Last week the Bureau of Meteorology declared a negative Indian Ocean Dipole — a natural climate phenomenon set to bring wet weather. Let’s look at what you can expect, and the role of climate change.
Australians have endured floods, bushfires and hailstorms and more over the last two years. The government is better aligning policy to deal with disasters, but its plan is somewhat half-baked.
Cities face harsher, more concentrated rainfall as climate change not only intensifies storms, but draws them into narrower bands of more intense downpours, UNSW engineers have found.
Long term warming of the Indian and Pacific oceans played an important role in making the Queensland floods far worse than they should have been, new research shows.
Flooding risk is often used as an argument against greater environmental flows for the Murray-Darling, but graziers would benefit greatly from floods, writes Richard Kingsford.
Insurance premiums are likely to rise for all Australians in the wake of the Queensland floods, even in areas not prone to flooding, says Professor Michael Sherris of the Australian School of Business.
