Smithers organised people to report these sites and participate in a mark-recapture programme. Essentially, this involves attaching a small unique identifying tag to the wing, noting the age and condition of the butterfly and the date and location of capture.
If the same individual is then recaptured sometime later and the information shared, it provides valuable data on survival and the distance and direction it moved, and even population size. This volunteer tagging programme enabled many aspects of the monarch’s ecology in Australia to be documented, but it was discontinued a few years ago.
Moths and Butterflies Australasia now hosts the butterfly database and has become an umbrella group for encouraging everyone with a mobile phone to get involved and report and record sightings.
Monarchs have established wintering sites in New Zealand and Australia.Kathy Reid, CC BY-SA
A similar programme is run in New Zealand by the Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust. Monarch overwintering sites and local breeding populations have been documented over the years. Alas, these data sets have been short term and haphazard.
What is intriguing is that populations appear to have declined in Australia and New Zealand, perhaps reflecting climate variability, expanding cities gobbling up local breeding habitats, and the intensification of agriculture.
What we need is reliable long-term data on adult numbers. Hence the call to reinvigorate interest in mark-recapture and reporting. We need the help of people who love the outdoors and love the monarch butterfly to become citizen scientists.
Citizen scientists are needed to help with tagging monarch butterflies.Anna Barnett, CC BY-SA
The Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust is asking individuals, groups and schools to tag monarch butterflies late in the autumn when the butterflies head for their overwintering habitat. This is a great project for schools, involving students in real science and addressing an environmental issue.
Each tag has a unique code. A computer system calculates the distance the monarch has flown and the time it took to get there. This information can then be collated with weather data to get a clearer picture of what is happening.
We hope people will spot tagged monarchs in their gardens and record where the butterfly was sighted, together with its tag number.
The author wishes to thank Washington State University entomologist David James and Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand trustee Jacqui Knight for their input, and Australian National University ecologist Michael Braby for comments.
Myron Zalucki 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.
Masses of glittering algae have returned to Tasmania’s coastline in a spectacular bloom of bioluminescence that experts say is the largest seen in years.
The phenomenon, known as “sea sparkles” or “red tide”, was caused by masses of noctiluca scintillans, a pink-coloured algae that experts say was beautiful to look at, but considered bad news for the environment.
The New South Wales Environment Protection Authority is prosecuting three companies and one individual in response to its investigation into Sydney’s asbestos in mulch scandal.
The prosecutions encompass 102 alleged offences relating to 26 sites, including Rozelle parklands.
Authorities head out to search for a large crocodile seen swimming around two popular islands where tourists and holiday-makers have been warned to be alert.
Authorities wipe out feral deer on Wild Duck Island off the central Queensland coast in a bid to preserve one of Australia’s largest flatback turtle rookeries.
Landmark research finds 244m tonnes of organic carbon is stored in top 10cm of marine sediment in British waters
Seabed habitats could capture almost three times more carbon than forests in the UK every year if left undisturbed, according to a report published on Thursday.
Researchers at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (Sams) have calculated that 244m tonnes of organic carbon is stored in the top 10cm of UK seabed habitats. That includes seagrass meadows, salt marshes, kelp and mussel beds but most (98%) is stored in seabed sediments such as mud and silt.
But how well-prepared are Australian households for life in a hotter world? Our new research explored this question in Victoria.
We examined how households cope with, adapt to and endure summers and heatwaves. We found they overwhelmingly considered summer heat a temporary disruption – something to just get through. This is consistent with the approach taken by authorities, which generally treat heatwaves as isolated emergencies.
This needs to change. Governments, emergency services and households must move beyond short-term coping strategies. A more sophisticated, long-term approach to managing heatwaves is needed.
Household experiences of heat
We wanted to better understand the experience of Victorians at home across the year. To do this, we interviewed members of 74 households in the Latrobe Valley (30) and Melbourne (44) between 2019 and 2021. We also walked with people through their homes.
We asked about the household’s experience of summer at home and how they coped with the heat. We paid particular attention to people’s everyday routines and the passage of heat through the home.
Questions covered the comfort of the home in summer, the different spaces householders used throughout the year, and the changes they had made (or would like to make) to the home to make it more comfortable.
Participants were also asked about how manageable they found their energy and other bills. Finally, participants were asked to reflect on their longer-term housing aspirations.
What we found
Many households prepared their home and themselves for a heatwave and the disruption it would cause, by shutting blinds or curtains and turning on fans or air conditioners. Those who could, planned to leave the home and visit a friend or other cool space such as the local pool, shopping centre or cinema.
Then they waited for the heatwave to pass, and experienced relief once a cool change arrived, opening doors or windows to let the cool breeze through.
