John Clarke is the Research Group Leader Regional Climate Intelligence within CSIRO. In the Climate Systems Hub, he works with scientists and practitioners within the Synthesis communication and data: Tailored information for stakeholders project.
Projections not predictions: creating plausible projections that people understand
One of the main things we do within the Regional Climate Intelligence group at CSIRO is develop projections of future climate that are plausible, and we try and do it in a way that meets the needs of the many and varied uses of climate information out there.
The work I do with NESP clearly aligns with those goals. Our project works to make sure people understand projections and involves hands on learning through our training with decision makers.
I come from a background where I’ve seen efforts to incorporate the impacts of climate change on a range of sectors. I’ve also seen the difficulty that people have with that. It can be paralysing – the complexity of the information and not knowing where to start. One of the reasons I moved to CSIRO was because I saw climate change as an existential threat to biodiversity conservation management. I wanted to get into this space to try and make a difference.
My journey from behind a camera to the middle of Australia
My working life began with an interest in natural history filmmaking. I was lucky enough to get a traineeship with ABC television in Melbourne but when I got sick of news and current affairs I pursued a degree in national park management.
I was halfway through it when I got a job in Watarrka National Park in central Australia. My mate (also called John!) and I ended up designing the Giles track, a 2-day walk from Kings Canyon to Kathleen Spring.
While I was there, I started doing work with threatened species. We had a Bilby population that we were researching and doing Recovery Management for captive breeding and release. It was disheartening watching them repeatedly get eaten by a very small number of cats in a very short space of time.
Working with threatened species and learning to consider our future climate
I ended up moving to Queensland National Parks for 15 years. I became a threatened species specialist while doing my master’s and researching the habitat requirements and behaviour of an endangered frog species – Kroombit Tinkerfrog (Taudactylus pleione).
This was where my research first linked with meteorology. There were clear links between climate and the breeding activities of the frogs, but this was very poorly understood
I set out my Master’s research to try and get a handle on this. As a part of this, I tried to understand future climate and its possible impacts on these frogs but found it extremely difficult. I made all the classic mistakes I now teach people to avoid.
Basically, I found some projections and said “these are from all of these climate models, we’re looking at a range of temperature and rainfall changes from this to that. Okay, well, I’m interested in the hottest and driest. So, I’ll take the hottest end of the temperature range and the driest end of the rainfall range and combine them.”
I plugged these into my behaviour models. I now understand I was combining data that was internally inconsistent. What I should have done was consider a range of different scenarios, each described by one ‘representative’ model. But the beauty of getting things wrong is that you learn from it.
At the time (2004) we also didn’t know what we could do about climate change, but it was becoming increasingly obvious the changes we were observing were beyond that of natural variability.
If you think about the fundamental paradigm of national parks: conservation and land management, it’s tied to our parcels of land. These have boundaries and become national parks because of their natural values – often tied to specific species of animals or plants within. But climate change means these species’ habitats are moving outside these protected boundaries and the natural values inside these spaces will be different, which means a lot of our current management techniques for these sites will stop working.
It’s such a gnarly problem and we need to be planning ahead now. That’s why I wanted to move into climate projections to be sure people had the information they need to make informed decisions.
My advice is to focus on the actions you can take
Climate change is a pretty scary problem and it’s hard to deal with. That’s part of the inaction, people just close down or focus on things that are within their control. It’s a really challenging thing and I think the way to cope is to focus on action.
I’m not the first to say this but it doesn’t matter how small an action, every action you take makes a difference.