Typically, such extreme weather patterns are caused by El Niño events—but this year, that's not the case. Rather, all of this dramatically hot weather is down to climate change, which is having such rapid conseuqences in places like Australia that climate change-related extinctions have already taken place there: not just in the Great Barrier Reef, but also in southern, high-altitude places like Tasmania where species that need cooler weather to thrive have nowhere left to go.

IBES Director and native Australian Amanda Lynch talks more about these extreme weather events with host Robin Young on WBUR's Here & Now.