BMRC Seminars

Date	Time	Title	Speaker	Affiliation
Wed 25 January	12.00pm	Transport of Trace Gases from the Tropical Troposphere to the Stratosphere	Neil Harris	European Ozone Research Coordinating Unit, University of Cambridge, Department of Chemistry
Tue 31 January	2.00pm	Flash Flood Forecasting - a South African perspective	Geoff Pegram	University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, RSA
Wed 1 February	10.00am	CALIPSO: Profiling Aerosols and Clouds from Space	Dave Winker	NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA USA
Thu 2 February	10.00am	OPeNDAP: Chaining, the ODC and Where It Is Going	Peter Cornillon	Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island
Thu 2 February	3.00pm	Surface Wind Response to Oceanic Fronts	Qingtao Song, Peter Cornillon and Tetsu Hara	Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island
Wed 15 February	10.00am	"New" Hazards to Aviation from Supercooled Large Drops and High Ice Water Contents	George Isaac	Cloud Physics and Severe Weather Research Section, Environment Canada
Wed 22 February	10.00am	The Oceans and Climate: Earth System Models and their Application to Abrupt and Not-so-abrupt Changes	Lawrence Mysak	McGill University
Thu 2 March	10.00am	Anthropogenic influences on tropical storm intensity	Tom Wigley	NCAR
Mon 6 March	10.00am	Passive microwaves - up and down: HATPRO - Humidity And Temperature PROfiler used in TWP-ICE and Simulation Study of Precipitating Clouds from Geostationary Orbits with Passive Microwaves	Mario Mech	Meteorological Institute, University of Munich, Germany
Wed 8 March	10.00am	Performance Computing and working with uGFS on gale	John Stern and Ramesh Balgovind	HPCCC
Wed 15 March	10.00am	The Tropical Warm Pool International Cloud Experiment - Wrap Up	Peter May, Christian Jakob and Jim Mather	BMRC
Tue 21 March	10.00am	The investigation of severe hailstorms in metropolitan Sydney using observations, weather radar, insurance claims and emergency calls	Sandra Schuster	Risk Frontiers, Natural Hazards Research Centre, Macquarie University
Thu 30 March	10.00am	Human-modified Temperatures Change Wild Plants and Animals: Joint Attribution	Terry Root	Center for Environmental Sciences and Policy, Stanford University
Thu 30 March	11.00am	Can we define, let alone prevent, "dangerous" climate change?	Stephen Schneider	Center for Environmental Sciences and Policy, Stanford University
Wed 5 April	10.00am	Seasonal dependence of the MJO-ENSO Relationship	Harry Hendon, Matt Wheeler and Chidong Zhang	BMRC
Wed 12 April	10.00am	Bayseian Network and weather forecasting	Tali Boneh, Peter Newham,Gary Weymouth, John Bally	Monash University, VRO, BMRC, BMRC
Wed 12 April	2.30pm	The WMO Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Programme: Integrated Global Atmospheric Chemistry Observations Related To Weather, Climate and Air Quality	Leonard A. Barrie	Chief, Environment Division, Atmospheric Research and Environment Programme, WMO Geneva
Wed 19 April	10.00am	Have Australian Rainfall and Cloudiness Increased Due to the Remote Effects of Asian Anthropogenic Aerosols?	Leon Rotstayn	CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
Wed 26 April	10.00am	Progress with the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS)	John Zillman	BMRC
Thu 4 May	10.00am	Are Scientists Under-estimating Climate Change?	A. Barrie Pittock	CMAR
Mon 8 May	10.00am	The Sumatra tsunami of December 26, 2004: Observations and analysis of tide gauge data from the World Ocean	Alexander Rabinovich and Richard Thomson	Russian Academy of Sciences, Tsunami Laboratory, P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Moscow, Russia; Department of Fisheries and Oceans Institute of Ocean Sciences, Sidney, Canada
Tue 9 May	2.00pm	Talk for a Change: Challenges and opportunities for effective communication of Climate Change	Susanne C. Moser	Institute for the Study of Society and Environment, NCAR
Wed 17 May	10.00am	Localisation and balance in an Ensemble Kalman Filter	Jeff Kepert	BMRC
Fri 19 May	11.00am	Introduction to SVN	Joerg Henrichs and Stephen Leak	HPCCC NEC
Wed 24 May	10.00am	Cool season tornadoes and climate change	Raphaelle Kounkou	Meteo-France
Thu 25 May	2.30pm	Significant CO2 reduction: An exciting challenge [a Science Tea presentation]	Kevin Tory	BMRC
Tue 30 May	10.00am	Climate Change Impacts on Wheat Production and Adaptation Potential in Southern Australia	Qunying Luo	Adelaide University
Tue 30 May	2.00pm	Real-time tsunami forecasting: challenges and solutions	Vasily Titov	NOAA Center for Tsunami Research
Wed 31 May	10.00am	Run BAM Scripts and Secrets of Using Lock-Files	Lawson Hanson	BMRC
Thu 8 June	10.00am	The origin of ENSO-like decadal patterns, and the predictability of decadal changes in ENSO teleconnections	Scott Power	BMRC
Wed 14 June	10.00am	Defining Spatially Distributed Warning Thresholds and its Application to Canadian Fire Weather Index	Klara Finkele	BMRC and Bushfire CRC
Tue 20 June	2.00pm	On the Paradox of Convectively-Coupled Waves	Lyle Pakula	Colorado State University
Wed 21 June	10.00am	Some points for efficient usage of the SX-6 system	Ilia Bermous	BMRC
Mon 26 June	10.00am	Design-a-Wetland, A tool for generating and assessing constructed wetland designs for wastewater treatment	Carolina Casaril	NRSM UQ
Tue 4 July	10.00am	Development of SES2 radiation and its performance in BAM model	Zhian Sun	BMRC
Mon 10 July	3.00pm	UM and VAR: an overview	Peter Steinle	BMRC
Wed 5 July	2.00pm	Seasonal hydroclimate forecast for water resources management	Francis Chiew	CSIRO Land and Water
Wed 11 July	10.00am	Advances in the Understanding of Wildfire Behavior and Smoke Transport Using High-Resolution Numerical Models	Philip Cunningham	Department of Meteorology & Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute, Florida State University
Wed 12 July	10.00am	Climate applications research at NIWA - from climate mapping to serving climate-based products over the web	Andrew Tait	National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA), Wellington, New Zealand
Tue 18 July	10.00am	Aerosols, ozone-depletion, and CO2: their influence on Australian rainfall and Southern Hemispheric climate	Wenju Cai	CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
Wed 19 July	10.00am	Verification of the Bureau's NWP marine surface winds	Eric Schulz	BMRC
Tue 1 August	10.00am	Monitoring and modelling the effects of human resettlement on the pristine coral reefs at Rongelap Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands	Maria Beger(1), Zoe Richards (2), and Eric Peterson(3)	(1) University of Queensland, (2) James Cook University, (3) Victoria University
Fri 4 August	11.15am	Where are the most intense thunderstorms on earth? 1: How do we know? This can be answered. 2: Why are these storms where they are? We can speculate about this.	Ed Zipser	University of Utah, USA
Tue 8 August	10.00am	Understanding and predicting terrain-induced turbulence using high-resolution numerical models	Todd Lane	School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne
Fri 11 August	11.00am	Introduction to Python	Ramesh Balgovind	HPCCC
Wed 16 Aug	10.00am	New High-Resolution Sea Surface Temperature Analyses and Products	Helen Beggs	BMRC
Mon 21 August	11.00am	ACCESS - current status and plans	Kamal Puri	BMRC
Wed 23 August	10.00am	Global changes in synoptic activity with increasing CO2	Eun-Pa Lim	BMRC
Wed 30 August	10.00am	Shifts in synoptic systems and total rainfall over south-west Western Australia	Pandora Hope	BMRC
Wed 6 September	10.00am	The Role of the MJO in Ensemble Forecasts of the 1997/98 El Ni�o in the POAMA1 System	Li Shi	BMRC
Wed 13 September	10.00am	Slow Modes of Climate Variability and Seasonal Prediction	Carsten Frederiksen	BMRC
Fri 15 September	11.00am	Weathering the balance of Work and other aspects of Life	Siusan Mackenzie	Equilibrium Worklife Solutions
Wed 20 September	10.00am	Ensemble Single Column Model Validation in the Tropical Western Pacific	Tim Hume	BMRC
Wed 27 September	10.00am	Quantifying the Impact of the Madden Julian Oscillation on Rainfall in Australia for All Seasons	Matthew Wheeler	BMRC
Wed 4 October	10.00am	Sources of variability of Australian surface climate	Simon Grainger	BMRC
Fri 6 October	10.00am	An Overview of the Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center	Steve Goodman	Earth Science Office, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama USA
Wed 11 October	10.00am	Fuzzy Forecast Verification	Beth Ebert	BMRC
Fri 13 October	10.00am	Methods of Tsunami Risk Evaluation: Statistical and Scenario Approaches	Efim Pelinovsky	Department of Nonlinear Geophysical Processes, Institute of Applied Physics, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Wed 18 October	10.00am	Web Applications Security 101	David Jorm	BoM Information Systems
Wed 25 October	10.00am	Classifying wind changes using synoptic pressure cycle phases and operational application	Xinmei Huang and Graham Mills	BMRC
Fri 27 October	10.00am	Dependence of ensemble spread on model uncertainties for extratropical cyclone simulations	Hongyan Zhu	BMRC
Tue 31 October	11.00am	Approaches for Creating Global Precipitation Data Sets	George Huffman	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Science Systems and Applications, Inc.
Tue 31 October	3.00pm	Ocean Modelling and Atmospheric Modelling	Alan Griffiths	Department of Aviation, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW
Thu 2 November	10.00am	Moving from Crisis to Risk Management of Drought in the U.S.: Progress and Challenges	Don Wilhite	Director, US National Drought Mitigation Center, Lincoln, Nebraska
Tue 14 November	11.00am	Changes in weather and climate extremes in a future warmer climate	Jerry Meehl	NCAR
Wed 15 November	10.00am	Introduction to SX Performance Monitoring	Joerg Henricks	NEC
Mon 20 November	11.00am	Towards a Severe Convection Warning Service for New Zealand / Using Doppler Weather radar in New Zealand	Paul Mallinson and John Crouch	Severe Weather Forecasters, MetService, New Zealand
Thu 23 November	3.30pm	Greenfleet - reducing the impacts of transport [a Science Tea presentation]	Sara Gipton	CEO Greenfleet Australia
Mon 27 November	10.00am-12.00pm	SGI High-performance computing for Environmental Modeling	Ilene Carpenter	SGI
Mon 27 November	4.00-5.00pm	Climate change and health	Colin Soskolne	University of Alberta
Mon 4 December	11.00am	Introduction of a Digital Forecast System in Korea	Young-Kyeoung Seo	KMA
Wed 6 December	10.00am	A First-generation Real-time Tsunami Forecasting System for the Australian Region	Diana Greenslade	BMRC
Wed 6 December	2.00pm	Weather modification and cloud physics research activities at MRI, JMA	Masataka Murakami	Cloud Physics Section, Physical Meteorology Research Department, Meteorological Research Institute, Japan
Mon 11 December	10.00am	Death and the Weather: An attempt to forecast heat-related deaths in Brisbane	Carol Skinner	BoM
Wed 13 December	10.00am	Flow adaptive moderation of spurious ensemble correlations	Craig H. Bishop and Daniel Hodyss	Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, CA, USA
Tue 19 December	2.00pm	Recontruction and analysis of high quality MSLP data sets	Rob Allan	UKMO
Wed 20 December	10.00am	The Future of Humans in Weather Forecasting	Harvey Stern	Bureau of Meteorology, Australia

