Extreme weather is increasingly a fact of life in a world that is getting warmer, wetter and wilder, but we still have the power to influence how we will live tomorrow by reducing our emissions today.
University of Melbourne researchers are at the vanguard of global efforts not only to mitigate the effects of climate change but also to develop solutions for living sustainably, transforming research into action.
University experts joined a panel discussion on 11 September – ‘Fire and Flood: living with extreme weather events’ – at the Science Gallery Melbourne.
Coming on the back of Australia’s hottest August on record, and with summer’s bushfire outlook showing above-average risk, a clear picture emerged: while governments must do more to help make our communities resilient, each of us has a role to play.
A confronting landscape
Moderator Dr Linden Ashcroft, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Melbourne, highlighted how changeable the landscape has become when she told of being unable to travel to Shepparton a couple of years ago for a planned event on the impact of drought – because the town was so severely impacted by flood.
Professor Todd Lane, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Science, set the scene further by noting that while fires and floods are “complex beasts” that rely on a range of variable factors, they are strongly influenced by two things that we know a lot about: heat and rainfall.
Data tells us heatwaves are increasing in occurrence, intensity and duration. At the same time, we expect more intense storms and rainfall.
“Rainfall is quite variable, but one thing we’re very confident about – because warmer air can hold more vapour – is that our strongest thunderstorms are actually going to be more intense in terms of rainfall,” Professor Lane said.
For every degree of temperature increase, rainfall intensity in storms can increase by more than seven per cent, and some studies have shown it could be twice that. “So, if we’re thinking about 1.5 to two degrees of warming, we might expect up to about a 20 per cent increase in rainfall intensity in the most powerful storms,” he explained.
Our future challenges were laid bare by Associate Professor Anna Hurlimann, from the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, who noted that historical data that led to cities being founded in places that were once deemed safe was no longer relevant.
Alas, as we allow our urban settlements to become denser there is less ability for rain to be absorbed through natural processes, placing greater pressure on outdated drainage systems.
“Our challenge in built environments is to use the data we have to anticipate how the climate is changing and start making decisions – that are going to be quite difficult – about where we shouldn’t expand our cities,” Associate Professor Hurlimann said.
Professor Trent Penman, from the University of Melbourne’s FLARE Wildfire Research, said the thing that scares him the most in the incredibly complex science of fire modelling is: “If it was easy, we would have done it already.”
Professor Penman noted that the time between fires occurring in the same location is decreasing. “So, what we really need to be focusing on is understanding how we can better prepare the environment, but also our human communities and settlements, for these multiple disturbances that all the evidence says are going to have a devastating impact.”
Plan and communicate
Professor Lane recalled living in America 20 years ago in a region where severe storms and tornadoes were commonplace, and how well warning for these events were communicated. “If there was one coming, you couldn’t miss it.
“In Australia, we have great ways of delivering warnings, but most of the time you have to be proactive and look for it – on your app, a specific radio or TV station, or search for it on the web. That’s something we could do better – both for short-term events that can pop up in an hour, and for bigger events.”
The special building overlay designed to identify flood-prone areas was cited by Associate Professor Hurlimann as a positive government lever, with drainage capacity a primary focus. She said the need to build resilience was highlighted by the uncertainty already aired by insurance companies around the long-term viability of the Australian market.
“We need to do a lot more in terms of understanding rainfall and how it’s changing relating to climate, and mapping and understanding what the implications are for our existing built environments.”
Learning from First Peoples
One audience member asked what role Indigenous Australians could play regarding fire risk, with Professor Penman reporting a steady increase in consideration given to Indigenous burning over his more than two decades in fire research.
“It’s had a place in Australian history for tens of thousands of years. It certainly has a place moving forward – it’s never going to be the entire solution, [but] it is very much part of the solution.”
Professor Lane said there was an onus on the University of Melbourne to help address a shortage of Indigenous researchers working in this vital pathway. “It’s something we should continue to work on as a university, in the hope that some of them will work on problems like future fire, including Indigenous burning practices.”
Hope for the future
Associate Professor Hurlimann cited UN Secretary-General António Guterres and his view that we all need to do “everything, everywhere, all at once”, adding that Australia has a responsibility to go further than the global average “because we’ve benefited from historic emissions of greenhouse gases, and other countries haven’t yet”.
Professor Lane echoed this point. “We have a responsibility as still being one of the largest emitters per capita in the world to do something about it – now, tomorrow, every day. Putting pressure on politicians, but also [taking] individual action.”
Professor Lane took heart from having recently started a seven-year research project ‘ARC Centre of Excellence for Weather of the 21st Century’, one of myriad University initiatives helping to transform research into everyday actions to help nurture a fragile planet.
A prime example is the Wattle Fellowship, a flagship program focused on developing leaders committed to embedding sustainability principles and practices into every social endeavour.
Chosen from all fields and academic disciplines, Wattle Fellows are empowered through workshops, retreats, coaching and funding for an action project.
Wattle allows the University to build on existing efforts such as embedding sustainability into curriculum alongside specialist degrees.
The program has also been pivotal in deepening and enriching student experience. Alumni and current fellows have a history of engagement with cultural burning as a means of landscape management, volunteering with their local CFA brigade and working with Parks Victoria as forest firefighters.
You can learn more about the fellowships here.