ANU climate tool identifies end of winter by 2050

Academics from the School of Art & Design have teamed up with colleagues from the ANU Climate Change Institute on a design project, which takes existing data and communicates the impacts of climate change in a way that people can engage with and better understand. The resulting new climate tool visualises data which shows by 2050, Australians will no longer enjoy winter as they know it today and will experience a new season the designers are calling "New Summer". New Summer represents a period of the year where temperatures will consistently peak in many cases well above 40ºC for a sustained period. Using the tool, people can click on thousands of locations across Australia to see how the local weather in their home town will change by 2050. "We looked at the historical average temperatures of each season and compared them to the projected data and what we find everywhere is that there's really no period of a sustained or lasting winter," said Dr Geoff Hinchliffe, Senior Lecturer (SOA&D). "In 30 years' time winter as we know it will be non-existent. It ceases to be everywhere apart from a few places in Tasmania," he said.