Research is being conducted throughout the world to track and understand climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), formed by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, reviews the scientific evidence for climate change and summarises the findings in regular assessment reports. 

In 2021, the IPCC released the first of 3 Working Group reports that would comprise the Sixth Assessment Report. It said that ‘It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed our atmosphere, ocean and land’. The remaining Working Group reports were released in 2022. A summary of what these findings mean for NSW are presented as a 2-part series of articles on AdaptNSW.

In Australia, our national scientific organisations are also assessing changes to our climate. Co-developed with the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO produce regular reports including the State of the Climate, which summarise observations of Australia’s climate and how it has changed. 

Observations, reconstructions of past climate and climate modelling continue to provide a consistent picture of ongoing, long term climate change interacting with underlying natural variability.

State of the Climate 2022

In NSW, the NSW Government leads the NSW and Australian Regional Climate Modelling (NARCliM) project, which provides regional climate projections to support local-level planning and decision making.