Episode 21: What does the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report tell us about extreme events?

The IPCC’s AR6 is a comprehensive analysis of the physical science associated with climate change. In the second in Energetics’ series on AR6, we explore what the findings mean in physical terms for Australia and the potential impacts for our businesses and communities. Energetics’ climate strategists Robyn Ashton and Anna Kuiper are joined by Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick who is an expert in heat waves and their effects. 

Featuring: Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, UNSW Canberra and chief investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and Anna Kuiper, Consultant

Our host: Aidan Ashton, Head of Decarbonisation

Note: The information and commentary in this podcast is of a general nature only and does not take into account the objectives, financial situation or needs of any particular individual or business. Listeners should not rely upon the content in this podcast without first seeking advice from a professional.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to the energetics exchange podcast conversations with energy and climate experts. Please note that the information and commentary in this podcast is of a general nature only, and does not take into account the objectives, financial situation, or needs of any particular individual or business business should not rely on the content in this podcast without first seeking advice from a professional,

Speaker 2: 0:30

Hello, and welcome to the energetics exchange podcast. I'm Robin Ashton, climate risk and strategy advisor here at energetics. As we are recording this podcast across multiple locations and in the spirit of reconciliation, energetics acknowledges for traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and the connections to land sea and community, we pay our respects to elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait island people today on the 9th of August, the United nations intergovernmental panel on climate change, VIPC released its sick assessment report for report is a comprehensive analysis of a physical science associated with climate change. And with its release, VIPC announced that climate change is widespread, rapid and intensifying. Today. We want to explore what the findings mean in physical terms for Australia and potential impacts for Australian businesses and our communities. I am joined by my colleague and fellow climate risk consultant and a coupon Ana is a lawyer with expertise in international and domestic climate policy settings, regulation, compliance, and climate related litigation. Welcome Anna. Thank you Robin. I'm also delighted to be joined by Dr. Sarah Perkins coat. Patrick. Sarah is a 2017 future fellow awardee at the school of science, you and SW Canberra. She was previously based at a climate change research center at UN w Sydney. And he's currently a chief investigator with the arc center of excellence for climate extremes. Thank you for joining us today, Sarah. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. So Sarah, if we can just start very high level, what are the main headline findings of AR six for you? So I think

Speaker 3: 2:20

The biggest one is climate change is unequivocal. The climate is staging and where to blame for that. So as you mentioned in your introduction, this is the sixth phase of the IP sec process. Um, there's been going on for about 30 years now. There's been six reports over that years. And with each report that sort of certainty around the fact that eight of climate is changing and B it's because of us has only increased. And now we're at the stage where it's irrefutable it, you know, so that, that's the, I think the main finding that he feels one finding of IPC, that would be it. Um, but there's also important findings around, you know, the viability of limiting global warming to both 1.5 and two degrees warming. Yes, it's not completely off the table if some miracle happened tomorrow, but for all intents and purposes, it's just completely out of reach by now. And the IP CSA states that, you know, really, we only have seven or eight years and drastic cuts to do, to actually limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So it's just, it's not economically possible. Um, you know, there's also a lot more confidence around other, um, statements they make. So, you know, for example, changes in extremes like heat waves, droughts, uh, rainfall extremes, the certainty around those statements has drastically increased. I think since the last IPC report and also, you know, something that's close to my heart is, um, understanding the human influence behind specific extreme events that that sort of research field has heavily developed in the last seven or eight years. So there's a lot, we know a lot more information and have a lot more information about how climate change is driving, um, specific, extreme events. So, you know, we can kind of, we can actually say that, yes, depending on the extreme of that, that you're looking at climate change is playing a pivotal

Speaker 2: 3:57

Role. Okay. So in your[inaudible] you mentioned Facebook is around two degrees, three degrees warming. Um, we see those butted about the media quite a lot in terms of, uh, the climatic heating. Um, but what does it actually mean for our kind of day-to-day experiences of weather systems?

