Extremism In Australia Research Articles

Islamist Extremism in Australia: Tracing the Ideological Roots and Pathways to Radicalisation

Australia has not been immune from patterns of recruitment, attacks and foreign fighters harbouring the ideology of Islamist-jihadism. This paper draws on sociological data from a nationwide survey of 1034 Muslim Australians to analyse the way in which pathways to knowledge exist for Muslim Australians in relation to interpretations of Islam and, importantly, the adoption of an Islamist or Militant interpretation. Islamist and Militant typologies will be examined to see if their sources of Islamic influence were different or the same in their belief formation compared with more moderate typologies. This paper will also examine those participants who indicated that the Quran should be read literally and analyse the overall religiosity of the various typologies, with the aim to get a sense of the connection between (moral/ethical) belief formation and daily ritual of Islamists and Militants. This paper finds that Muslim Australians categorised as Political Islamist and Militant are more likely to have been influenced by mainstream areas of Islamic knowledge and discourse, such as the Quran, hadith, ulema, and the mosque, whilst also interpreting the Quran literally and praying daily. These findings suggest a challenging path forward for counterterrorism and countering violent extremism policies and programs in Australia.

Anti-Governemnt Extremism in Australia: Understanding the Australian Anti-Lockdown Freedom Movement as a Complex Anti-Government Social Movement

This article aims to explore the emergence and consolidation of various actors and sympathisers into the Australian ‘anti-lockdown’ freedom movement, a diverse, hybrid anti-government movement that emerged during the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a qualitative longitudinal analysis of data from the online posts of a prominent branch of the anti-lockdown freedom movement, we identify the movement’s core narratives, motivations, and forms of action, revealing how this social movement developed into a complex form of anti-government extremist movement that combines and conflates anti-institutional, anti-elite sentiments, and anti-government attitudes and beliefs through conspiratorial narratives. Drawing upon interrelated strands of social movement theory and the broader body of research on conspiracy theories and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on radicalisation to extremism, we offer a conceptual framework to understand the movement’s emergence, consolidation, and development. This study furthers our understanding of how conspiracies and disinformation can be utilised and fed into anti-government extremism during times of crisis and emergency.

Exploring the link between austral stratospheric polar vortex anomalies and surface climate in chemistry-climate models

Abstract. Extreme events in the stratospheric polar vortex can lead to changes in the tropospheric circulation and impact the surface climate on a wide range of timescales. The austral stratospheric vortex shows its largest variability in spring, and a weakened polar vortex is associated with changes in the spring to summer surface climate, including hot and dry extremes in Australia. However, the robustness and extent of the connection between polar vortex strength and surface climate on interannual timescales remain unclear. We assess this relationship by using reanalysis data and time-slice simulations from two chemistry-climate models (CCMs), building on previous work that is mainly based on observations. The CCMs show a similar downward propagation of anomalies in the polar vortex strength to the reanalysis data: a weak polar vortex is on average followed by a negative tropospheric Southern Annular Mode (SAM) in spring to summer, while a strong polar vortex is on average followed by a positive SAM. The signature in the surface climate following polar vortex weakenings is characterized by high surface pressure and warm temperature anomalies over Antarctica, the region where surface signals are most robust across all model and observational datasets. However, the tropospheric SAM response in the two CCMs considered is inconsistent with observations. In one CCM, the SAM is more negative compared to the reanalysis after weak polar vortex events, whereas in the other CCM, it is less negative. In addition, neither model reproduces all the regional changes in midlatitudes, such as the warm and dry anomalies over Australia. We find that these inconsistencies are linked to model biases in the basic state, such as the latitude of the eddy-driven jet and the persistence of the SAM. These results are largely corroborated by models that participated in the Chemistry-Climate Model Initiative (CCMI). Furthermore, bootstrapping of the data reveals sizable uncertainty in the magnitude of the surface signals in both models and observations due to internal variability. Our results demonstrate that anomalies of the austral stratospheric vortex have significant impacts on surface climate, although the ability of models to capture regional effects across the Southern Hemisphere is limited by biases in their representation of the stratospheric and tropospheric circulation.

