A heat wave, sometimes known as extreme heat, is a period of abnormally hot weather. High humidity often accompanies heat waves. This is especially the case in oceanic climate countries. Definitions vary but are similar. We usually measure a heat wave relative to the usual climate in the area and to normal temperatures for the season. Temperatures that people from a hotter climate consider normal can be called a heat wave in a cooler area. This would be the case if the warm temperatures are outside the normal climate pattern for that area. Heat waves have become more frequent, and more intense over land, almost everywhere since the 1950s. This is due to climate change.
Sir John Theodore Houghton was a Welsh atmospheric physicist who was the co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) scientific assessment working group which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with Al Gore. He was the lead editor of first three IPCC reports. He was professor in atmospheric physics at the University of Oxford, former Director General at the Met Office and founder of the Hadley Centre.
John Alexander Church is an expert on sea level and its changes. He was co-convening lead author for the chapter on Sea Level in the IPCC Third Assessment Report. He was also a co-convening lead author for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. He is a member of the Joint Scientific Committee of the WCRP. He was a project leader at CSIRO, until 2016. He is currently a professor with the University of New South Wales' Climate Change Research Centre.
Climate change affects the physical environment, ecosystems and human societies. Changes in the climate system include an overall warming trend, more extreme weather and rising sea levels. These in turn impact nature and wildlife, as well as human settlements and societies. The effects of human-caused climate change are broad and far-reaching. This is especially so if there is no significant climate action. Experts sometimes describe the projected and observed negative impacts of climate change as the climate crisis.
Ann Henderson-Sellers is an Emeritus Professor of the Department of Environment and Geography at Macquarie University, Sydney. She was the Director of the Joint Planning Staff (JPS) of the World Climate Research Programme in 2006 and 2007 and was the Director of the Environment Division at ANSTO from 1998 to 2005. She was the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology from 1996–1998. Prior to this she was the founding director of the Climatic Impacts Centre at Macquarie University where she continues to hold a Professorship in Physical Geography.
The Burtoni Award was created in 2003 by a group of leading experts and policy makers in the field of climate change. It is named for the Canadian science pioneer Ian Burton. Its purpose is to recognize outstanding contributions to the science of adaptation to climate change. The award is named after the first recipient of the award, Ian Burton, an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto and a pioneer in the field of adaptation to climate change and extreme events and disasters. Ian has contributed to three assessment reports of the IPCC and the recent Special Report on Extremes (SREX).
Andrew John Pitman is a British-Australian atmospheric scientist.
Climate change has been a critical issue in Australia since the beginning of the 21st century. Australia is becoming hotter and more prone to extreme heat, bushfires, droughts, floods, and longer fire seasons because of climate change. Climate issues include wildfires, heatwaves, cyclones, rising sea levels, and erosion.
Michael James Salinger is a New Zealand climate change researcher and teacher who has worked for a range of universities in his home country and around the world. He was a senior climate scientist for a Crown Research Institute, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), and President of the Commission for Agricultural Meteorology of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). He has received several awards and other honours for his work with climate change and is involved in researching and monitoring past and current climate trends. Within his area of specialist scientific knowledge, Salinger has co-authored and edited a range of reports, articles and books. He was involved in an employment dispute and elements of his theory and practice were at the centre of a case against NIWA.
Joanna Dorothy Haigh is a British physicist and academic. Before her retirement in 2019 she was Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London, and co-director of the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment. She served as head of the department of physics at Imperial College London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), and a served as president of the Royal Meteorological Society.
Penelope Whetton was a climatologist and an expert in regional climate change projections due to global warming and in the impacts of those changes. Her primary scientific focus was Australia.
Julie Michelle Arblaster is an Australian scientist. She is a Professor in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University. She was a contributing author on reports for which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Arblaster was a lead author on Chapter 12 of the IPCC Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report in 2013. She has received the 2014 Anton Hales Medal for research in earth sciences from the Australian Academy of Science, and the 2017 Priestley Medal from the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. She has been ranked as one of the Top Influential Earth Scientists of 2010-2020, based on citations and discussion of her work.
The contributions of women in climate change have received increasing attention in the early 21st century. Feedback from women and the issues faced by women have been described as "imperative" by the United Nations and "critical" by the Population Reference Bureau. A report by the World Health Organization concluded that incorporating gender-based analysis would "provide more effective climate change mitigation and adaptation."
Caroline C. Ummenhofer is a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she studies extreme weather events with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean. Ummenhofer makes an effort to connect her discoveries about predicting extreme weather events and precipitation to helping the nations affected.
A marine heatwave is a period of abnormally high ocean temperatures relative to the average seasonal temperature in a particular marine region. Marine heatwaves are caused by a variety of factors, including shorter term weather phenomena such as fronts, intraseasonal events, annual, or decadal (10-year) modes like El Niño events, and longer term changes like climate change. Marine heatwaves can have biological impacts on ecosystems at individual, population, and community levels. MHWs have led to severe biodiversity changes such as coral bleaching, sea star wasting disease, harmful algal blooms, and mass mortality of benthic communities. Unlike heatwaves on land, marine heatwaves can extend for millions of square kilometers, persist for weeks to months or even years, and occur at subsurface levels.
Linda Opal Mearns is a geographer and climate scientist specializing in climate change assessment science. Mearns is a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Mearns is the director of NCAR's Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Program (WCIASP) and head of the Regional Integrated Sciences Collective (RISC). Mearns is a lead principal investigator for the North American Regional Climate Change Program (NARCCAP).
Opha Pauline Dube or Pauline Dube is a Botswanan environmental scientist and Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Botswana. She co-authored the IPCC's Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. She is one of fifteen scientists creating the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report for the United Nations.
Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick is an Australian climate scientist and expert in heatwave research. She was awarded a NSW Young Tall Poppy in 2013 and received the Dorothy Hill award in 2021. She has extensive science communication experience.
Tracy Ainsworth is a marine biologist and Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, working on coral reefs, and the biology of the Great Barrier Reef. Her research covers the biology of stresses, cells, disease, immunity and symbiosis. She was awarded the Dorothy Hill Medal for science, from the Australian Academy of Science, for research on coral reef, stresses and impacts of temperature on coral health.
Andréa Sardinha Taschetto or A. S. Taschetto; Andréa Taschetto is a climate change scientist at the University of New South Wales, and winner of the Dorothy Hill award. She was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship in 2016. Her research has contributed to improved understanding of the role of oceans, on climate variability at regional scales, and from seasonal to mulit-decade timescales. This research also has assisted with future climate projections.