Speaker 3: 4:17

Yeah, so it's, it's really hard and I do struggle with this, you know, trying to explain, well, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 degrees warming choose your threshold, what it means on a day to day scale. It's not, you know, on a day to day scale, sometimes five degrees sounds really nice, especially right now in the middle of winter, but it's not about necessarily what happens on a day to day, how it influences, um, you know, things like climate extremes, there's certain events that might occur on a day-to-day scale. Um, and how extreme that bay and how like how intense though based. So it's, it's difficult to pick up what those changes mean every single day of the year, whether it's now or in 2050 or 2100, but we can certainly say, well, you know, we thought that extra threshold of warming, so there'll be certain changes that we expect to see around that threshold. So for example, there's certain increase that we might see in heat wave frequency or the certain intensity we might expect, expect for heat waves at that intensity, or how will extreme rainfall change. Once we reached 2, 3, 4 degrees warming. So it's more about looking at certain types of events and other shifts in the climate as well. Not so much about the day-to-day scale, um, that there is some research, I guess, suggesting that certain systems might change with this level of certain levels of warming. Um, but I don't really think that I PCC went into too much detail about that. Cause there's a lot of research going into that and, um, it is difficult to say on that day to day scale.

Speaker 2: 5:37

So sticking with extremes, um, you gave some good examples where around so, uh, heat waves, um, extreme rain events, I guess. Do you have an idea of save a magnitude of change of those extreme events?

Speaker 3: 5:53

Yeah, it depends. So I find heat waves for a living, so I know a lot about them. Um, it depends where you are. So tropical regions, I think north Australia think, you know, um, uh, SAFT Asia, um, you know, central America they'll see larger changes in the frequency of heat waves. So that's because they already have like a really small climate distribution. And if you kind of warm that climate by just a little bit, all of a sudden these extreme events are occurring much more often. So they'll say a lot more heatwaves, but it's the higher latitudes. So, you know, I think maybe like Tazzy, even Adelaide and Melbourne, um, especially places like Siberia and Northern Europe, they're going to see, they will see changes in, um, heat wave frequency, but they'll say greater changes in heat wave intensity. And that, that really scales with global warming. Um, you know, the, the more we warm, the higher that changing frequency will be. And also the higher, the intensity, um, you know, different climate models might give you different specific values, but they all show the same trend in the state, the same status in that line. So to say that with each global warming threshold, even with each half degree global warming threshold, there's a, you know, a clear shift in the frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves. It's just that those regional values that depend on, on the, you know, the baseline climate in those locations.

Speaker 2: 7:10

I know, I guess we, we have actually seen evidence of this very recently with the hitting event that we saw in Canada. Um, I know that it was a heat dome effect, but essentially it's driven by the same underlying systems. Is that correct?

Speaker 3: 7:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, heat is basically a and atmospheric system. So it's an optic system. We say that it's a high pressure system or heat wave to somewhat join to a high pressure system and allow, and a heat domain just basically allows the heat to build up in the atmosphere. The high pressure system is stable and the heat can't go anywhere. It just stays under that high pressure system and it just builds up and, you know, feeds into itself. Um, and that can happen anyway. We've had them here in Australia, heatwave and fees ago in Sydney was attributed to one, like there was a hate time at that time, but we've also gotta remember that, you know, with a heat dome and a change in the baseline climate, which is just over one degree Celsius globally speaking, there's more heat to build up. And not only is there more heat on one day, but if the heatwave lasts for 10 days, you've got that curative effect over the 10 days. So that, that makes them worse. And that's effectively what happened over the Northern U S and Canada. These heat waves went on forever and, you know, records were absolutely smashed. So it's that kind of combination of what we would call a natural driver, which is that heat dome and climate change kind of exacerbating those conditions. And that's, that's, unfortunately that's going to come more often, um, dependent on the global warming threshold that we won't buy.

