climate change

Coral records thousands of years of climate change

Thermometer-based climate records started in 1850, so scientists have gone “back to nature” for sources of long-term climatic information to help them better understand climate change and rising sea levels.

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Animals contribute to greenhouse gases

Smoke-belching coal-fired power stations and factories and fossil fuel-guzzling motor vehicles may be seen as the big villains of the global climate change debate, but they aren’t the only ones contributing to the greenhouse effect.

Australia’s hundreds of millions of cattle, sheep, pigs and other agricultural animals – not to mention our native fauna – also release significant amounts of methane and other gases into the atmosphere.

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Antarctica under threat

Climate change will impose a complex web of threats and interactions on the plants and animals living in the ice-free areas of Antarctica.

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Fighting fire with science

In Australia we call them bushfires. In other parts of the world they are called forest fires, and global climate change and increasing human populations mean they are increasing in frequency and ferocity.

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Unlocking secrets of significant declines in regional rainfall in Australia

Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre climate scientists believe they have part of the answer to significant declines in Australian regional rainfall and subsequent stream flow since the 1970s.

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Lake Mungo reveals ancient human adaptation to climate change

Aboriginal Elders from the Traditional Tribal Groups in the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area are collaborating with researchers to produce the first integrated account of the history of human settlement, landscape evolution and past environmental change for Australia’s foremost ‘Ice Age’ archive.

Lake Mungo is renowned as the site of the world’s oldest known cremation and ritual ochre burial, as well as the longest trail of ancient human footprints. But until now little was known about the lives of the people who settled in this area more than 45,000 years ago

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Are forests really the carbon sink we need?

Evidence is building to suggest that our forests may not be the climate change ‘get out jail free’ card we all want.

Australian Rivers Institute’s Assoc. Prof. Peter Pollard has researched rainforest lakes and rivers to test a provocative theory. The respiration of bacteria living and ‘breathing’ in these freshwater ecosystems is a major pathway for the return of rainforest carbon back to the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

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