The venue is the BMRC seminar room (Floor 9, east side).

Until further notice, seminars are at 10 am on Wednesdays with duration of 30 to 50 minutes + questions. Dates and times other than the usual Wednesday afternoon are shown.

Emphasis is on work in progress. Partly because of this, the schedule is susceptible to change.
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Provided the presenter has agreed, then a copy of the powerpoint (or pdf) presentation documents, as well as a wmv movie of the talk, can be found on the "Seminar Presentation Documents" site listed at the top of the page. If we have them, then these are indicated by a powerpoint (or pdf) icon next to the seminar date, or a movie-camera icon next to the seminar time. Seminars for previous years can be found at the "Goto list of BMRC seminars for 2005" site at the top of the page. In addition, a list of actual videos from some previous seminars is held in the library and can be found on the catalogue by entering Series: BMRC, Format: Video. If you would like to have a talk videotaped please contact the seminar coordinator. Note: as of 2005, it is standard practice for all seminars to be recorded as wmv movies, provided the presenter agrees.

If you would like to know more details of coordinating seminars (if, for example, you are hosting a visitor who will be giving a seminar and the regular seminar coordinator is not available), have a look at the document, "Instructions for BMRC Seminar Coordinator"

For further details contact the seminar coordinator, Greg Roff, on 03 9669 4822, g.roff@bom.gov.au

ABSTRACTS

Wednesday 25th January, 12.00pm, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th Floor East, 700 Collins St.

Transport of Trace Gases from the Tropical Troposphere to the Stratosphere

Neil Harris
European Ozone Research Coordinating Unit, University of Cambridge, Department of Chemistry

Abstract:

We have carried out studies of the transport between the boundary layer, the tropical tropopause layer and the stratosphere during January 2001 using atmospheric tracers in a CTM and in air parcel trajectories. Most of the transport (approximately two thirds) from the BBL into the TTL occurs vertically above the Indian Ocean, Indonesian and West Pacific regions, consistent with transport being dominated by convection. We find no preferred longitude for transport (no 'fountain') into the stratosphere. However, transport from the base of the TTL into the stratosphere is dominated (more than 75%) by isentropic transport into the extratropical lower stratosphere (ELS) with a much smaller fraction entering the stratospheric 'overworld'. The timescale for boundary layer-to-ELS transport is such that this represents an important route by which very short-lived species, emitted at the surface, could influence lower stratospheric ozone.

