Dr. Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer at the Australian National University. She served as a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and is the author of Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia. Joëlle has also contributed chapters to The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg, and Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua.

JOËLLE GERGIS

We're really starting to witness serious climate extremes that can no longer be ignored. And the IPCC, one of our key conclusions to that report was that effectively the human fingerprint on the climate system is now undeniable. It is now an established fact that we have warmed every single continent, every ocean basin on the planet. And again, that's a pretty serious thing to contemplate that human activity from the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of land has led to this energy imbalance in the earth system, which is leading to a rapidly shifting climate.

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The reason why I became a scientist, to be honest, is because of my deep love for the natural world and living in a country like Australia, which is absolutely extraordinary. You know, we have more unique plants and animals than anywhere on the planet. So more than places like Brazil or Papua New Guinea or Madagascar, these places you think of as being richly biodiverse. Australia actually tops the list, just in terms of the uniqueness of our natural environment. And so growing up in a place like that really infuses into your pores. And so I would go into these beautiful places, whether it be rainforests or the coast, which I love. And then as a young person, I was really drawn into wanting to study science. And so that's why I became a scientist. I guess I move through these landscapes in a slightly different way to say other people who maybe don't have that training, but I guess it's my love of the natural world that really is the fuel for the fire that keeps me going in this area. So I think it's fascinating, for example, that every single year trees can actually put down this growth ring and that is responding to things like temperature and rainfall. So, as long as that tree's been alive and some of these trees can grow up to 2000 years, you can have this really, really long record of climate that extends back beyond the official weather records that generally begin around about 1850 over most of the world. So it's one of these things that I just inherently find science really fascinating and being able to use these different types of records to reconstruct past climate allows us to look at these cycles of natural climate variability and then understand how they're shifting as the planet continues to warm.

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It's unbelievable to stop and think that you've got such heat extending so far into polar regions that even these places are burning in the Arctic. I mean, it's extraordinary. And not just trees but also the permafrost, the frozen soils underneath. These frozen places in the Arctic are also starting to thaw. And when they start to thaw, that releases a lot of methane. Methane is a very, very powerful greenhouse gas. And along with carbon dioxide that really combines to accelerate warming. And so this is the thing. We're witnessing these changes in our lifetime. And to think as well that you have 40-degree temperatures in the United Kingdom. I mean, that's crazy stuff, but it just goes to show that we're really starting to witness serious climate extremes that can no longer be ignored. 

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Eveline Mol with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Eveline Mol.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).