The Climate and Weather Node will deliver a targeted Masters program with students conducting various research projects to better understand climate and weather extremes of relevance to bushfires and floods and their impacts. MPhil project topics include everything from investigations of rainfall extremes and flash droughts to climate drivers and fire weather.

As of May 2026, nine projects were underway and one completed.

Erin Barr - Stalling Cyclones
David Bee Olmedo - How heavy rainfall may increase in a warming climate
Senan Gill - Weather types responsible for IFDs
Yajat Goswami - Flood intelligence using AI
Shrija Guragain - Impacts of climate change on effectiveness of nature-based flooding solutions
Samantha Lee - Numerical weather model to study the impacts of major bushfires on air quality in NSW
Jonathan Van Leeuwen - Links between flash droughts and bushfires
Sima Rahmani - Topographic Drivers of Lightning Ignition
Sylvia Wang - How will the probability of temporally compounding extreme events change with climate change?
Patrick Wilcox - NARCliM2.0 predicting spatial / temporal distribution of compounding events

(Image: Adobe Stock Photo)