Professor Karoly is an internationally recognised expert in climate change and climate variability, including greenhouse climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion and interannual climate variations due to El Niño-Southern Oscillation. He was heavily involved in preparation of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in 2007, in several different roles and was a Review Editor in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report in 2014.
He is a member of the Climate Change Authority which provides advice to the Australian government on climate change policies. He is also a member of the Academy of Science's National Committee on Earth System Science and the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.
Professor Karoly joined the School of Earth Sciences in May 2007 as an ARC Federation Fellow funded by the Australian government.