Authors and acknowledgements

Dr Blair Trewin is a climate scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology. His specialist areas are the development of long-term historical data sets for the assessment of climate change, and the analysis of extreme events, both current and historic. He was the lead developer of the main long-term Australian temperature dataset, ACORN-SAT. He was a lead author for Working Group I (physical science) of the recently-released Sixth Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is a member of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Expert Team on Climate Monitoring and Assessment, and has led a number of WMO’s annual global State of the Climate reports. He was also President of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society in 2012-14.

Mr Damian Morgan-Bulled is a proud Yorta Yorta man based on the Dhungala (Murray) River at Echuca-Moama on the Victoria-New South Wales border, within Yorta Yorta Country. Damian has worked within the cultural heritage and natural resource management field for more than 25 years including stints with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority based in Canberra and the Department of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria. He currently works as the Executive Officer for the Yorta Yorta Traditional Owner Land Management Board, which oversees the implementation of the Joint Management Plan for the Barmah National Park in conjunction with Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation and Parks Victoria. Damian has represented the Yorta Yorta Nation on several key negotiating teams and committees at regional, state and national levels. Recently, Mr Morgan-Bulled Co-Chaired the National First Peoples Gathering on Climate Change Steering Committee that co-designed the protocols and agenda for the National First Peoples Gathering on Climate Change. He is considered a senior leader within the Aboriginal community of Echuca-Moama and has well established networks that has seen him recently present First Nations Peoples issues in Climate Change at both the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS) and Knowledge Exchange for Climate Adaptation Platforms (KE4CAP) forums.

Ms Sonia Cooper is a Yorta Yorta woman raised by her Nan on Cummeragunja. She is a community member. She has a strong interest in culture, the environment, science, policy, law, contracts and geopolitics. She is currently completing her Bachelor of Science degree at Australian National University. She works as The Living Murray Indigenous Facilitator for Barmah National Park for Yorta Yorta Nation and is a great advocate for the progression of Indigenous rights. Sonia has been engaged to sit on various boards around the country including CSIRO's Indigenous Reference Group in 2019 and science panels over the last 10 years. Sonia has been living in the bush next to the Murray for the last year and can see and feel Country.