Many households considered heatwaves as short-term but manageable disruptions to their daily, weekly or seasonal routines.
But for some, summer heat was an extended disruption to their lives, for which they had limited capacity to adapt and respond.
These households had fewer ways to manage heat at home, or improve the home’s resilience to heat.
For example, renters turned to unreliable portable air-conditioners, which failed to manage extreme conditions. Melbourne renter Nanci said:
We bought the portable [air conditioner], which ended up breaking down after 33 degrees, so we put it on [until it] blows hot air out.
Other low-income households were hesitant to use or install air conditioners, given the consequences for their energy bills.
Vulnerable households with young children or people with chronic health conditions found it difficult to function and manage those in their care.
In the Latrobe Valley, Sam is a single parent in social housing, who struggles with health problems in the heat. Every year Sam buys a new portable air conditioner to get through summer, as they never seem to last more than one season. Sam said:
The doctor wants to write a letter to the housing [provider because I] get sick all the time and end up in hospital because of the heat … When it’s really hot, I get really sick … My [kid’s] worse … I get phone calls from daycare all the time … so I have to race down and get them to the hospital.
Households overwhelmingly considered summer heat a temporary disruption they just had to get through.Olezzo, Shutterstock
Rethinking summer heat at home
During a heatwave, authorities encourage people to stay cool and look out for vulnerable groups such as children and the elderly. While important, this is a short-term approach.
Relatively little attention is paid to longer-term concerns. As a society, we must acknowledge the increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves, and start protecting people in their homes.
Relying only on air-conditioning to cool homes, rather than improving their thermal performance, will increase electricity demand and make it harder to reduce emissions. For households worried about the cost of living, an air conditioner might be considered too expensive to run or install.
Renters are often worst affected during heatwaves and cold winters. We welcome proposed minimum energy efficiency standards for rental homes in Victoria. Only the ACT and Victoria are proposing to mandate ceiling insulation for rental properties so far. Other states should follow suit.
Australia recently improved energy-efficiency standards for new homes. Now we need a mandatory disclosure system for property energy efficiency, across both new and existing homes, including both owner-occupied and rental properties.
Authorities should also improve public spaces to cope with hotter summers and more extreme weather. This includes creating and maintaining trees and green space in cities to combat the effects of “urban heat islands”.
Trees, plants and light-coloured external surfaces such as cool roofs can also help reduce heat in and around the home.
Without action, more households will be stuck in unhealthy, unsustainable and downright dangerous situations when a heatwave hits. Governments must take a broader, more holistic approach to manage the risks.
Sarah Robertson received funding for this research from the Australian Research Council Linkage Projects grant scheme, the Victorian State Government, and the Fuel Poverty Research Network’s Energy Poverty in Early Career grant program.
Gordon Walker has received funding from the Australian Research Council Linkage Projects grant scheme.
Ralph Horne has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Victorian State Government for research related to this article.
Hosting the conference would help us overcome our colonial mentality and the fossil fuel lobby, both of which have held us back from tackling climate change
As the world grapples with the climate crisis, Australia stands at a crossroads. Our bid to co-host the UN’s climate conference, Cop31, with Pacific nations is not just a diplomatic event; it is a pivotal opportunity to redefine our nation’s role in the global fight against climate change. This could mark a shift, propelling Australia from climate laggard to leader on the world stage. With the Cop presidency, we would be at the centre of international climate negotiations, shouldering the responsibility to provide the infrastructure and visionary leadership needed to drive meaningful progress. The stakes are high, but so too are the potential rewards for our nation and the planet.
For years, Australia has been held back from meaningful climate action by the powerful influence of the fossil fuel lobby. This industry has shaped policies and public opinion, prioritising short-term profits over long-term sustainability. Their grip on our political landscape has delayed the transition to cleaner energy and put us on a dangerous path that threatens the security of our communities, our environment and our economy. Now, as the cost of living skyrockets and climate impacts escalate, we’re facing the consequences of that inaction.
A Bunbury magistrate fines a business $141,000 for illegally clearing 16 hectares of land in the state’s south west, severely impacting a rare endangered honeysuckle species.
The NT Supreme Court has rejected an environmental group’s legal challenge of the approval of a fracking exploration project in the Beetaloo Basin, finding it failed to make out its grounds for review.
When Labor came to power federally after almost a decade in opposition, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek pledged to turn around Australia’s worsening environmental woes, from extinctions to land clearing to climate change.
While the government has made progress on climate action, protecting biodiversity hasn’t got out of the starting blocks.
