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Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick is a Professor of Climate Science in the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University. She holds a B.Sc. from Macquarie University and a PhD from UNSW Sydney, obtained in 2010. Prior to her current position, she worked at UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney, and CSIRO. Perkins-Kirkpatrick was supported by an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from 2014 to 2017 and an ARC Future Fellowship from 2017 to 2023. She currently serves as Deputy Director of Communications and Outreach in the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, Chief Investigator in the Attribution and Risk Program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, Vice President of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, and Co-Chair of the Fenner IDEA Committee.
Her research focuses on climate extremes and their projections in physical climate models, with a particular emphasis on heatwaves, including their drivers, future changes compared to the historical record, extreme event attribution isolating natural and anthropogenic contributions, and extending attribution to impacts such as health effects through interdisciplinary work with human health experts. Other areas include future projections of physiologically relevant heatwave metrics for different age groups, heatwaves in a net-zero world, marine heatwaves, detection and attribution of extreme events and impacts to climate change, the role of internal variability using large-ensemble models, compound extreme events, improving heatwave prediction and projection, interactions of heatwave mechanisms, and the influence of urban environments. She has received the Australian Academy of Science Dorothy Hill Medal in 2021, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Communication and Outreach Award in 2021 and Early Career Researcher Award in 2016, and was named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Key publications include 'Attributing global impacts of local extremes to climate change for improving loss and damage estimates' (2025), 'Attributing heatwave-related mortality to climate change: a case study of the 2009 Victorian heatwave in Australia' (2025), 'Detection and attribution of the human influence on extreme weather and climate events' (2025), and 'Climate impacts of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation on Australia' (2025). With over 26,000 citations, her contributions have substantial influence in climate science, and she is a prominent science communicator featured in national and international media.
Explore groundbreaking research from ANU, ASU, and UC Irvine revealing deadly heat stress in current heatwaves. Learn physiological insights, case studies, and adaptation strategies.
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