Australia’s meteorologists and oceanographers have convened at their first in-person conference since the pandemic to absorb the latest emerging research on the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, climate and weather.
This year held in Adelaide, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS) conference for 2022 – dubbed “The Critical Decade” – will highlight the state of the global climate, newly published research in climate science and discus the impact of activities being taken in Australia and globally to address climate change.
The event notably comes a week after the UN Climate Change Conference in Egypt, and the release of the Global Carbon Budget, as well as a swathe of major climate events and hazards in Australia and worldwide.
Dr Roger Dargaville is the president of AMOS and the deputy director of the Monash Energy Institute.
He says the research presented at this event, which is already feeding into the scientific community through journals, will also make its way into the community via policy advice to key decision-makers.
“This further enhances the importance of acting on climate science,” says Dargaville.
“And hopefully the politicians and the decision-makers at the top of the tree actually hear that policy advice and will make policy decisions based on that.
Among the key presentations will be summaries on global and Australian state of the climate reports, connecting scientific and traditional knowledge, retrospectives looking at key moments in climate science and knowledge of the Global Carbon Budget, which shows the world is running out of time to keep within 1.5 degrees of warming as aspired by the Paris Climate Agreement.
Scientists will meet to discuss the latest research on climate and ocean science, and the way it affects humans.
“Climate change is one of the great challenges of the 21st century, it’s an absolutely diabolical problem,” says Dargaville.
“The drivers of climate change and fossil fuel emissions are countries which are not the vulnerable ones that will be exposed to climate risks.
“There’s a lot of political nuance in it as well, but without really robust climate science, we don’t know what the best policies will be to mitigate and try and reduce climate impacts, but also adapt to the impacts that we will experience.”
Cosmos is reporting from the AMOS 2022 conference this week. The Royal Institution of Australia, Cosmos’ publisher, is hosting the closing public talk at The Science Exchange.