Understanding the transport of chemical compounds into the stratosphere is one of the aims of both the SCOUT-O3 and ACTIVE projects. Both projects conducted aircraft campaigns in Darwin in November and December 2005 in the first phase of TWP-ICE. Preliminary results from these campaigns will be presented.

Tuesday 31st January, 2.00-3.00pm, BMRC Seminar room, 9th floor East, 700 Collins St.

Flash Flood Forecasting - a South African perspective

Geoff Pegram
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, RSA

Abstract:

In South Africa, the Weather Service (SAWS) has shouldered the responsibility for Flash Flood Forecasting (FFF) to empower local Disaster Managers in the mitigation of damage due to flash floods. The hydro-meteorological group under Geoff Pegram's leadership at the University of KwaZulu-Natal has been collaborating with SAWS for the last 15 years in related areas of research. This presentation outlines what is relevant in what has been achieved so far in supporting the FFF initiative and covers:

* rainfield estimation combining gauge, radar and satellite information

* short term forecasting using radar images

* rough estimation of error with range in radar rainfall measurement

* initial progress in spatial estimation of soil moisture by remote sensing

* steps towards ground validation of rainfall and soil moisture measurement from space

Wednesday 1st February, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar room, east side of 9th floor, 700 Collins St

CALIPSO: Profiling Aerosols and Clouds from Space

Dave Winker
NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA USA

Abstract:

Aerosols influence the radiation budget of the Earth, as well as playing a role in atmospheric chemistry and impacting air quality. Relative to the main greenhouse gases, aerosols are highly variable in space and time due to variable sources and short atmospheric residence times. Satellite observations are required to understand the distribution and properties of aerosols on a global scale and to gain a better understanding of the interactions aerosols with clouds, radiation, and atmospheric chemistry. To improve current satellite capabilities, the CALIPSO satellite will fly a two-wavelength polarization-sensitive lidar providing new capabilities to observe aerosols and clouds on a global basis. Among other features, lidar offers an improved capability to discriminate aerosol from clouds and CALIPSO observations can be used to assess cloud-clearing biases in current passive satellite aerosol retrievals. CALIPSO observations will also provide a unique dataset with which to test and improve the representation of clouds and aerosols in models. CALIPSO was developed within the framework of a collaboration between NASA and CNES, and is planned to launch in early 2006.

Thursday 2nd February, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar room, east side of 9th floor, 700 Collins St

OPeNDAP: Chaining, the ODC and Where It Is Going

Peter Cornillon
Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island

Abstract:

This talk will be in four parts. In the first part, I will provide a general overview of OPeNDAP for those in the audience who might not be familiar with it. In the second part I will discuss some new experimental OPeNDAP chains that focus on access to in situ (or, in OPeNDAP parlance sequence) data. This will be followed by a section on what I refer to as a system's integrator, a program or group of programs that define a data system in a highly distributed environment. This part of the talk will be given in the context of the OPeNDAP Data Connector, a system integrator as I have defined it. In the last part of the talk I will provide a glimpse of things to come in OPeNDAP.

Thursday 2nd February, 3.00-4.00pm, BMRC Seminar room, east side of 9th floor, 700 Collins St

Surface Wind Response to Oceanic Fronts

Qingtao Song, Peter Cornillon and Tetsu Hara
Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island

Abstract:

Spaceborne scatterometer (NSCAT and QuikSCAT) wind data are combined with Gulf Stream north wall positions, manually digitized from two-day composite sea surface temperature (SST) fields obtained from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data.

These data reveal the response of the surface wind field to large open ocean fronts characterized by sharp gradients in both SST and near surface currents. Each scatterometer pass was paired with the GS path closest in time. The period studied, determined by the availability of AVHRR data, was from 16 September 1996 to 29 June 1997 for NSCAT and from 24 July 1999 to 31 December 2000 for QuikSCAT. All match-ups were visually examined and only those for which the Gulf Stream presented a reasonably straight segment and the wind field was free of atmospheric fronts or large curvature were selected. Ten match-ups met these criteria.

The response of the scatterometer wind field to the SST/current front was analyzed in detail for these ten cases using the Pennsylvania State University (PSU)-National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesoscale Model (MM5). This includes an analysis of both the dynamical forcing of the wind (by the currents) and the thermal forcing due to the step in SST. To do so the planetary boundary layer (PBL) model Medium-Range Forecast (MRF) used in MM5 was modified to allow the incorporation of the Gulf Stream current as part of the bottom boundary condition. Changes in the modeled surface wind field across the front in each of the ten cases agrees well with changes in the observed winds. The importance of pressure gradients induced by changes in air temperature, moisture, and vertical mixing across an oceanic front is studied by analyzing the momentum budget in the vicinity of the front.

Our findings suggest that the perturbation pressure gradient resulting from the thermal forcing by the front accounts for the decrease in wind speed when moving from warm to cold water and the increase observed in the converse. The adjustment of the surface wind to the front occurs as a result of the vertical motion induced by horizontal divergence/convergence and advection in the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL). The dynamical forcing associated with strong surface currents is also shown to modify scatterometer-derived winds. Finally the numerical simulations suggest that the dynamical and thermal effects are very nearly additive.

Wednesday 15th February, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar room, 9th floor East, 700 Collins St

"New" Hazards to Aviation from Supercooled Large Drops and High Ice Water Contents

George Isaac
Cloud Physics and Severe Weather Research Section Environment Canada

Abstract:

For the past 15 years, Environment Canada has been performing research on aircraft icing. A large data set of in-situ cloud measurements has been used to develop a new Appendix X for certifying aircraft for flight into freezing drizzle and freezing rain. The rationale for this work and a brief summary of the data and new Appendix will be given. Recently, high ice water contents in the tops of convective storms has been recognized as a potential hazard to aviation, resulting in jet engine powerloss. Many of the incidents are occurring in SE Asia. A new Appendix K has been proposed for certifying aircraft but it is recognized that the data available for characterization of the conditions are quite limited. This problem and the suggestions for future work will be described. The difficulty of predicting in-cloud icing using numerical models will be discussed using data from the field work. Finally, a brief description of the Canadian Nowcasting system used to warn pilots of hazardous conditions at airports will be given.

Wednesday 22nd February, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar room, east side of 9th floor, 700 Collins St

The Oceans and Climate: Earth System Models and their Application to Abrupt and Not-so-abrupt Changes

Lawrence Mysak
McGill University

Abstract:

During the past decade, a new class of geosphere-biosphere models of the Earth system has been developed for investigating long-term as well as abrupt climate changes, both past and future. These models, known as Earth system Models of Intermediate Complexity or EMICs (Claussen et al., 2002, Climate Dynamics), have been used extensively, for example, in scoping out future climate change scenarios, estimating the effects on climate of deforestation and afforestation, and exploring the mechanisms for decadal-to millennial scale variability. In my presentation I will focus on the role of the ocean thermohaline circulation (THC) in several of these phenomena. Results will be shown from a number of EMIC modelling groups, including that at McGill. In particular, simulations will be presented of the THC collapse during very cold climates, millennial-scale Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, the last glacial inception, and the initiation of the next ice age.