“Unstructured terrorism”? Assessing left wing extremism in Australia

ABSTRACT Left wing extremism (LWE) in Australia between 1968 and 1972 has been described inconsistently as either unstructured terrorism or protest activity. Schmid’s comprehensive work towards an academic consensus on terrorism definitions was applied to this Australian case study to try to sharpen the blurred lines between these two forms of political mobilisation. It is argued that while most LWE activity was protest activity, there were instances where the activity constituted terrorism due to its premeditated nature, risk to life, and threat-based communication. This has application to contemporary left wing activism in Australia and around the western world. Further examination of LWE mobilisation also demonstrates that the actors were likely organised in free-floating cells, capable of cooperation, but otherwise autonomous, thus establishing another precedent for left wing leaderless resistance. This challenges the notion that organisational decentralisation is a new element to contemporary terrorism.

On the impact of increasing penetration of variable renewables on electricity spot price extremes in Australia

In energy-only electricity markets, such as Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM), it has been argued that an increasing penetration of variable renewable energy (VRE) generation is likely to have two effects: (i) more extreme spot prices, with greater instances of both very high and very low prices and (ii) a need to increase the market price cap (MPC) and related price signals for reliability. This article examines the validity of both these effects using spot pricing outcomes in South Australia (SA), which has one of the highest VRE penetrations worldwide. We find partial support for these two effects. While extremely low prices have become more frequent over time, extremely high prices have become less frequent. Spot price volatility has risen, consistent with the hypothesis, but not because prices have become more extreme. Furthermore, these findings are observed for prices in all NEM regions, not just SA. Also, reliability has remained high over the past decade despite the MPC remaining constant in real terms. We provide four reasons why higher VRE penetration need not result in more extreme prices and higher MPCs: (i) greater investment in volatility-dampening, reliability-enhancing technologies like storage and interconnectors; (ii) increased contract cover; (iii) more price-responsive demand; and (iv) emergence of additional ancillary service revenues. These findings have implications for the durability of the NEM’s energy-only design given expected further increases in VRE penetration rates across the NEM.

The impact of global warming and the El Ni\xf1o-Southern Oscillation on seasonal precipitation extremes in Australia

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) drives substantial variability in precipitation and drought risk over Australia. Understanding the combined effect of anthropogenic forcing and ENSO on Australian precipitation extremes over the coming century can assist adaptation efforts. Here we use 24 CMIP5 climate models to examine externally forced changes in the frequency of “droughts”, when precipitation falls below the pre-industrial Decile 1 threshold. We focus on June to November (i.e., southern hemisphere Winter–Spring season) because precipitation during this period is important for agricultural production and recharging reservoirs in many parts of the country. The analysis in this paper is based on two 90-year simulations (1900–1989 and 2010–2099) for Historical and RCP8.5 scenarios. We show that the frequency of droughts, including droughts occurring in consecutive Winter–Spring seasons, is projected to increase in the twenty-first century under the RCP8.5 scenario in all eight Natural Resource Management (NRM) “clusters”. Approximately 60% of years are projected to be drought years in Perth, 35% in Adelaide, 30% in Melbourne, and approximately 20–25% of years in Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. The relative frequency distributions of seasonally averaged Winter–Spring precipitation shift to lower values in all NRM clusters. However, apart from the Southern and Southwestern Flatlands, the shifts are accompanied by changes in the shape of the distributions whereby the high end of the distributions do not shift as much as other parts of the distribution and the wettest seasons become marginally wetter. This means that in most locations generally drier conditions are projected to be infrequently punctuated by seasons that are just as wet or wetter than the wettest years experienced during the twentieth century. While the models generally do a poor job in simulating ENSO precipitation teleconnections over Australia, an increase in ENSO-driven variability is suggested for the Wet Tropics, the Monsoonal North, the Central Slopes and the Southern and Southwestern Flatlands.

