In late February there were reports of record-breaking high temperatures from scientists working on the Antarctic Peninsula. At the time Diana King and I were in NSW in Australia having spent the summer experiencing smoke pollution from the Australian bushfires along with extremely hot days. Our colleague Dana Bergstrom was sending us reports of rain at Davis Station in East Antarctica. Given that almost all precipitation falls as snow in Antarctica, these were strange reports. Our Chilean colleagues, Marisol Pizarro Rojas and  Gustavo Zúñiga were also reporting that there was no snow around the Escudero research station on King George Island and that every day was perfect for field work, a most a worrying development. There is always bad weather sometime in Antarctica!

An article on how we cope with the fear and horror that now goes hand-in-hand with climate change? by Keeli Cambourne in The Stand.

Plus a link to an article on a similar topic about Laureate Fellow Professor Belinda Medlyn ‘I can see where we are headed & it’s bad’: in the Women's agenda

An open letter on the scientific basis for the links between climate change and bushfires in Australia.

This open letter is supported by more than 400 scientists with research expertise across the fields of climate, fire and weather science. This open letter is composed of the full statement, a summary statement, and lists of co-signatories and references. 

Please read and share.

Georgia Watson and Sharon Robinson,  

Global Challenges Program, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

The Wold Meteorological Organisation (WMO) have just reported that 2019 capped off an exceptionally hot decade, with global temperatures 1.1˚C  above pre-industrial levels last year. The Bureau of Meteorology’s annual climate statement for 2019, shows that last year was Australia's warmest year on record, with the lowest annual rainfall on record, and will rank amongst the most severe drought years ever recorded. The consequences of this hotter, drier climate are evident. The 2019-2020 bushfire season has seen the greatest area of Australia burnt with at least 10.7 million hectares (as of 8 Jan 2020, across all states and territories excluding NT). Australia has already warmed 1.52˚C above average, surpassing the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels, and we are already seeing the devastating effects of our new climate on humans and wildlife. 

The climate marches on March 15^thshowed the world what young people think we should be paying attention to. 

Click on the title to go to the item page where you wll find the video player

A Part of GLOBALCHALLENGES.UOW.EDU.AU

This is a short online lecture-style presentation that gives an overview of this paper.

This page is an overview of the sceince projects that I was involved with on our January 2015 trip to King George Island with INACH, the Chilean Antarctic Program. I was working with two Chilean scientists on this trip -

Angelica Casanova-Katny and Gustavo Zuniga.

Angelica is from  Centro de Biotecnología, Universidad de Concepción.

Gustavo is from the University of Santiago, Chile and his projects for this trip were....

Here is my introduction to the work from the field site at Collins Glacier on Maxwell Bay.

We also worked with a team of scientists from Portland State University including Dr Todd Rosentiel and Dr Sarah Eppley. Here is Todd talking about one part of his research.