This report outlines the latest science on how climate change is driving more destructive heatwaves, downpours, cyclones, droughts, fires and other extreme weather events. It highlights significant events in Australia and around the world from the past two years. Taken alone, any one of the events described in this report – from Australia’s Black Summer bushfires to the record breaking North Atlantic hurricane season, or the remarkable Siberian heatwave – would mark the year as unusual. Taken together, they paint a disturbing portrait of our rapidly escalating climate emergency.

Key findings:

• 2019-20 was an exceptionally intense period for climate-fuelled extreme weather, with heavy costs felt in Australia and around the world.
• Some extreme weather events show ‘tipping point’ behaviour when a critical level of heat or drought triggers a massive, devastating event.
• Ignoring climate change is deadly. Australians are now paying the price for our own and the world’s failure to reduce emissions quickly enough or deeply enough.
• No developed country has more to lose from climate change-fuelled extreme weather, or more to gain as the world transforms to a zero-carbon economy, than Australia does.