In recent years, Australia has experienced unprecedented heat, including heatwaves and record-breaking hot days, months, seasons and years. Australia has a naturally variable climate, but recent attribution studies show that our recent extremes are already being influenced by climate change. In this talk, I will investigate these human influences on past, present and future extreme climate events in Australia. How have recent hot extremes compared to cold extremes? Will future temperatures be more extreme and how so? Are recent extremes a sign of a new normal?

Biography

Sophie Lewis is an ARC DECRA Fellow in the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University. She is also part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. Her research uses climate models to understand climate change and variability.