Professor Ann Henderson-Sellers
Research
Professor Henderson-Sellers participates in Macquarie’s Climate Risk CORE. This CORE has the aims of focusing on the risks associated with climate change in an environment of increasing vulnerability. The Climate Risk CORE is premised on the fact that the science of climate change is now well established: governments, business and much of industry now accept the scientific evidence that climate is already changing due to human activity. Through the establishment of this CORE, and its participation in the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF), the University has accepted the challenge of how to quantify and assess climate change-associated risks for key sectors such as economies, financial markets and national security as well as more traditional impact areas including water, food and biodiversity,
Professor Henderson-Sellers research builds on the Climate Risk CORE strategy and NCCARF’s lead themes to use science and impact assessment infused by and packaged within a framework of economic, financial, and legal risk. Her research comprises an intentional re-development of traditional climate science, in which she has excelled for 30 years, to communicate directly in the language of economics, policy, and regulation. Her expertise in climate change predictions, downscaling and probability forecasting are now being directly applied to: (i) Identifying activities that have potential to contribute to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to climate change within various sectors of Australian society; (ii) Estimating the financial impact and contribution of actions to mitigation or adaptation; (iii) Developing models for governments (national, regional/state and local) to assist in guiding capital and recurrent cost and the return on investment; and (vi) Structuring such models so the results may be incorporated into ongoing analyses addressing social, environmental, economic and governance factors.
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