Speaker 2: 8:31

Okay. So if we shift our view a little closer to the home, um, one of the recent kind of extreme events we have experienced was with the 20 19 20, 20 summer Bush fires. Um, and we saw catastrophic devastation essentially across Southern Australia. Um, at the time the adjective that was used to describe these fires was unprecedented. Can you explain why they were viewed as unprecedented,

Speaker 3: 9:02

Your experience experienced anything like that before? Never. So it was also 2019 was our hottest and, you know, one of our drivers to use on record. So it's like extremes already being smashed in that regard and those conditions primed, um, the bushfire season. And on top of that, going into summer, we had what we called a positive notion dipole phase, which is a hot summer hot spring effectively only lasts for a few months, but it was another primer. And then you've got climate change on top of that. So all of those ingredients basically made this, I guess, perfect cake for hot weather and bushfire weather to occur. And we just never said anything of that extremity, the fires were incredibly hot. Um, we'd never seen anything of, you know, basically the whole Southeast coast of Australia, Bernie at the one time. So the area like the extent, um, and you know, the, you know, how much was going on at that particular point in time, you know, anecdotally, my husband's an RSP RFS member and we were watching the footage of the news and, you know, the ground was burned, basically it was Ash and I can't remember the exact temperature he said, but he said for that to burn and for it to be Ash, it's a hugely intense fire and it's not something that he's ever experienced in his firefighting career. So it's, you know, those sorts of, you know, that, that sheer intensity and the fact that we had lots of what we call pirates, cumulonimbus fire. So they're the fires that go all the way up into the atmosphere and interact with the atmosphere basically right there and where the system and there's, you know, lightning and thunder and it's, you know, they're pretty terrible, pretty frightening. We had a load of those. Um, and there are any associated with the most severe fire weather conditions. And unfortunately with climate change, you are expected to see more of them. And, you know, I guess 20, 19 20 20 was, you know, a window into the future that these types of, you know, when a fire occurs, there's a much greater probability that it will be a lot worse.

Speaker 2: 10:44

So you've just described VM as a window into the future. I guess one question I do have is where they unforeseen no

Speaker 3: 10:54

Straight up, no. So which way is the complex? It's not something like gateways or it's just reliant on one climate variable heatwaves are basically relying on, on temperature. They can also be, um, humidity can also be incorporated with them, but, you know, temperatures, the main driver of a heat wave, which fires you've got heat. You've also got humidity, you've got wind and you've got dryness. It's, that's how the FDR, the forest fire danger index is measured. Um, so it's not just a change in one variable that matters, you know, sometimes there's changes in all of them in saying that, I mean, there was a report put out by CSRO, I think 10 or 15 years before the fires saying, well, you know, in the next 10 or 15 or 20 years, we expect on average to see higher fire danger weather. And that's exactly what we, what we, what happened. Um, on top of that, you know, that there's evidence that a lot of evidence that the bushfire season is increasing and now going into spring time, um, and the fires started, you know, before summer. So sometimes that happens. That's not, you know, that the bushfire season starting duper early, but that's where most of the fires were. It was definitely before Christmas or around Christmas, new years. I didn't really go into January or February, but also a lot of it was happening in, in November too. So we're having that springtime effect. So, you know, and a lot of that's driven by the fact that the temperatures are going up because of climate change. We're having more heat waves that more rapidly dry out as fuel. Um, and also, you know, droughts can be worse, especially in certain parts of Australia to, to climate change. So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't something that we didn't predict or it didn't, it didn't catch us by surprise in that way. It's, don't get me wrong. What happened was absolutely truly catastrophic and shocking and unprecedented. Yes. But I hate to say it. I wasn't really that surprised if it didn't happen in 20, 19, 20 20. And you know, it may happen in a couple of years. It might've happened a couple of years before, but the conditions, at least in terms of climate change was certainly favorable.