Sub‐seasonal to seasonal prediction of rainfall extremes in Australia

AbstractSeasonal climate prediction to date has largely focussed on probabilistic forecasts for above‐ and below‐average conditions in climate means. Here, we examine the possibility of making sub‐seasonal to seasonal outlooks for daily‐scale precipitation extremes in Australia. We first use observational data to show that significant relationships exist between climate modes, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, and indices representing rainfall extremes across much of Australia. The strong observed teleconnections between climate modes and daily rainfall extremes suggest the potential for predictability on seasonal scales. The current Australian Bureau of Meteorology seasonal prediction system (ACCESS‐S1) is examined for performance in predicting rainfall extreme indices using a range of measures. Ensemble hindcasts, consisting of 11 members initialised every month during 1990–2012, perform well for some extreme rainfall indices on short lead‐times (up to 1 month). We note that at short lead‐times, forecasts are aided by skilful weather prediction, so forecast performance drops at lead‐times of a week or more. Forecast performance is lower in austral summer than other seasons and greater in the north and interior of the continent, particularly in the dry season, than elsewhere. The ACCESS‐S1 ensemble is overconfident but exhibits some reliability in probabilistic forecasts of above‐ or below‐average number of wet days and intensity of the highest daily maximum precipitation, especially in northern Australia. ACCESS‐S1 captures the broad pattern of relationships between climate modes and rainfall extremes that are observed. For two case‐studies of unusually extreme precipitation, ACCESS‐S exhibits contrasting performance for forecasts of extreme rainfall anomalies beyond the first month. These results suggest that ACCESS‐S1 may be used to produce outlooks for some rainfall indices, such as the number of wet days and the intensity of the wettest day, for the month ahead.

Australian hot and dry extremes induced by weakenings of the stratospheric polar vortex

The occurrence of extreme hot and dry conditions in warm seasons can have large impacts on human health, energy and water supplies, agriculture and wildfires. Australian hot and dry extremes have been known to be associated with the occurrence of El Nino and other variations of tropospheric circulation. Here we identify an additional driver: variability of the stratospheric Antarctic polar vortex. On the basis of statistical analyses using observational data covering the past 40 yr, we show that weakenings and warmings of the stratospheric polar vortex, which episodically occur during austral spring, substantially increase the chances of hot and dry extremes and of associated fire-conducive weather across subtropical eastern Australia from austral spring to early summer. The promotion of these Australian climate extremes results from the downward coupling of the weakened polar vortex to tropospheric levels, where it is linked to the low-index polarity of the Southern Annular Mode, an equatorward shift of the mid-latitude westerly jet stream and subsidence and warming in the subtropics. Because of the long timescale of the polar vortex variations, the enhanced likelihood of early-summertime hot and dry extremes and wildfire risks across eastern Australia may be predictable a season in advance during years of vortex weakenings. Hot and dry climate extremes in Australia are linked to stratospheric polar vortex weakening, with potential implications for their predictability, according to statistical analyses of observational data from the past 40 years.

Multi-climate mode interactions drive hydrological and vegetation responses to hydroclimatic extremes in Australia

