Orange doctor Kevin Parton looks at possibility of climate change across Australia

Dr Kevin Parton has lived in Orange for 21 years and has spent decades teaching and researching climate change policy, as well as having published more than 100 internationally refereed journal articles.

With the most recent flooding event in Eugowra and other Central West towns attracting national attention, the question was posed to Dr Parton of whether more weather events like this could be expected any time soon and if climate change was the main reason for the devastation.

To put things simply, it's just too early to tell.

"To the average person on the street, it seems like (natural disasters) are happening much more regularly than they are," he said.

"To the average person, we've got some sort of change in the climate. But as far as scientific analysis is concerned, nobody knows the answer to the question, 'are the recent, repeated phases of wet weather the result of climate change'. Nobody knows, there's not enough data yet to say if they are or not in a scientific sense."

So what does Dr Parton mean when he says there's not enough data?

Well, the former head of Charles Sturt University Orange campus said there had not yet been a long enough sequence of years like what the Central West was currently experiencing, know whether it was atypical or not.

"That's the conundrum that typically faces us," he added.

As a long-time resident of Orange, Dr Parton has also found himself feeling like disastrous weather events - such as floods (2022), droughts (2019) and fires (2018) - are more common nowadays.

"I'm fed up with this weather," he sad.

"It seems like for three years we've had wetter than normal conditions, summers that aren't actually proper summers and I didn't sign up and live in Orange for this kind of thing.

"I hate this business, particularly in Eugowra, of people getting their houses washed out all the time. I hate it, but I'm kind of reacting like the person on the street. Science doesn't know the answer yet and that raises the question of how you could scientifically find out whether this is a climate change event or not."

He said there were three ways to try and asses whether climate change was directly impacting the Central West with these large scale events.

The first was to wait for a long enough period of years to see whether there was a sequence of atypical years.

"The current sequence is no longer than has been seen before in Australia," Dr Parton said.

"You look back over the 115 years worth of rainfall data and you will see there have been sequences of years like the one we've had and so you can't claim they're not typical over that 100 year period.

"But if you've got a few more years banked on the end of it from now, you'd certainly start to get evidence that there was a long enough period to claim that it was climate change."

He said if the same conversation was had in four years time, with the weather remaining largely the same over that period, then he would likely say the evidence would point towards climate change.

Dr Parton said the second way to judge if this flooding could be put down to climate change was to see whether there was a pattern in the weather. But he said that once again, there was not enough data currently available to determine one way or another.

The third way was to study more closely what drives the climate, with that largely being ocean currents and ocean temperatures.

"All of us as individuals, even me, are influenced by the way in which the last couple of years seem to be descriptive of a new climate, but actually if you go an look at the climate record, we've seen all this before. You can't yet claim this is anything new," Dr Parton said.

"It's all emphasising that we haven't seen enough years yet."

As for here and now, like many around the Central West, Dr Parton has the utmost sympathy for those doing it tough in those flood-affected areas.

"My immediate personal response to the floods is to feel very sorry for the people who have had their houses gutted by them," he said.

"Like any normal person, you hear stories about what goes on at Eugowra and it's really sad. It's really tough on those people, it's one of the toughest things that can hit someone when your home gets flooded out with water.

"I have great sympathy for those people."