Speaker 2: 12:44

Okay. So over to Anna, if we're saying that these extreme events on unforeseen, um, what are the legal implications for businesses? Thank

Speaker 4: 12:56

Robin, as bushfires and other natural hazards become more foreseen rather than unforeseen companies, um, have the risk of becoming subject to large legal and reputational risks for not acting early enough as physical events, such as drought to post-fire shifts from abnormal to normal over time, liability risk will increase liability often depends on the first day of ability of events happening. And it's quite likely on the basis of the climate science, but more, more recently AR seeks that either the foreseeability as community changed or that the legal definition for foreseeability when it comes to climate hazards, um, becomes looser. And by way of example, of how such a duty of care can evolve, um, in the 2009 black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, the company alls net services was found negligent to, um, because they caused a bushfire. And, um, in that case, if Victorian bushfire Royal commission had found that the Bush fire was caused by all net. So it's clearly more easy to prove. Um, and it's understandable that start to causation and therefore negligence is, um, more difficult to prove if it's caused by climate change, but that doesn't mean that businesses get a free pass case law and legal opinions. And, um, the scientific proof have been establishing that such a legal duty of care also exists for businesses when it comes to climate related events and this evolves as the science matures. So that's why I think the come out of AR six is very important for any legal implications for businesses. It's a foreseeable risk for companies. And if you don't act on that, you will face legal Constance.

Speaker 2: 14:41

So we now have climate events, particular, the extremes are foreseeable. We have the litigation and duty of care on not just businesses, governments. Well, Sarah, how do we bring science and business together to collaborate

Speaker 3: 14:57

Interesting and very tricky question. And I think it's something that we've done a lot of in the past, but it's certainly time we do a lot of it now. Um, I think, you know, we speak very different languages. You know, scientists are generally conservative by nature. We generally don't know how to talk to businesses and some of us may not even want to, but I think moving forward, we need to, we've got a lot of information about, you know, what these risks mean, you know, potential uncertainties in projections, what we can say about certain extreme events compared to others, for example, and that's really important information. So if you have to disclose for risks, you know, we can help, um, you know, give you that. Well, we can give you that information, which, which might help it'll hopefully help make your risk assessment, um, much more robust, but how, how to get that going. I'm not sure. I know a lot of companies are trying to have climate specialists in there. I kind of send an inverted comments. I'm not actually sure though, if they are climate specialists, um, you know, people in academia, for example, this is their whole lives. You know, they've been at uni for eight years, they're at PhD level or they're professional professors, you know, that they've gone all the way through and their professors. Now there's a wealth of information there. However, people working potentially employed in these positions may not have that information. So I guess what I'm getting at there is, I don't think a lot of companies are doing enough at the moment. They might say, oh, you know, we've got a climate person on our team, but it's just one person. Um, we need to be doing better than that. Maybe, you know, if, if someone, if a business wants to have their own in-house team or make it actually a team and make it a good team and consult with academics on what that team should look like and the expertise that they should have, additionally, we can, you know, a lot of us are open to working together. Um, whether it's going for grants or just, you know, in consulting or some sort of partnership, I'm not actually sure what that might look like. Um, but it certainly doesn't hurt to approach us and, you know, get the discussion going. Um, I think if I'm really candid, I think businesses need to be doing a better job than what they currently are.

Speaker 2: 16:56

Do you think on the other side, VAV is also the argument that, um, climate scientists have a responsibility to make this information more accessible.

