In mid January 2026, Australians watched in disbelief as an excessive downpour and violent flash flood swept vehicles on Victoria’s Nice Ocean Street into the ocean. Simply days earlier, the state was within the grip of catastrophic hearth situations and essentially the most harmful heatwave because the notorious Black Summer season of 2019-20. Reduce to this week, and Victoria was once more within the grip of an excessive heatwave, this one much more intense than the final.
These wild swings between climate extremes – between sizzling and dry to heavy rains and again once more – have develop into all too acquainted to Australians and to susceptible communities around the globe.
So what’s driving this new world of violent climate extremes?
Typically local weather science can appear fiendishly advanced. However in essence issues are quite simple. By burning coal, oil and gasoline we’ve got thickened up the blanket of warmth trapping gases in our ambiance, that means that as we speak our ambiance just isn’t solely hotter, but in addition wetter and packing extra power.
It signifies that heatwaves are hotter, longer and extra frequent, rainfall is extra intense, and hearth seasons are longer and extra harmful. Furthermore, with extra power to gasoline highly effective storms, and the flexibility of our hotter ambiance to absorb extra moisture, the swing from one excessive to a different has develop into extra fast and intense.
The previous is not a information for the longer term
The change within the background situations driving our climate signifies that previous climate patterns are not a great information for the current. We’re seeing excessive occasions unfold in locations and at occasions the place they by no means have earlier than, at the least not in dwelling reminiscence, that means communities usually tend to be caught off guard. Cyclones are monitoring additional south, massive wildfires are taking place approach exterior of the standard season, shifting rainfall patterns are wreaking havoc with meals manufacturing.
From Melbourne to Mozambique
The time period local weather whiplash emerged throughout our 2023-24 summer time, when an early and ferocious hearth season, pushed by an El Niño sample, gave approach unexpectedly to file breaking rains. A lethal Queensland blaze in October 2023 destroyed extra properties in that state than the notorious Black Summer season fires did. Simply weeks later, close by climate stations registered their highest November rainfall on file. Down south, early and extremely damaging fires in Gippsland, Victoria had been adopted nearly instantly by excessive rainfall and flash flooding.
For a lot of, this has come to epitomise the lived expertise of local weather change. And never simply in Australia. On the east coast of the US, 2025 noticed many communities face a number of spells of harmful warmth and humidity. Immediately, a lot of those self same communities are gripped by a lethal winter storm and excessive low temperatures.
On the west coast, in California, years of extreme drought had been adopted by exceptionally moist winters in 2022-23 and 2023-24, resulting in explosive progress of vegetation. When this file moist interval was adopted by California’s hottest summer time on file and a record-dry begin to 2025, the situations had been set for the horrific LA fires.
On the opposite aspect of the world, in Mozambique, a protracted dry interval in 2024 and 2025 noticed the nation face vital meals insecurity because of crop failure. This month, Mozambique is tragically going through a extreme humanitarian state of affairs because of excessive downpours and catastrophic flooding. Over 100 individuals have died, and near 1,000,000 affected.
Including gasoline to the hearth
Put merely, local weather change, pushed by the burning of coal, oil and gasoline, is catapulting susceptible communities from one disaster to a different. Hit by a succession of compounding disasters, with little or no time to get better, many are seeing their resilience pushed past its limits. The toll on our psychological well being has been profound.
The primary obligation of governments is to maintain our communities protected. However proper now, many are doing precisely the other. In Australia, our State and Federal Governments proceed to allow the damaging growth of fossil gasoline manufacturing. In December 2025, the Victorian Authorities, alongside Federal authorities, opened new areas for gasoline exploration within the Otway Basin, off the Victorian coast.
Each new fossil gasoline challenge will increase the longer term dangers for communities in Australia, the Pacific and around the globe.
You’ll be able to converse out towards this local weather recklessness by including your title to Greenpeace’s submission to the Federal Authorities, urging them to guard our oceans and local weather by abandoning plans for any additional gasoline exploration within the Otway Basin.
Time for a good, quick fossil gasoline section out
2026 will probably be a defining 12 months for the world’s transition away from fossil fuels.
Pacific Island nations have been working for a few years to spearhead a world phase-out of coal oil and gasoline. In just a few quick weeks, Vanuatu and Tuvalu will probably be amongst dozens of nations gathering within the coal port Santa Martha for the First Worldwide Convention on the Simply Transition Away from Fossil Gas, a robust new initiative led by the Authorities of Colombia.
In the meantime, as Australia prepares to tackle the function of President of Negotiations for COP31, we’ve got the duty to guide. Now greater than ever.
The science is unequivocal: we should transition away from fossil fuels at emergency velocity, whereas doing way more to help our communities with adapting to this new period of local weather whiplash.
The longer term is ours to decide on. Become involved.
