ONLINE BRIEFING –  Thursday May 17, 12.30pm AEST

In the first study of its kind in Australasia, scientists have used 27 natural climate records to create the first large-scale temperature reconstruction for the region, over the past 1000 years.

 The study, led by researchers at the University of Melbourne, used a range of natural indicators including tree rings, corals and ice cores to reconstruct Australasian temperature over the past 1000 years. The results show that there are no other warm periods in the last 1000 years that match the warming experienced in Australasia since 1950.

Comparison with climate model data reveals that the warming cannot be explained by natural factors alone, suggesting a strong influence of human-caused climate change in the region.

This study gives an insight into the next IPCC report, as it will form the Australasian region’s contribution to the chapter on past climate of the last 1000 years. The research is published in the Journal of Climate today:

UniMelb media release

Paper

Briefing powerpoint presentation

The briefing will discuss the following issues:

• Natural variability in Australasia over last 1000 year

• How does modern climate change compare to the ‘little ice age’ and ‘medieval warm period

• How unusual is recent climate warming?

 SPEAKERS:

• Dr Joelle Gergis is an ARC Research Fellow at the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She is leader of the Past Global Changes (PAGES) working group on Australasian climate of the past 2000 years (Aus2K) and lead author of the study

•  Professor David Karoly is a Professor of Climate Science and leader of the Climate Change theme in the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne 

• Dr Steven Phipps is a research fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of New South Wales

 BRIEFING DETAILS:

DATE: Thu 17 May 2012

START TIME: 12.30pm AEST

DURATION: 30 min

VENUE: Online

For further information and instructions for logging into the event, please contact us on 08 7120 8666 or by email.

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Embargo lifted at 9.01am AEST Wed 25 April 2012

NEWS BRIEFING:  The dangers of youth – a Lancet series on adolescent health

ONLINE BRIEFING – Tue 24 April at 9.30am AEST

There are around 4.8 million adolescents (those aged 10-24 years) in Australia today, comprising around a fifth of our total population. However, new research is beginning to suggest that despite how invincible teenagers feel, when it comes to health, these are not the ‘best days of our lives’.

While half a century ago it was common for young people to settle down and have a family in their early 20s, today these milestones are delayed and the window of risk for adolescent behaviour has substantially increased.

Facebook and Twitter, along with globalisation, and urbanisation have changed traditional family and community influences. For many adolescents, modern-day youth culture now also includes fast-food, binge drinking, cyber bullying and ‘sexting’. Yet despite this being a period of high risk, there is little focus on the specific health challenges faced by adolescents while they are actually adolescents.

The 45^th Session of the United Nations Commission on Population Development takes place in New York from April 23-27. To coincide with this, The Lancet journal is launching a special series on adolescent health. Two of the Australian scientists who contributed to this series will stay up late in New York to brief Australian journalists on the key findings and how Australia fares.

SPEAKERS:

• Professor Susan Sawyer, Director of the Centre of Adolescent Health at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and University of Melbourne | Susan’s Powerpoint
• Professor George Patton, Director of Research at the Centre of Adolescent Health at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and University of Melbourne | George’s powerpoint

BRIEFING DETAILS:

DATE: Tuesday 24 April
START TIME: 9.30am AEST
DURATION: 35 min
VENUE: Online  |   A recording of the full briefing is now available here

For further information, please contact the AusSMC on 08 7120 8666 or email us.

NB:  The AusSMC generally runs two different types of media briefings:
NEWS BRIEFINGS – Where new research or data will be released as part of the briefing
BACKGROUND BRIEFINGS – Where experts discuss an issue which is in the news or an issue we consider newsworthy, but no new research or data is being released 

ONLINE BRIEFING – Thursday March 29 at 9.30am AEDT

Note: The State of the Planet declaration from the conference was released on 29th March. Download the declaration here.

More than 80 Australian scientists are in London this week attending a major international conference on the state of the planet and the most pressing issues faced by humanity – and climate change is only one of them! The relatively new field of Earth System Science takes a holistic view of the planet as a complex system, somewhat analogous to a human body. It may sound esoteric but the field is taken very seriously by scientists, who are concerned about the implications for life on earth if any part of the system is stressed or begins to fail. More than 3,000 of them have congregated in London to alert the world to trends and to discuss solutions. They monitor everything from the acidity of the oceans and the state of global fisheries to worldwide trends in deforestation and urbanization and the condition of the world’s rivers and try to understand the connections between them.

Two Australian scientists will stay up late in London to brief Australian journalists on the key findings of the conference and what politicians and the public need to consider in the lead up to the UN Rio+20 conference on sustainable development in less than three months.

Topics for discussion include:

• What are the pressure points on the Earth and why does it matter?
• Are we getting close to tipping points that, once reached, could trigger dramatic changes?
• What can be done to reduce pressure on the planet?
• What key scientific messages need to be heeded at Rio+20?

SPEAKERS:

• Dr Mark Stafford Smith, Conference co-chair and Scientific Director at CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship
• Professor Will Steffen, Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute

BRIEFING DETAILS:

DATE:  Thu 29 March 2012
START TIME: 9.30am AEDT
DURATION: 35 min
VENUE:  Online

Follow the full briefing here

*NB:  The AusSMC generally runs two different types of media briefings:
NEWS BRIEFINGS – Where new research or data will be released as part of the briefing
BACKGROUND BRIEFINGS – Where experts discuss an issue which is in the news or an issue we consider newsworthy, but no new research or data is being released

ONLINE BRIEFING: 10.00am AEDT Tue 6 March

March 11^th marks one year since the devastating Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and associated nuclear incidents. We’ve asked several experts to give an update on everything from the current situation on the ground to future nuclear power plant designs, tsunami-proofability and whether experts think that nuclear power has a future.

