Emerging Scientist awarded for work on climate change and extreme weather
Media Release: Te Puiaki Kaipūtaiao Maea | Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize
Dr Luke Harrington, who leads the Climate Extremes and Societal Impacts research group at The University of Waikato, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato, has won the Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize.
Dr Harrington has developed novel analytical methods to quantify the effects of climate change on likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world.
His research team uses these findings to inform policies in New Zealand and globally, helping to mitigate risks and determine priorities for adaptation.
“My research focuses on how climate change affects extreme weather and how that flows through to affecting people – both today but also into the future as well.”
Dr Harrington credits the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, about former United States presidential candidate Al Gore, for motivating him to learn more about climate change, but perhaps in a different way to most people.
“I thought the film was very misleading and simplistic. They said that all extreme weather was due to climate change. And I thought: ‘what about the past? You can have things happen in a world without climate change’.”
“If anything, it was wanting to disprove some of the assumptions of Al Gore that got me into this area of research.”
Dr Harrington wanted to understand the scientific basis behind climate variations. “I wanted to get into the details of what we can and can’t say about what’s happening.”
Studying climate change brought together his favourite subjects. “To understand how things are happening in the climate as a whole, you actually need elements of physics, chemistry, biology, maths, and geography as well. It was the perfect fit.”
But Dr Harrington soon found it was “very tricky” to identify when climate change is emerging, relative to the background noise of weather variability.
“That’s where some of the leading-edge elements of our research comes from, actually interrogating what we could see. We want to understand how these different flavours of extreme weather are getting worse. And then, how can we use that information to inform risk management plans, particularly at a government level?
“We want to make sure that the impacts of those events don’t increase, even as the hazards themselves do.”
New Zealanders have tended to think of sea-level rise and extreme rainfall as the main climate change hazards for our country, but Dr Harrington’s research team has also been looking at other hazards, such as drought, given that rainfall could potentially either increase or decrease during summer months.
“We’ve explored what a plausible worst-case-scenario drought could be in a warmer world. And we’re using that information to feed into adaptation plans for drought, both for the primary sector, but then also for things like drinking water availability in the future as well.”
His team has worked on extreme heat, which has been somewhat overlooked as a hazard for New Zealand.
“This work led to the development of a pilot heat-alert system with MetService. Now the Ministry of Health has developed their own national adaptation plan, which has extreme heat as a really foundational part of that.”
Adapting communication to specific groups is important to Dr Harrington.
“We tailor the message to what matters to different audiences. If we’re talking to someone at central government level, the key point we are focusing on will be completely different to when we are talking to the public.”
“We use a range of tools, whether it’s simple infographics to communicate the key messages, op-eds for the news media, or face-to-face presentations.”
In recommending Dr Harrington for this Prize, the expert panel was impressed with his work to calculate the contribution of human activities to extreme weather events, and the translation of these results to mitigate risks to society.
“Dr Harrington’s findings are already informing policies and priorities for adaptation and should help to quantify and mitigate economic costs. His skills and knowledge are now globally recognised.”
While he is personally gratified that his research has been recognised, he says the larger benefit of winning the Prize is to raise awareness of extreme weather and climate change.
“All of these different types of extreme weather events that we’re seeing are worsening in a warming world. If we can bring that front-of-mind and get people to think about how we are going to do better in the future, that would be a real positive of winning this Prize.”