Trends in Australia’s climate means and extremes: a global context

Australia, described in Dorothea Mackellar's 1904 poem My Country as the country of ‘drought and flooding rains’, may be better placed than most to adapt to changes in climate extremes. However, climate change might shift extremes towards conditions that will stress vulnerable systems such as Australia’s unique ecosystems (Pittock et al. 2001). There is growing evidence that the global changes in extremes that have been observed in recent decades (e.g., Aust. Met. Mag. 56 (2007) 1-18