Monday 6th March, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Passive microwaves - up and down: HATPRO - Humidity And Temperature PROfiler used in TWP-ICE and Simulation Study of Precipitating Clouds from Geostationary Orbits with Passive Microwaves

Mario Mech
Meteorological Institute, University of Munich, Germany

Abstract:

In this presentation two different passive microwave applications for the investigation of atmospheric quantities are presented.

First a ground-based instrument, the humidity and temperature profiler HATPRO, that has been set up in Darwin during the TWP-ICE campaign will be introduced. With its 14 channels in the 22 GHz water vapor, the 60 GHz oxygene line and the 31.4 GHz window frequency full-tropospheric humidity and temperature profiles as well as the integrated quantities liquid water path (LWP) and integrated water vapor (IWV) can be measured with a high temporal resolution and high accuracy. Due to additional an elevation scan mode of the instrument even the large diurnal variablity of temperature and the humidity in the boundary layer with development and decay of inversions can be resolved.

Examples of the measurements taken during the campaign, some preliminary products and their agreement to radiosondes will be shown.

The second part gives an overview of the project "Simulation Study of Precipitating Clouds from Geostationary Orbits with Passive Microwaves" funded by EUMETSAT. The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential for precipitation retrieval from observations in the millimeter and sub-millimeter range for the mid-latitudes. Therefore the cloud resolving mesoscale model Meso-NH with its five hydrometeor categories has been coupled to the radiative transfer model for the microwave region MWMOD to simulate a large data set of realistic observations for 5 different mid-latitude cases.

On the data set of hydrometeor content with corresponding simualted brigthness temperatures statistical analysis has been performed in order to investigate potential frequencies. The potential of precipitation retrieval at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths was analyzed by developing multi-variate regression algorithms.

Conclusions to be drawn are that there is indeed a high potential of millimeter and sub-millimeter waves to sense atmospheric hydrometeors, especially for snow and graupel. The performance for the rain water path and surface rain rate is lower but still gives better results than current passive microwave systems.

Wednesday 15th March, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

The Tropical Warm Pool International Cloud Experiment - Wrap Up

Peter May, Christian Jakob and Jim Mather
BMRC

Abstract:

The Tropical Warm Pool International Cloud Experiment (TWPICE) has just been completed. The experiment has collected what is possibly the most complete data set of tropical cloud systems through their lifetime and their interaction with the large scale environment. How the experiment worked in the field including some more detailed discussion on one of the aircraft missions to illustrate the wealth of data that has been collected will be described. The experiment sampled a range of monsoon regimes including active monsoon and breaks periods as well as a relatively suppressed monsoon period.

Tuesday 21st March, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

The investigation of severe hailstorms in metropolitan Sydney using observations, weather radar, insurance claims and emergency calls

Sandra Schuster
Risk Frontiers, Natural Hazards Research Centre, Macquarie University

Abstract:

This talk describes the investigation of severe hailstorms in metropolitan Sydney and provides the first in-depth hail climatology based on reported hailstones between 1791 and 2003. On average 10 hailstorms per year were recorded in the last 50 years with a statistically significant decrease in frequency during the last 14 years. The hail season lasts from August to February, but during the last 14 years there has been a shift to November to March.

Observed hailstone sizes, radar-derived reflectivity and insurance claims data were used to define elliptical shaped footprints of hail, reflectivity and damage for several storms. Reflectivity swaths were defined on the projected area with a reflectivity = 55dBZ. For the Sydney April 1999 hailstorm, for which we have the best data, the radar reflectivity, damage and hailfall ellipses are almost identical.

High radar reflectivity cells and their hail kinetic energy were investigated during the time they passed over occupied urban areas causing damage to insured assets. The preferred area for damage was to the left and the rear left flank with respect to storm movement. While correlation coefficients with two damage variables (average cost and spatial average loss ratio) improved substantially when the radar fields were shifted horizontally, the general conclusion is that hail kinetic energy as calculated in this study cannot by itself provide a robust, consistent and reliable predictor of insured losses.

The Sydney hailstorm of 14th April 1999 was analysed using above mentioned data sources as well as emergency calls. The "emergency response intensity" (defined by the number of emergency calls as a proportion of the total number of dwellings in a Census Collection District) is a useful new measure of storm severity. Merging hail cells appear to cause a substantially higher emergency response intensity, which in turn correlates well with maximum hailstone sizes. Higher claim costs occurred in areas that experienced higher emergency response intensities. Based on the emergency response intensity, the damage threshold for hailstone size was around 2.5cm whereas insurance claims occurred for hailstone sizes beyond 1cm.

Wednesday 5th April, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Seasonal dependence of the MJO-ENSO Relationship

Harry Hendon, Matt Wheeler and Chidong Zhang
BMRC

Abstract:

Observations of the development of recent El Nino events suggest a pivotal role for the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). Previous attempts to uncover a systematic relationship between MJO activity and El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), however, have yielded conflicting results. Here, we stratify the MJO-ENSO relationship by season and find a robust relationship between MJO activity in late boreal spring and subsequent El Nino strength in boreal autumn/winter for the period 1979-2005. The connection between boreal spring MJO activity and subsequent El Ni�o strength results from a combination of the MJO being most sensitive to SST variations at the eastern edge of the warm pool and the coupled ENSO mode being most sensitive to surface westerly anomalies (which stem from enhanced MJO activity) in the the west Pacific during boreal spring.

Wednesday 12th April, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Bayesian Network and weather forecasting

Tali Boneh, Peter Newham,Gary Weymouth, John Bally
Monash University, VRO, BMRC, BMRC

Abstract:

A single unforecast fog event can cost the aviation industry $15M,while false alarms carry a significant penalty in wasted fuel. The aviation industry is direct in demanding performance from the Bureau, funds many Bureau staff and observations, and is understandably willing to seek forecast clarifications from individual forecasters at all hours. The ability to both defend a forecast through following a scientifically valid process, and allow human identification of guidance inapplicability, are desirable attributes of a fog forecasting process. Unfortunately fog forecasting is subject to significant error even with short lead times.

The following approach has been taken to successfully overcome 'intractable' obstacles to improve Melbourne Airport fog forecasting accuracy. Firstly, potential predictors were identified based on forecaster knowledge, including an understanding of relevent meteorological fog processes. The skill of these predictors was quantified. Secondly, these predictors and existing guidance schemes were incorporated into a bayesian network. Thirdly, the skill of the bayesian network has been estimated, and compared against past operational forecasts.

The bayesian network encapsulates much of the fog forecast process and knowledge. It probabilistically incorporates other guidance, which forecasters previously had limited ability to appropriately weight and use. The network also enables both prescriptive forecasting, and 'what if' interaction soundly based on probabilities. It is also robust in the presence of missing data.