Speaker 3: 17:05

That's a difficult one. So I personally think I enjoy doing that on, you know, clearly do a lot of communication activities and I think we have to make the information accessible somehow. Absolutely. But I don't think that always falls on the academics, you know, that they're not trained for that. They probably did get in their job to do that. They're there to do the research and they think differently to breaking down information for a general audience or for a particular purpose, like businesses. That's not really what they're trained to do, you know, whether or not there's a middle person to do that. Uh, we, you know, for example, in the center I work at, we have a couple of knowledge proteins, and there's a go between like he Roman, you know, that's, that's, that's a great step. Someone, I guess, someone who is a Trent translator, right. That's, that's what we need. Um, yes, academics might, especially in the climates. See, we might need to work with knowledge brokers. I think that's perfectly acceptable, but I don't think the owners should particularly be on academics to do that. I mean, you know, agile is usually just research, not just research, it's research, going for grants teaching and on something like communication, which a lot of academics probably don't want to do, or don't have the skills to do, probably going to send them over the edge. But having that sort of middle person there I think is, is probably a better, um, a better option.

Speaker 2: 18:20

So with bushfires, um, we've discussed Outland, the impacts that they have. They're very real, they're very destructive. But if we look at say heat waves, which we can also describe as an extreme event of the individual and systemic impacts of those can be a little more nuanced. Sarah, can you describe some of the impacts that we might experience during a heat wave? Oh,

Speaker 3: 18:46

There's so many.

Speaker 2: 18:48

Exactly. And so ma maybe let's okay. Let's, let's narrow it down a little bit to say, um, the effect on say infrastructure, something like the energy network and, uh, say the health of an outdoor worker. So I'm

Speaker 3: 19:03

Going to start with human health. I might just talk more about just an outdoor worker. So currently when extreme heat experience, usually with a heat wave, it lasts for a few days. At least it's not just a single day. Most people can cope with a single day of hate if they hate persists. Usually it's the old, the sick, the very young and pregnant women who are affected most by the heat. Um, however that's likely to shift if we're experiencing these heat waves more often and more intense, they go for longer people who work outside, people who exit are exercising 45 degree hate. Um, people are outside just having fun, you know, barbecue on the weekend. For example, they're more, if they will be more effected by the extreme hate. So that kind of shift in the population, if it will be effected pen and mood change, especially as climate change intensifies. So, you know, you get heat exhaustion that may change into heat stroke. We're very far, our bodies are very fine tuned to a certain temperature threshold. And if we go a few degrees over that, we're literally toast. So that's something that we need to keep in mind. The interesting thing about how it affects human health is you don't usually die from heat. It usually exacerbates an online condition. Perhaps if you're sick with heart disease or you have an issue with your kidneys, it will exacerbate that condition. That will usually be the cause of death. You know, if you do, you know, suffer from heat stroke, that's still not usually from the death certificate, it's usually something else. So it's sometimes really hard to quantify the actual effect, um, of mortality rates due to hate, um, the electricity supply. So during hotter weather, the ability for the network to transmit, meet electricity, um, reduces greatly. Um, and there's also the added pressure of everyone who can afford one turning on their air conditioning through me. Cool. And not only do they turn them on, a lot of people turn them onto like 16 or 18 degrees, not something that's perfectly livable, such as 27 degrees, especially if you're in a city like Sydney or Brisbane, that puts a huge strain on the network. I remember being in Sydney and there was calls for people to turn up the air conditioners, not necessarily turn them off, but turn them up. So they weren't straining the energy network as much. Of course, if you've got solar panels on your roof that helps you're not straining the network. Um, but there's certainly issues not only with population increase, but with heat increase going to the future. And,

Speaker 2: 21:18

Uh, given the far reaching impacts of heat waves. But Sarah has just described what can businesses do to better understand their risk profile? I think

Speaker 4: 21:27

A starting point for businesses should be to incorporate climate related risks into their risk registers and governance policies, such a climate hazard risk that Sarah just described will likely place a risk, very high or red colored on the company's risk register. I think of organizational health and safety, um, doing these would increase their understanding of and capacity to deal with climate related risks. And it's a crucial component that the company board has oversight of these risks. But then secondly, a next step obviously is to act on these risks and modify business strategies to make them more robust and resilient. Um, it's not just a tick box exercise in that sense, it's rather an opportunity to be responsive and proactive rather than defensive and reactive.