In the latest example of inaction, proposed laws to create an independent environmental regulator, Environmental Protection Australia, appear stalled in the Senate. Labor needs the backing of the Coalition or the Greens to push the reform through. At the time of writing, no deals looked likely.
This is a real problem. A stream of audits and reviews have shown Australia’s environmental laws are not fit for purpose. Change is possible – but hard. Keeping the status quo is far easier, no matter how dysfunctional it is.
Development proposals assessed under the EPBC Act are nearly always approved.Deek/Shutterstock
The failings of the law are no secret. In 2020, an independent review by Graeme Samuel delivered blunt findings: the laws were simply not protecting nature.
So Labor changed tack. It pivoted to a staged reform process – with the full-scale revamp delayed indefinitely.
This week, Labor attempted to pass at least some change – a bill to create an independent environmental regulator, Environmental Protection Australia. But it ran into major roadblocks.
Mining companies such as Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting and Rio Tinto pushed for the regulator to be stripped of its powers in a private letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
And Coalition and Greens senators delivered stinging critiques, arguing variously that the regulator would be too strong or too weak.
Crossbenchers and the Greens say to win their support, Labor must end native forest logging nationally and require consideration of climate damage when assessing projects such as new coal mines for approvals.
The laws focused on threatened species and ecosystems but did not mention damage done by climate change.
Almost a quarter of a century later, we still have the same set of laws, described as ineffective or little enforced in audits and reviews.
Every year since the act came into force, Austalia’s threatened species populations have actually fallen 2-3%.
When development, agriculture and infrastructure projects do get assessed under these laws, about 99% are approved.
Experts have found the laws permit ongoing destruction of critical habitat for threatened species.
Why? While the environment minister of the day is required to consider environmental impacts of a proposal, they can essentially rule any way they like – even if it goes against the opinion of independent environmental experts, or their own bureaucrats.
Why is change so hard?
The 2020 Samuel review recommended new “national environmental standards” be enforced. These would mean explicitly defining what outcomes for nature we are aiming for, and making sure a development proposal met that standard.
For example, one proposed standard would disallow “unacceptable or unsustainable impacts” on matters of national environmental significance. These matters include internationally important wetlands and nationally threatened species. Other standards include preservation of Australia’s natural world heritage sites, such as the Great Barrier Reef.
In late 2022, Plibersek released Labor’s official response in the form of the Nature Positive Plan.
The plan seemed promising. It recognised the dire state of Australia’s species and ecosystems and labelled the current laws “ineffective”. It promised national environmental standards.
Plibersek vowed to consult on further changes. This led to a proposal to replace the EPBC Act with stronger laws, and create a new regulator – Environment Protection Australia.
As initiailly proposed, this independent agency would have power to make development decisions and ensure compliance. It would only grant approval to a project if it was consistent with national environmental standards. The minister could still step in, but had to give public reasons for doing so, and take advice from the regulator.
However, major lobby groups opposed the proposed overhaul of the laws.
In response, Plibersek changed tactics. She announced environmental reform would be in three stages.
The first was the Nature Repair Market, which passed Parliament late last year. The second stage involved the laws now before the Senate: creating Environment Protection Australia in a weaker form (without the restrictions on discretion in the initial proposal) and a data and monitoring agency, Environment Information Australia.
If passed, these bills would create a protection agency – but one which could only enforce the same weak approval laws and be subject to the same broad discretion for the decision-maker. For the agency to have teeth, the government would need to pass stage three, which would reduce discretion, introduce stronger environment laws and create legally binding National Environmental Standards.
This is a problem for Labor. Western Australia was instrumental in the party’s election win in 2022 and it needs to shore up seats in the mining-heavy state ahead of the next federal election.
Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has pledged to be the mining sector’s best friend if elected, by cutting “green tape”, fast tracking resource projects and defunding the Environmental Defenders Office.
All this is bad news for our threatened species and sick ecosystems. We know what needs to be done. But our government is showing worrying signs of letting industry and developers control their environmental agenda.
Justine Bell-James receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Environmental Science Program. She is a Director of the National Environmental Law Association, and attended the EPBC Act stakeholder consultation sessions in her capacity as Director. Her opinions in this article are her own.
Oxfam says ‘commonsense solution’ would reduce emissions and raise urgently needed climate finance
Fair taxes on superyachts and private jets in the UK could have brought in £2bn last year to provide vital funds for communities suffering the worst effects of climate breakdown, campaigners say.
Conservation group calls on government to ban insect-killing neonicotinoid pesticides outright
A national “butterfly emergency” has been declared by Butterfly Conservation after the lowest Big Butterfly Count since records began.
An average of just seven butterflies per 15-minute count were recorded by participants in this summer’s butterfly count, the lowest in the survey’s 14-year history.
