Hughes was one of five Australian Lead Authors who worked on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth & Fifth Assessment Reports in 2007.
In her acceptance speech for the 2019 Australian Museum Research Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, she listed "six reasons for hope in the face of climate change".
In July, the secretary general of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries declared Thunberg, and other young climate activists as the "greatest threat" to the fossil fuel industry.
[23]Her work has been published in The Monthly, describing the balance between the depression of climate change, while trying to maintain optimism, in an article titled "When planetary catastrophe is your day job".
People who work outside, in unventilated environments, in mines and agricultural industries, for example, are vulnerable to the impacts of excessive heat.
[25] In June 2019 she spoke at a "women in science" event at the Sydney Mechanics School of Art on climate change.