Hi, this is Rich Weatherall Program Manager for Climate Watch with the first video in a three-part series for university students. Climate Watch was started by Earth Watch with the Bureau of Meteorology and the University of Melbourne to understand how changes in temperature and rainfall are affecting the seasonal behaviour of plants and animals in Australia. Earth Watch is a not-for-profit organisation that has been going for over 40 years. Originally started to involve volunteers in scientific research. So the original Earth Watch model had volunteers paying to go on expeditions in remote locations with scientists and help out with data collection. Every Earth Watch project has two fundamental elements. It has volunteer participation through data collection or other tasks and scientific output. So the data collected contributes to research, peer-reviewed publications, input into policy and management. Since the start of Earth Watch, the business model has evolved to include working with business through corporate social responsibility or social investment programs. For example, with Climate Watch, the three main partners are Rio Tinto, Layton Contractors and Woodside. But we also involve staff in volunteering days and Earth Watch is evolved to work with government, so working on national programs and working with government agencies like the Bureau of Meteorology. I'll now give you a bit of background on some of the science behind Climate Watch. So Australia has a diverse range of environments. This map shows the range of different regions broken up across the country. You can include tropical rainforests in the northeast, a large semi-arid interior with a variety of different types of regions in there, even ourpine conditions down in Tasmania. So there's a diverse range of environments in Australia. When people think of the Australian landscape, they might imagine something like this from the semi-arid interior, but equally people can imagine tropical rainforest conditions like this. Australia has been experiencing a change in climate. In the last 40 years since 1960, most of Australia has experienced warming, with some areas experienced warming of up to 1 degree. Each decade has been warmer than the previous decade since the 1950s, and annual maximum temperatures have increased by 0.75 degrees since 1910. So there is a significant change in the temperature across Australia. Australia is also experiencing a change in rainfall. There's a general trend towards increased spring and summer monsoon or rainfall across Australia's north, and a decline in late autumn and winter rainfall across southern Australia. This map shows April to September rainfall, declines from 1997 to 2011 for Australia. And you also have areas of some of the highest and lowest on record. So in the southwest, there's a definite drought with some of the lowest rainfall, decline on record, and even though there have been floods and storms, there is still a decline in the southeast as well. Now with this changing climate, Australia plays a role in having input into the international panel on climate change, so the IPCC. This is where scientists from around the globe come together to explain climate change research for policy makers. So in 2007, there was the intergovernmental panel on climate change, and one of the reports was the fourth assessment report. This compiled all of the biodiversity information together from all of the researchers. There were 29,000 data sets of plants and animals species that have been affected by climate change. Now out of these 29,000 data sets from around the world, only six came from Australia and New Zealand, and none of these were nationally significant. So there is a bit of a crisis. We do not know how climate change is affecting our plants and animals. This brings me to the next video, part two, where you can find out about climate watch, one of the proposed solutions to filling this data gap. Thank you.