Australia has experienced a large frequency of hydroclimatic events since the early 21st century, with multiple large-scale droughts and flooding rains exerting dramatic impacts on water resources and ecosystems. Despite these pronounced consequences, the coupling of ecosystem functioning to extreme climate variability remains elusive due to the lack of complete understanding of hydrological connections. In this study, we investigated the spatiotemporal trends of Australia's hydrological and vegetation responses to three climate modes: El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Indian Ocean dipole and the Southern Annular Mode, utilizing climate indices, satellite-derived total water storage anomaly (TWSA) from GRACE, precipitation from TRMM and vegetation greenness from MODIS. Using partial cross-correlation and vegetation sensitivity analyses to interpret the interactions among climate modes, water resources and vegetation across Australia, three hydroclimatic extreme events from 2002 to 2017 were analyzed: (i) a prolonged drought (2002–09, colloquially known as the ‘big dry’); (ii) a dramatic wet pulse (2010–11, the ‘big wet’); and (iii) another anomalous El Niño event (2015).Our results showed the entire continent partitioned into three geographic zones with diverse drying and wetting trends in total water storage, precipitation and vegetation greenness, reflecting varying and fundamental influences from the individual climate modes. Ecosystem productivity was found to be better related and more sensitive to TWSA than precipitation across different hydroclimate zones and during both extreme dry and wet conditions. We also observed TWSA increased rapidly during wet extremes, and these gains in water resources persisted for an additional four years (i.e., TWSA remained positive until 2015 following the 2011 ‘big wet’). Lastly, findings from another hydroclimatic event (the 2015 El Niño drought) further confirmed the relationships among climate, water and ecosystems, demonstrating the feasibility of predicting ecohydrological implications of future hydroclimatic extremes in Australia.

Detection of continental-scale intensification of hourly rainfall extremes

Temperature scaling studies suggest that hourly rainfall magnitudes might increase beyond thermodynamic expectations with global warming1–3; that is, above the Clausius–Clapeyron (CC) rate of ~6.5% °C−1. However, there is limited evidence of such increases in long-term observations. Here, we calculate continental-average changes in the magnitude and frequency of extreme hourly and daily rainfall observations from Australia over the years 1990–2013 and 1966–1989. Observed changes are compared with the uncertainty from natural variability and expected changes from CC scaling as a result of global mean surface temperature change. We show that increases in daily rainfall extremes are consistent with CC scaling, but are within the range of natural variability. In contrast, changes in the magnitude of hourly rainfall extremes are close to or exceed double the expected CC scaling, and are above the range of natural variability, exceeding CC × 3 in the tropical region (north of 23° S). These continental-scale changes in extreme rainfall are not explained by changes in the El Nino–Southern Oscillation or changes in the seasonality of extremes. Our results indicate that CC scaling on temperature provides a severe underestimate of observed changes in hourly rainfall extremes in Australia, with implications for assessing the impacts of extreme rainfall. Theory predicts that hourly rainfall extremes may increase with anthropogenic warming. Observations from Australia suggest changes two to three times above the Clausius–Clapeyron rate, above that expected from natural variability.

Local service provision to counter violent extremism: perspectives, capabilities and challenges arising from an Australian service mapping project

ABSTRACTAuthorities are increasingly engaging community-based organisations and social service providers to help them prevent and reverse radicalisation. However, little is known about community-based services for youth at risk of violent extremism and whether service providers have the necessary capacity and willingness to take on this role. This paper reports the results of research undertaken in 2016 to map community-based services for youth at risk of violent extremism in Australia. Research teams examined the capabilities and needs of service providers across three of Australia’s most populous states, which have experienced several dozen counter-terrorism operations. Interviews with service providers indicated they have specific conceptions of what constitutes violent extremism, the likely causes and how they should be addressed. While it was found that, in general, service providers are willing to engage in practices that could help prevent individuals radicalising to extremism, a range of constraints and capability gaps were identified. The agencies that were interviewed believed that providing services aimed at countering violent extremism (CVE) involved significant risks, relating to the impact on the provision of current services, the ability to engage clients and adverse community reactions. The paper considers the implications of the results for the delivery of CVE policy and practice.