Listen in to the briefing to hear from Japanese, UK and Australian nuclear and tsunami experts and ask questions such as:

• What is the situation on the ground at the nuclear reactor?
• What have we learnt and can we stop it from happening again?
• When can the hundreds of thousands of evacuated residents in Fukushima return home?
• What are the implications for the nuclear power industry worldwide?
• How is the tsunami recovery going?
• Can we become tsunami-proof in the future?

SPEAKERS:

• Prof James Goff, Director of the Australia-Pacific Tsunami Research Centre and Natural Hazards Research Laboratory at the University of New South Wales and will be in Japan from March 10 for the opening of the International Disaster Prevention Centre at Tohoku University. Japanese audio translation
  

• Dr Tetsuo Sawada, Research Laboratory for Nuclear Reactors Energy Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology. He’ll be joining us from Japan. Japanese audio translation
  

• Prof Richard Wakeford, Professor Epidemiology, Visiting Professor at the Dalton Nuclear Institute at the University of Manchester. Richard was a speaker at the International Expert Symposium in Fukushima – Radiation and Health Risks held last year and was in Japan last week for the International Symposium on the Natural Radiation Exposures and Low Dose Radiation Epidemiological Studies. He worked for British Nuclear Fuels Ltd for almost 30 years until 2006. He’ll be joining us from the UK. Japanese audio translation
  

• Mr Tony Irwin, Chartered Engineer and Visiting Lecturer for the Masters course in Nuclear Science at the ANU. Tony is the Chairman of the Engineers Australia Nuclear Engineering Panel. Tony worked for British Energy in the UK for more than thirty years commissioning and operating eight nuclear power reactors. Following the Chernobyl accident he was a member of a World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) mission that reviewed operating practices at Russian RMBK reactors. In 1999 he moved to Australia and joined the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and was Reactor Manager during the construction and operation of the OPAL research reactor; he retired from ANSTO in late 2009. Japanese audio translation

• Q&A session Japanese audio translation
  

Due to time zone differences Prof Richard Wakeford will have very limited availability so please ask your questions during the briefing.

BRIEFING DETAILS:

DATE:  Tuesday 6 March
START TIME: 10am AEDT
DURATION: 45 min
VENUE:  Online

Audio files will be posted here as soon as possible after the event.

For further information, please contact the AusSMC on 08 7120 8666 or email us.

Across the world countries are having to face the serious issue of depleting water tables as the ever-increasing thirsts of agriculture and industry compete for every drop. In the US a prime example is of an aquifer that extends all the way from South Dakota to northern Texas, yet it has been lowered by nearly 50 metres. In India an aquifer that took 40,000 years to fill was emptied in just over a century, leaving the remaining water too salty and inaccessible to easily use. The problems are no different for us, we rely on underground reservoirs that have built up over thousands of years but we are draining the water far faster than it is being replaced. Amidst the controversies of the Murray-Darling Basin, coal seam gas and desalination plants, Australia is having to sit up and take notice.

An international panel of experts have come together to discuss just how bad the situation really is, what can be learned from other countries and, most importantly, what can be done.

Join the briefing to ask questions such as:

• How much water is stored and how quickly are we using it up?
• What are the contamination risks and what can we do to protect our water?
• How much does Australia’s agriculture and industry rely on groundwater? How important is it for our own drinking water?
• How do current questions over water (desalination plants, coal seam gas and the Murray Darling basin) fit into the picture and what does the future bring?
• What can we learn from other countries and what do governments need to be doing?

Follow the full presentation here |  Audio only is also available here (higher quality available on request  – 12Mb)

SPEAKERS:

• Prof Robert Glennon is Morris K. Udall Professor of Law & Public Policy at the University of Arizona, USA. He specialises in water use, is the author of Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It and was on the Advisory Board at the Centre for Comparative Water Policies and Laws, University of South Australia, Adelaide in 2011
• Prof Edward Sudicky is a Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Waterloo, Canada and currently holds a Canada Research Chair in the field of quantitative hydrogeology. He received the O.E. Meinzer Award from the Geological Society of America in 1999, the Hydrology Award from the American Geophysical Union in 2002 and the M. King Hubbert Award from the National Ground Water Association in 2007. Professor Sudicky is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America.
• Dr Leonard Konikow works at the United States Geological Survey as a research hydrologist. He has received the M. King Hubbert Science Award from USA National Groundwater Association. He was Chairman of the Hydrogeology Division of the Geological Society of America, has served on the USA National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Groundwater Modeling Assessment and was the Chairman of the American Geophysical Union’s Groundwater Committee.
• Em. Prof Ghislain de Marsily holds the position of Emeritus Professor at Pierre & Marie Curie University (UPMC) in Paris, France. He has served on numerous advisory boards including the Nuclear Waste Program of the European Commission and The Commission of Environmental Management Technology of the US National Academy of Science. He is the author of the concept of ‘Hydrogeological Natural Parks’ which suggests a protective action be taken to prevent the degradation of ground water resources.
• Prof Craig Simmons is Director of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training in South Australia and Professor of Hydrogeology at Flinders University, Adelaide. He is also a member of the National Water Commission’s Groundwater Technical Advisory Committee.

DATE: Mon Jan 23 2012
START TIME: 10.45am AEDT
DURATION:  48 min
VENUE: Sydney CBD (also available online).

For further information, please contact the AusSMC on 08 7120 8666 or email us.