Andrew King awarded ARC Future Fellowship

The ARC Centre of Excellence in 21st Century Weather congratulates Chief Investigator Dr Andrew King on being awarded an ARC Future Fellowship.

Andrew is a Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Melbourne.

Andrew, who is also a former ARC DECRA Fellow, has been awarded a grant of AU$1,034,602 to conduct a four-year project titled ‘Understanding climate change beyond net-zero’.

Speaking to 21st Century Weather about the announcement, Andrew said: “I was really surprised to get the Future Fellowship and I’m super excited to work on this. 

“This research should help us understand how the climate would evolve beyond our goal of reaching net-zero. We don’t know much about how a post-net-zero climate will change and what it would mean for Australia and the extreme weather we experience, so I’m looking forward to exploring this. 

“I’ll also be looking at how climate changes and extreme events beyond net-zero depend on our greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades. This should help us better understand the long-term consequences of our current actions for global and Australian climate.”

Future Fellowships reflect the Australian Government’s commitment to excellence in research by supporting excellent mid-career researchers to undertake high-quality research in areas of national and international benefit.

“We have a broad understanding of how the climate will evolve under continued greenhouse gas emissions, but we know surprisingly little about how the climate will behave if we achieve our policy goals and reach net-zero or net-negative emissions,” Andrew wrote in the project summary.

“This project aims to fill a major knowledge gap through using new earth system model simulations to investigate the evolution of regional climates, variability in the climate system and the likelihood of damaging extreme events under different net-zero and net-negative emissions scenarios. 

“The goals of this work are to help prepare Australia for the climate changes we can expect from decarbonisation and to illustrate the climate impacts of humanity’s choices in our path to a low-carbon future.”

To read more about Future Fellowships, go to: https://www.arc.gov.au/funding-research/funding-schemes/discovery-program/future-fellowships