Wednesday 12th April, 2.30-3.30pm, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

The WMO Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Programme: Integrated Global Atmospheric Chemistry Observations Related To Weather, Climate and Air Quality

Leonard A. Barrie
Chief, Environment Division, Atmospheric Research and Environment Programme, WMO Geneva

Abstract:

Atmospheric chemistry is very relevant to climate change, improved weather prediction, ozone depletion/ UV increase, air quality and long-range transport/deposition of pollution. The boundaries between atmospheric chemistry, weather and climate research are disappearing and technological advances are driving the need for an integrated approach to observational systems. The Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) programme of the World Meteorological Organization was established in 1989 by merging the WMO Global Ozone Observing System (GO3OS) and the Background Air Pollution Monitoring Network (BAPMoN). Its mission is to coordinate atmospheric chemistry research and monitoring related to: (i) systematic global monitoring of chemical composition of the atmosphere, (ii) analysis and assessment in support of international conventions and (iii) development of air pollution, weather and climate predictive capability. The focus is on six GAW target variable groups: greenhouse gases, ozone, ultraviolet radiation, aerosols, selected reactive gases and precipitation chemistry. GAW is a lead programme in implementing global networks for the essential climate variables greenhouse gases, ozone and aerosols identified by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS).

In 2004, an international panel of atmospheric scientists co-convened by WMO and the European Space Agency completed an Integrated Global Atmospheric Chemistry Observations (IGACO) strategy. It is an official Theme Report on Atmospheric Chemistry for the International Global Observing Strategy (IGOS), a consortium of organizations WMO and the Committee for earth Observations by Satellite (CEOS). IGACO provides a framework for bringing together ground-based, aircraft and satellite observations of chemical species in the atmosphere using atmospheric models such as forecast models that assimilate not only meteorological observations but also chemical constituents. Implementation of IGACO will be part of the next generation WMO Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) programme. The aim is to improve delivery of bulletins, scientific assessments and other services/products useful in addressing weather, climate and environmental issues. In this presentation, the past, present and future contribution of Australian observational research and modelling to GAW will be discussed.

Wednesday 19th April, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Have Australian Rainfall and Cloudiness Increased Due to the Remote Effects of Asian Anthropogenic Aerosols?

Leon Rotstayn
CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research

Abstract:

There is ample evidence that anthropogenic aerosols have important effects on climate in the Northern Hemisphere, but little such evidence in the less polluted Southern Hemisphere. To investigate possible effects of aerosols on the Australian hydrological cycle, 20th Century transient simulations performed with a new low-resolution version of the CSIRO global climate model have been analyzed. This version of the model ("Mk3A") includes an interactive treatment of aerosols from both natural and anthropogenic sources.

� Observations of Australian rainfall and cloudiness since 1950 show increases over much of the continent, and especially in the northwest. We found that when anthropogenic aerosol changes were included in the model, it gave increasing rainfall and cloudiness over Australia during 1951-1996. The pattern of increasing rainfall was strongest over northwestern Australia, in agreement with the observed trends. When anthropogenic aerosol changes were omitted, the model gave decreasing rainfall and cloudiness over Australia during 1951-1996.

� The strong impact of aerosols was predominantly due to the massive Asian aerosol haze, as confirmed by a sensitivity test in which only Asian anthropogenic aerosols were included. The Asian haze altered the north-south temperature and pressure gradients over the tropical Indian Ocean, thereby increasing the tendency of monsoonal winds to flow towards Australia. Inclusion of anthropogenic aerosols also made the simulated pattern of surface-temperature change in the tropical Pacific more like La Nina, since they induced a cooling of the surface waters in the extratropical North Pacific, which were then transported to the tropical eastern Pacific several decades later via the deep ocean. This effect was related to aerosols from regions other than Asia.

� Transient climate model simulations forced only by increased greenhouse gases have generally not reproduced the observed rainfall increase over northwestern and central Australia. Our results suggest that a likely reason for this failure was the omission of forcing by Asian aerosols, and that inclusion of this forcing is essential in future modeling of Australian climate change.

Wednesday 26th April, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Progress with the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS)

John Zillman
BMRC

Abstract:

The concept of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) emerged form the 1990 Second World Climate Conference and was aimed at ensuring an integrated and enhanced effort from the individual atmospheric, oceanographic, and terrestrial observation communities, systems and programs to meet the full range of needs for observational data for climate monitoring, research and applications.

Implementation of GCOS has not proceeded as originally envisaged or as well as originally hoped. It has progressed through a number of stages of overall philosophy, scientific guidance, secretariat management, political support, and national implementation arrangements. Most recently, it is being represented internationally as the climate component of the so-called Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) and, as itself a system of systems, something of a prototype for GEOSS.

This Seminar will present an informal, anecdotal and interpretive review of the past, present and future of GCOS from the perspective of some-one who was involved in its original establishment, watched from a distance through its formative years and now carries some measure of responsibility for guiding its future direction. In particular, it will report on a remarkable meeting in Addis Ababa last week which brought together a wide range of political, economic, and user sector representatives to develop a framework for G-8 funding support for the implementation of GCOS in Africa in support of the Millennium Development Goals.

Thursday 4th May, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Are Scientists Under-estimating Climate Change?

A. Barrie Pittock
CMAR

Abstract:

Uncertainties in climate change science are inevitably large, due both to inadequate scientific understanding and to uncertainties in human agency or behaviour. Policies must therefore be based on risk management, that is, on consideration of the probability times the magnitude of any deleterious outcomes for different scenarios of human behaviour. A responsible risk management approach demands that scientists describe and warn against seemingly extreme or alarming possibilities, for any given scenario of human behaviour, if these possibilities have even a small probability of occurring.

The consensus view of climate scientists, as represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report in 2001, is that the enhanced greenhouse effect will likely lead to global average surface warming by 2100 of between 1.4 and 5.8�C, and global sea-level rise of between 9 and 88 cm. This assumes the climate sensitivity is in the range 1.5 to 4.5�C for an equilibrium doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentrations, and the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) range of emissions scenarios. However, recent estimates of climate sensitivity and other developments suggest this might under-estimate the upper end of the range of possibilities.

New observations suggesting early and rapid warming with more positive feedback effects include:

* Reductions in global dimming.

* Permafrost melting.

* Biomass feedbacks.

* Rapid recession of Arctic sea ice.

* The northern and southern annular modes have strengthened.

* Rapid disintegration of ice shelves.

* Rapid intensification of tropical cyclones.

* Changes in North Atlantic circulation.

The above points, while not definitive, and in some cases controversial, suggest that the balance of evidence may be swinging towards a more extreme outcome. Taken together they increase the urgency of further improving climate models, and of action to reduce emissions if we are to avoid the risk of unacceptable levels of climate change.