Historical and projected trends in temperature and precipitation extremes in Australia in observations and CMIP5

Abstract This study expands previous work on climate extremes in Australia by investigating the simulation of a large number of extremes indices in the CMIP5 multi-model dataset and comparing them to multiple observational datasets over a century of observed data using consistent methods. We calculate 24 indices representing extremes of temperature and precipitation from 1911 to 2010 over Australia and show that there have been significant observed trends in temperature extremes associated with warming while there have been few significant observed trends in precipitation extremes. We compare the observed indices calculated from two mostly independent datasets with 22 CMIP5 models to determine how well global climate models are able to simulate observed climatologies, variability and trends. We find that generally temperature extremes are reasonably well simulated (climatology, variability and trend patterns) although the models tend to overestimate minimum temperature extremes and underestimate maximum temperature extremes. Some models stand out as being outliers and we exclude one model (INMCM4) entirely from the multi-model analysis as it simulates unrealistic minimum temperature extremes over the historical period. There is more spread between models for precipitation than temperature extremes but in most cases the observations sit within the model spread. Exceptions are consecutive wet days (CWD) where nearly all models overestimate the actual number of annual wet days and simple daily intensity (SDII) and one day precipitation maxima (Rx1day) where the models tend to underestimate precipitation intensity. However, some of these differences likely lie in observational uncertainty. Most models including the multi-model mean indicate that precipitation intensity has increased over the last century but the two observational datasets analysed disagree on the sign of change of precipitation intensity, one of them indicating a significant decrease. We use the CMIP5 simulations for two future Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) to project changes in temperature and precipitation extremes across Australia. By the end of the century the number of cold temperature extremes substantially reduces and the number of warm temperature extremes substantially increases; changes scaling relative to the strength of emissions scenario. Changes in temperature extremes are often greatest in the tropics. While the results for precipitation extremes are less marked, simulations for the end of the century compared to present day indicate more periods of dryness while the most intense precipitation extremes increase substantially, with a separation becoming clear between emissions scenarios.

Right-wing extremism in Australia: the rise of the new radical right

ABSTRACTThis research examines the shifting momentum of right-wing extremism (RWE) in Australia. The study provides an in-depth assessment of eight of the most active RWE groups in Australia, through their online presence where they espouse their ideological narrative and propaganda statements. The phenomenon of new radical right (NRR) groups is explored through a three-pronged mixed method research design: Firstly, a content analysis of core narrative themes contained on websites of RWE groups; secondly, a thematic analysis of RWE ‘online’ discussion forums; and thirdly, a critical analysis of Google Trends data on the shifting patterns of popularity of various extremism-related search terms amongst the general population. A problem–solution mapping tool that was developed for this research that quantifies the ‘ideological space’ occupied by different ‘new’ RR groups compared with ‘old’ RWE groups is presented. The overall findings are that NRR groups pose political and community challenges to the nature of Australian Society. Moreover, there is evidence of a contest for ideological dominance between ‘old-style’ RWE groups and ‘new-style’ Radical (Far) Right Extremism groups in Australia. The ‘online’ forum data and Google trends data confirm this finding. The practical implications of these challenges and the future directions of this research as well as its limitations are discussed.

Community perceptions of radicalisation and violent extremism: an Australian perspective

This paper discusses selected findings and implications of a recent qualitative Australian study, Community and Radicalisation, focusing on grassroots community and government perspectives about what radicalisation and violent extremism mean for Australian communities a decade after 11 September. The key aims of the study were to identify how communities understand the meanings of and relationship between radicalisation and extremism; to explore community perceptions of the underlying drivers for radicalisation and extremism; the perceived impact of radicalisation and violent extremism on sense of community and social harmony and cohesion; and to investigate community approaches to and solutions for eliminating or reducing the threat of violent extremism in Australia in order to inform and support effective policy and strategy development around countering radicalisation and extremism in Australia. The study's findings suggest that a broad national sample of 542 participants were reasonably confident that Australia is in a good position to meet and address some of the continuing challenges presented by the threats of radicalisation and violent extremism to a peaceful and open democratic society. However, a range of strategies and solutions were identified that help focus attention on what work still needs to be done and what innovations may be needed to stay abreast of a social and political environment that is dynamic, fluid, occasionally volatile and still working towards broadscale resilience and social cohesion in Australian contexts.