Speaker 2: 22:17

In recent months, we've seen court rulings demanding climate action by both federal entities and corporations. What are your messages to business and, uh, around the significance of such rulings, I'm thinking in particular, um, the landmark case in the Netherlands, uh, which shell, yes,

Speaker 4: 22:36

The argumentation in the showcase was very interesting. It was, um, again, this breach of the duty of care, that was the reasoning was based on the best available science, which at the time was actually the IPCCs fifth assessment report or[inaudible]. Um, the science has only expanded since AR six came out and that the court held that shells, unsound and insufficient climate policy might be seen as an event giving rise to damage. And so my advice to businesses would be to acknowledge that this duty of care is legally evolving and it has now also been tested successfully in courts. This means that simply disclosing climate related risks is no longer sufficient. Shell has been legally ordered to reduce its emissions significantly in line with the Paris agreements and company directors should take proactive steps and disclose not only risks, but also take positive action and design and implement strategies to deliver on their climate commitments at the national level in May, 2021, the federal court of Australia, that the Commonwealth minister for the environment of illegal duty of care to avoid causing personal injury to children when deciding in its approval of a coal mine expansion in new south Wales,

Speaker 2: 23:57

It's very easy for us to look at the findings of ASX, um, and see new stories from the media streams of the outcome of extreme events, such as the heat wave in Canada, where many people lost their lives due to heat related illnesses, such as the displacement of our fellow Australians during the Bush fires. Sarah, given what we see in AR six, given the impacts of these extreme events, how do you remain inspired and determined?

Speaker 3: 24:34

I know, I guess I kind of think, well, no, not. I kind of think, I do think something's got to give and it's got to give some hopefully sometime soon. So I would have liked to have thought that black summer was the catalyst for change in this country. Unfortunately just led to a gas recovery, but that's another conversation something's got to give, something's going to happen. It's just going to be so bad that we simply cannot ignore this anymore. Now I hope that it's not, you know, lives are lost in that sort of catastrophe, but I do think that's what it's going to take to kind of kick out butts into gear, to really be serious about reducing emissions show. We're not going to reach 1.5 or even two degrees global warming. We're actually going to overshoot that and go further. But I am pretty certain, we're pretty optimistic that we will limit warming to well below four or five degrees Celsius. I'm hopeful. And I think it will be somewhere between three and 3.5 degrees Celsius globally speaking. Yes. That really drastically increases the frequency and intensity of many extremes, not just extreme heat. Um, but that's better than what would happen if we do reach four or five degrees Celsius. So I think, yes, we should be doing absolutely, absolutely everything we can, as soon as we can. That's that's, you know, that shouldn't have to be said, that's, you know, we should be doing more and doing it sooner, but I don't think it will be as bad as the highest or the worst emissions scenario that the EPCC uses. Um, it's just unfortunate that it might take a couple more cause catastrophes to get there. Um, I guess I'm just motivated because you know, being a mom of two young kids and looking at their peers. So, you know, I'm not just interested in my own kids' wellbeing. I'm thinking about their entire generation. They didn't cause this, they didn't destroy the planet like we have, or like the people before us have, why should they inherit a world that's worse in worse condition than what we inherited. Um, you know, we need to do better. It's plain and simple. It's not fair on them. It's certainly not fair on the planet. So it, we just simply need to do better. And that's that's I guess what keeps me going that there's gotta be something better than this. There's gotta be a better response in this. So let's just keep going until that response actually comes into action.

Speaker 2: 26:44

Thank you, Sarah. And thank you Anna to our listeners. This is the second in a free pout series. We are running on the IPCCs AR six report. Look out for our third podcast, which features a conversation with Juliette bell who leads the climate resilience enterprise mission at the sorrow. If you have any questions arising from today's discussion, please feel free to contact energetics by our website. Or if you're a client, please reach out to be your energetics

Speaker 1: 27:12

Energetics exchange podcast conversations with energy and climate experts.