Monday 8th May, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

The Sumatra tsunami of December 26, 2004: Observations and analysis of tide gauge data from the World Ocean

Alexander Rabinovich and Richard Thomson
Russian Academy of Sciences, Tsunami Laboratory, P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Moscow, Russia; Department of Fisheries and Oceans Institute of Ocean Sciences, Sidney, Canada

Abstract:

At 07:59 Local Time (00:59 UTC) on December 26, 2004, a Mw = 9.3 megathrust earthquake occurred along 1300 km of the oceanic subduction zone 100 km west of Sumatra and the Andaman Islands in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean. The earthquake generated highly destructive tsunami waves that strongly impacted the coastal regions of the Indian Ocean, killing more than 226,000 people. Because of international tourism, many countries far removed from the major disaster areas lost citizens, triggering the largest international aid and relief effort in history. The waves from this event were recorded within most of the world's oceans and represent one of few documented global-scale tsunamis, in which waves generated in one ocean propagate into adjoining oceans. The tsunami was the first to occur during the "instrumental era" and was recorded by a large number of tide gauges throughout the World Ocean, including tide gauges in the North Pacific and North Atlantic. It was also clearly recorded by a number of instruments along the west, south and east coasts of Australia. Global tsunami propagation models have demonstrated that mid-ocean ridges served as wave-guides, efficiently transmitting the tsunami energy from the source area to far-field regions of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North America. The 2004 Sumatra tsunami is now recognized as the most globally distributed and accurately measured tsunami in recorded history. Approximately 200 digital records of this tsunami are available and months after the event, tsunami measurements are still being collected and archived. The main purpose of this presentation is to review the records found for the 2004 Sumatra tsunami and to present some basic statistical characteristics of these records for three major regions:(1) the Indian Ocean; (2) the Atlantic Ocean; and (3) the Pacific Ocean. The study also compares tsunami wave characteristics in the near-field (Indian Ocean) with those in the far-field (Atlantic and Pacific) regions, provides estimates of the relative influence of the source and topography on these waves, and reconstructs the spectral properties of the source zone.

Tuesday 9th May, 2.00-3.00pm, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Talk for a Change: Challenges and opportunities for effective communication of Climate Change

Susanne C. Moser
Institute for the Study of Society and Environment, NCAR

Abstract:

Climate change requires societal engagement on both mitigation and adaptation. Citizens in urban and rural areas, in developed and developing nations, in private and public sectors, eventually, will need to reduce their emissions and other impacts on the regional and global climate and deal with the unavoidable near-term and potential longer-term impacts of climate change.

To achieve effective societal response to climate change, a busy, distracted and, so far, only marginally interested public - as well as decision-makers with many competing priorities- will need to be engaged. Climate experts and advocacy groups have played key roles in communicating climate change to these various publics, yet, arguably, have not yet achieved widespread engagement, much less meaningful dialogue.

This presentation will address how scientists and other communicators can do better in conveying their knowledge and engaging their audiences in a deeper conversation. Drawing on multi-disciplinary insights and practical experience garnered in a three-year project, this presentation will aim to dispel key myths still prevalent among communicators that can hinder societal response to climate change. It also offers suggestions to improve climate change communication and support the social changes needed to effectively respond to the immense challenge of climate change.

Wednesday 17th May, 10.00-11.00pm, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Localisation and balance in an Ensemble Kalman Filter

Jeff Kepert
BMRC

Abstract:

The Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) has considerable potential as an advanced data assimilation system for geophysical applications. An important part of its appeal is the ability to account for spatial and temporal structure in the errors in the background field, and thereby produce an analysis that is a more optimal blend of the background with the observations than current operational assimilation systems, which typically assume the background errors to be static and more-or-less homogeneous and isotropic. In the EnKF, these flow-dependent errors are modelled by a Monte Carlo technique. Practical constraints on ensemble size impose a significant amount of sampling error, which has deleterious effects on the analysis. This problem is partially controlled by filtering the ensemble covariance, a process known as covariance localisation.

The talk will begin by showing that localisation weakens the balances implied by a typical multivariate covariance matrix. As the ensemble covariances are supposed to better represent these balances at the analysis time than a static formulation, localisation thus reduces one of the prime advantages of an EnKF. An EnKF formulation with a transformed state space variable is then presented. This is compared to the classic EnKF in an identical-twin experiment using a global spectral shallow-water model, and it is shown that the transformed formulation has significantly better performance, producing analyses which are better balanced and more accurate. Finally, an improved localisation method is presented, which should better preserve balance, at the cost of a substantial increase in complexity. Results from the shallow-water system using this new localisation will be presented (if I can get the code working in time).

Friday 19th May, 11.00-12.00pm, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Introduction to SVN

Joerg Henrichs and Stephen Leak
HPCCC NEC

Abstract:

Version control is an important part of software development. It supports users in documenting changes to source code, and even more importantly helps them to synchronise their work - allowing many developers to simultaneously work on the same project without undermining each others work.

SVN (subversion) is a significant improvement over the older CVS (Concurrent Versions System) - it simplifies actions such as branching and tagging, and offers several important improvements over CVS. SVN is a stable program, which is used in projects like apache, kde, gcc, python.

This talk will give an introduction to version control with SVN, conventions for SVN repository structure and how to use the SVN client-side commands for day-to-day program development.

We will also introduce the common features of popular SVN GUIs, and touch on the essentials of SVN server administration.

Wednesday 24th May, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Cool season tornadoes and climate change

Raphaelle Kounkou
Meteo-France

Abstract:

The societal impact of climate modifications is often linked to extreme events. The tornadoes are one class of extreme events which are quite important in Australia. An interesting problem is thus to assess the impact of human induced climate change on the likelihood of tornadic events in Australia.

However, these extreme events imply small-scale phenomena which are not resolved by global climate models. It is therefore necessary to develop diagnostic tools to deduce the risk of extreme events from large-scale parameters. Such a tool is operational since 2000 at BMRC. It relies on the analysis of the vertical wind shear and of the surface lifted index to determine the risk of cool-season tornadoes.

This tool has been adapted and used with ERA-40 and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis and a climatology of this risk has been done. Then, we have used the global climate models from IPCC database to simulate the risk of cool-season tornadoes in the future and assess its evolution.

Tuesday 30th May, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Climate Change Impacts on Wheat Production and Adaptation Potential in Southern Australia

Qunying Luo
Adelaide University

Abstract:

In this talk, I will firstly present wheat production impact from climate change in SA based on my previous work. I will introduce our current project subsequently. Climate data needs and their integration into the wheat production system in the current project will be discussed last.

Tuesday 30th May, 2.00-3.00pm, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Real-time tsunami forecasting: challenges and solutions

Vasily Titov
NOAA Center for Tsunami Research

Abstract:

A new method for real-time tsunami forecasting will provide NOAA's Tsunami Warning Centers with forecast guidance tools during an actual tsunami event. PMEL has developed the methodology of combining real-time data from tsunameters with numerical model estimates to provide site- and event-specific forecast for tsunamis in real time. An overview of the technique and testing of this methodology is presented.

Wednesday 31st May, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Run BAM Scripts and Secrets of Using Lock-Files

Lawson Hanson
BMRC

Abstract:

Some features of the Run BAM scripts will be discussed, including a few of its more useful command-line options. An overview of the actions performed by these scripts leads to the discovery of the chain of processes they launch.

A brief outline of the three main CFAS (file archive) scripts is coupled with an examination of the notion of the FIFO Queue to serve as an introduction to a case where a lock-file is used to synchronise access of different processes to shared files.

Considering some aspects of Perl's "flock()" function for handling advisory lock-files, a slide depicting semaphore lock-files in action will be presented to help uncover some of the secrets of how best to use lock-files. Less than one dozen lines of code are also included to round off with a comparison of Perl .vs. Shell methods of using lock-files.

