Climate History Australia

Climate History Australia was created by researchers from the Australian National University to provide a central hub for historical climate research in our region.

Our researchers won the 2014 Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research – informally known as the ‘Oscars of Australian Science’ – for reconstructing south-eastern Australian climate over the past 1,000 years.

For anyone who wants to understand the impact of a warming planet on Australian lifestyles and ecosystems, our Director Dr Joëlle Gergis published a book in 2018, Sunburnt Country: The future and history of climate change in Australia. It pieces together Australia’s climate history for the first time, and uncovers a continent long vulnerable to climate extremes and variability.

Here’s Joëlle talking about Sunburnt country on ABC News Breakfast:

Recent press coverage:

Climate reconstructed. *COSMOS *magazine, issue 89, December 2020, p 110-111.

Unearthing Australia’s climate history. Australian Geographic, November/December 2020.

Want to help fill the blanks of our weather history? ABC Radio National, 9 September 2020.

Renewed interest in weathered records. *COSMOS *online, 8 September 2020.

Citizen scientists called on to fill the gap in Australia's longest daily weather record. ABC’s SA Country Hour online, 8 September, 2020.

We dug up Australian weather records back to 1838 and found snow is falling less often. The Conversation, 4 June 2020.

##Recent journal papers from our team: ##
Gergis, J., Baillie, Z., Ingallina, S., Ashcroft, L., and Ellwood, T. (2021). A historical climate dataset for southwestern Australia, 1830–1875. International Journal of Climatology: https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/joc.7105

Gergis, J., Ashcroft, L. and Whetton, P. (2020). A historical perspective on Australian temperature extremes. Climate Dynamics: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05298-z

Ashcroft, L., Karoly, D. J., and Dowdy, A. J. (2019). Historical extreme rainfall events in southeastern Australia. Weather and Climate Extremes, Vol 25: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2019.100210

Gergis, J., Neukom, R., Gallant, A. J. E. and Karoly, D. J. (2016). Australasian temperature reconstructions spanning the last millennium. Journal of Climate 29 DOI 5365-5392

Ashcroft, L., Gergis, J. and Karoly, D.J. (2014). A historical climate dataset for southeastern Australia, 1788–1859. Geoscience Data Journal DOI: 10.1002/gdj3.19

Neukom, R., Gergis J., Karoly, D., Frank, D., Villalba, R., Zinke, J., Linsley, B., Raible, C., González-Rouco, F. and Steig, E. (2014). Southern Hemisphere temperature variability over the last millennium, Nature Climate Change DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE2174

Ashcroft, L., Karoly, D.J. and Gergis, J. (2013). South-eastern Australian climate 1860–2009: a multivariate approach. International Journal of Climatology DOI: 10.1002/joc.3812