Thursday 8th June, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

The origin of ENSO-like decadal patterns, and the predictability of decadal changes in ENSO teleconnections

Scott Power
BMRC

Abstract:

Earlier work (Power et al. 1999) showed that an index for variability in ENSO-like decadal patterns (the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation Index - which is closely related to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation) - was statistically linked to surprisingly large interdecadal changes in ENSO's impact on Australian climate during the twentieth century. This raised the possibility that the interdecadal changes might be partially predictable. Here, however, we show that if these interdecadal changes are predictable then the level of predictability is low - at least in our CGCM (Power et al. 1998). Why then do decadal ENSO-like patterns appear to modulate ENSO telconnections to Australia (for example)? In seeking to answer this question we will pay very close attention to the impact that ENSO has on Australia. We will show that the relationship is non-linear, and that this non-linearity can be used to help to reconcile the apparent decadal modulation with the low predictability evident in the model (Power et al. 2005). We will also discuss implications this non-linearity has for climate services.

We will also present a new theory for the origin of decadal-like ENSO patterns (Power and Colman 2006). We will see that ENSO drives signals in the ocean that are actually predictable well beyond time-scales normally associated with ENSO. How is this possible? You will have to come along to find out! This theory explains why ENSO-like decadal patterns have a broader meridional appearance than their interannual counterparts - a longstanding puzzle.

References

Power, S., F. Tseitkin, R. Colman, and A. Sulaiman, 1998: A CGCM for seasonal prediction and climate change research. BMRC Res. Rep. 66, Bureau of Meteorology, Australia, 52 pp.

Power, S., Folland, C., Colman, A., and V. Mehta, 1999: Inter-decadal modulation of the impact of ENSO on Australia. Climate Dynamics, 15, 319-324.

Power, S.B., and R. Colman, 2006: Multi-year predictability in a coupled GCM. Climate Dynamics, 26, 247-272.

Power, S., M. Haylock, R. Colman, and X. Wang, 2006: The predictability of interdecadal changes in ENSO and ENSO teleconnections. J. Climate, (in press).

Wednesday 14th June, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Defining Spatially Distributed Warning Thresholds and its Application to Canadian Fire Weather Index

Klara Finkele
BMRC and Bushfire CRC

Abstract:

The currently operationally used Forest Fire Danger Index has been developed by McArthur in the 1960's along with a set of fire danger thresholds from low to extreme. The Australia wide threshold for a fire weather warnings issued by the Bureau is set at 50. However, in Tasmanian this threshold has been lowered to 24 because significant fire activity is happening at these levels. Two further arguments support this lower fire danger threshold: 1) the fire weather warning is a public warning message and if the level were set at 50 this would be issued too infrequently to be an effective public warning. 2) Implicit in the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index is an assumption of a standard fuel load and in the densely forested parts of Tasmania this standard fuel load is exceeded.

Taking spatially and climatically varying factors into account a frequency approach was taken to define new warning thresholds for fire danger. The Canadian Fire Weather Index has been implemented for Australia using grided input data either from observation analysis or from mesolaps forecast as a proxy for lacking observations. However, applying the standard thresholds developed for Canada did not result in meaningful warning levels for Australian conditions. The new extreme threshold was set at the 99 percentile level using daily data of 6 years. This new approach is setting spatially distributed extreme threshold at a percentile level rather than at a defined value. The forecast of FFDI and FWI is then mapped into the categories (low to extreme) using the spatially distributed values derived from the percentile levels. Data from fire related house loss over 46 years will show that significant fire occurs above the 99 percentile level and in some locations this is below the current standard threshold for FFDI of 50. Cases will be shown to demonstrate using the spatially distributed thresholds lead to more effective warnings such as the Wilson's Promontory fire in April 2005.

Tuesday 20th June, 2.00-3.00pm, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

On the Paradox of Convectively-Coupled Waves

Lyle Pakula
Colorado State University

Abstract:

The theory of equatorially trapped waves is frequently used as a basis for explaining many of the fundamental modes of variation of the large scale flows of the tropical atmosphere. A key aspect of these phenomena is the way they apparently organize convection to such an extent that indices of deep convection, derived from observed Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR), are used to reveal the waves themselves (Lau and Peng 1987, Wheeler and Kiladis 1999). However, the wave propagation speed implied by tracking areas of low OLR, and thus presumably deep convection, is significantly slower than that derived from linear wave theory that invokes expected vertical distributions of heating and related equivalent depths of the fluid.

In this presentation, we present a new dynamical theory to explain this apparent paradox in the context of forced linear waves on an equatorial beta-plane. Two concepts are central to this new theory: (i) a convectively coupled wave is a forced wave and (ii) a convectively coupled wave is a coupled feedback system, wherein the forcing and wave mutually reinforce one another. Furthermore, a convectively coupled wave exhibits phase-locked structures as it approaches steady state whose necessary condition provides much insight into the observed structure.

It is shown that forced waves are governed by two equations, one for the amplitude and one for the frequency of the wave. The difference between the speed of the forcing and the theoretical speed of the wave, delc, is an essential parameter of these solutions. It is argued that the apparent paradox of slow propagation can be explained by consideration of the parameter delc. Furthermore, the heuristic conditions of Bjerknes (1938) "uniform adjustment" and Mapes (1993) "gregarious convection" applied to the large scale define an optimal propagation speed that correctly predicts the phase speed of convectively-coupled Kelvin waves as well as, possibly, the MJO.

Wednesday 21st June, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Some points for efficient usage of the SX-6 system

Ilia Bermous
BMRC

Abstract:

With increasing usage of the SX-6 it is very important that the system is used efficiently. Some points for efficient usage are discussed in the talk. Significant part of the talk is devoted to how the I/O performance can be improved for an application on SX-6. Simple general ways of reducing I/O are discussed, as well as some Fortran coding techniques and proper setting of environment variables responsible for I/O. Indirect memory addressing may impact on the application performance, detection of the culprits for memory contention issues and possible ways of improving these cases are discussed. Suggestions are made for efficiency in multitasking and multi-node processing, SAM data archival jobs and parallel single CPU processing. Job monitoring tools and their usage are illustrated by simple examples.

Monday 26th June, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Design-a-Wetland, A tool for generating and assessing constructed wetland designs for wastewater treatment

Carolina Casaril
NRSM UQ

Abstract:

Can a single integrated decision model be created for the design and assessment of artificial wetlands, provided either entry or exit standards are known and specified?

Can the elements of a system of interfacing the model with Public Consultation be specified?

Wetlands are acknowledged as key ecosystems within which the hydrological cycle regenerates itself. Their values are manifold, ranging from aesthetic to habitat, from water buffers to nutrient sinks. Humans have been attempting to harness the natural water filtering capacities of wetlands in order to generate wastewater treatment wetlands, specially designed for multiple purposes, thereby releasing the pressure on natural wetlands. This project aims to decipher a way of incorporating many levels of information: mathematical, numerical, categorical and even logical, within one decision making tool. This tool will allow a user to:

a) Determine how a particular wetland design will function in terms of water quality output given an input

b) Determine which designs would suit a particular set of water quality output requirements

c) Incorporate elements within its interface relating to public consultation, direct or indirect

The project has developed a 'Blue Web' model divided into 5 sections:

1. Compartments: Geometric Compartment and Nutrient compartment (or processes compartment) both CORE compartments: Landscape Compartment, User Compartment both EDGE compartments

2. Three data filters: mathematical, numerical/categorical and logical data types;

3. Dynamic Model: the Blue Web incorporating Orbiting elements of complexity which are included at the user's discretion; plus the capacity to iterate this web,

4. a data store, and

5. a rearrangement and visualisation of the results.

It is hoped this model can be used as a decision guide to incorporate information and issues from all interested and relevant parties such as: polititians, policy makers, stakeholders, public reaction in the press, scientific data, user data and incomplete and patchy data from unreliable sources. Putting out in proporation to what is put in. Its purpose would be to inform and facilitate decision making, not replace it.

Tuesday 4th July, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Development of SES2 radiation and its performance in BAM model

Zhian Sun
BMRC

Abstract:

Since implemented into the BAM system, the SES radiation has undergone a series modifications, but it is still not good enough for NWP and climate applications. Therefore, a second version (SES2) is developed and implemented into BAM system. In this talk, I will introduce new features in SES2 and show you several advances in line with the code accuracy compared with benchmark and observations. Experiments for 10 year AGCM integration and one month assimilation and forecasting have been performed using the SES2 and results will be shown in this talk. Please come along to see if this code can make you smile.

Wednesday 5th July, 2.00-3.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Seasonal hydroclimate forecast for water resources management

Francis Chiew
CSIRO Land and Water

Abstract:

Associate Professor Francis Chiew has over 15 years experience in research, teaching and consulting in hydrology and water resources and related disciplines. He recently joined CSIRO Land and Water in Canberra after 15 years as an academic at the University of Melbourne. He leads CSIRO's "Catchment hydrology" stream and the eWater CRC's "Impacts of hydroclimatic variability" program. His interests include hydrological modelling, hydroclimatology, statistical hydrology and urban stormwater quality.

Francis will give a presentation on "seasonal streamflow forecast for water resources management". The presentation will include discussions on: ENSO-streamflow teleconnection; streamflow serial correlation; statistical methods for forecasting streamflow; benefits of seasonal streamflow forecast, current and potential applications of seasonal forecasts for water resources management; and improved seasonal forecast using dynamic climate models with hydrological models.

Tuesday 11th July, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Advances in the Understanding of Wildfire Behavior and Smoke Transport Using High-Resolution Numerical Models

Philip Cunningham
Department of Meteorology & Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute, Florida State University

Abstract:

Wildfires are highly complex geophysical phenomena involving interactions between the combustion and heat transfer processes, the local atmospheric environment, and the terrain and vegetation characteristics. Due to the immense difference in scale between the chemical processes occurring within the fire and the atmospheric processes occurring in the fire environment, the modeling of wildfires represents a formidable challenge. With the availability of large-scale supercomputers, however, it has become possible to begin to investigate the dynamical and physical processes occuring in wildfires and their associated smoke plumes using high-resolution numerical models in an effort to advance fundamental understanding of these phenomena.

In this talk, simulations from two numerical models will be presented. The first model is a fully coupled atmosphere-fire model that incorporates representations of the physical processes that govern wildfires, such as combustion and radiative and convective heat exchange. The second model is slightly less complex and is designed to investigate the dynamics of buoyant plumes arising from intense heat sources representative of wildfires. New insights into the dynamics of wildfires and their associated smoke plumes that have been obtained from these simulations will be discussed.

Wednesday 12th July, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Climate applications research at NIWA - from climate mapping to serving climate-based products over the web

Andrew Tait
National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA), Wellington, New Zealand

Abstract:

This preseantation will cover much of the applied climate work currently being done through the National Climate Centre, at NIWA. There are three main areas of work: spatial estimation and mapping of climate, analysing meteorological hazards and crop-growing potential, and delivering climate-based products over the web. Our climate mapping work is based on using the ANUsplin spatial interpolation software, which is also extensively used in Australia. We have produced a vast library of climate surfaces and have initiated a climate mapping service which has proven very popular. All our climate maps are produced using ArcGIS. We also produce daily estimates of several climate parameters for around 11,500 grid points covering all of New Zealand, which we call our "virtual climate stations" (similar to the SILO system). These daily data estimates extend back to 1972 for most variables. Building on our capabilities for mapping climate, we have done some very interesting crop-growing potential studies and meteorological hazards analyses. These studies tend to be funded by local and regional government through regional development and civil defense programmes. Lastly, we have recently launched ClimateExplorer, which is a web-based system for delivering climate data-derived products. These products range from climate change scenario maps to regularly-updated line plots for select climate stations showing the accumulated rainfall from the start of the growing season to the current date.

Tuesday 18th July, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Aerosols, ozone-depletion, and CO2: their influence on Australian rainfall and Southern Hemispheric climate

Wenju Cai
CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research

Abstract:

Climate modeling science is now at a stage where the relative importance of various forcing components in driving the climate change over the past decades can be assessed.

This talk will discuss 1. How aerosols induce a pan-oceanic response and suppress the sea level rise in the Southern Hemisphere 2. What role ozone depletion plays in driving the SWWA rainfall reduction. 3. How CO2 will continue to affect rainfall across Australia. 4. Why Tasman Sea warming is fastest of the Southern Hemisphere.

Come along and find out the linkage between aerosols and "The day after Tomorrow" and between ozone and fish.

Wednesday 19th July, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Verification of the Bureau's NWP marine surface winds

Eric Schulz
BMRC

Abstract:

The importance of the Bureau's Numerical Weather Prediction marine surface winds has increased in recent years. Modelling capabilities in the marine environment have been expanding since the introduction of wave prediction in the mid 80's, to the ocean forecasting now possible under BLUElink. This has elevated the importance of understanding the NWP surface forcing which is driving the marine system. Here we present a recently developed system that routinely verifies the quality of the Bureau's NWP surface winds over the ocean against the satellite bourn QuikSCAT scatterometer. Broad characteristics of individual model performance will be discussed and some recent application of the verification described.

Tuesday 1 August, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Monitoring and modelling the effects of human resettlement on the pristine coral reefs at Rongelap Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands

Maria Beger(1), Zoe Richards (2), and Eric Peterson(3)
(1) University of Queensland, (2) James Cook University, (3) Victoria University

Abstract:

This paper explores the interactions between physical oceanography and biodiversity, as a case study of marine protected area design by the indigenous community of Rongelap Atoll. The model has been validated by natural resource assessment surveys conducted in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The model explains what drives larval distribution in and around an isolated atoll and what are the physical qualities that are important in ecological function. Hydrodynamic modelling is useful to classify regions on the basis of bathymetry and the intensity of bottom shear stress, and to specifically empower resource managers to estimate the fate of effluent from aquaculture cages, for example. Why are hydrodynamics important for coral atolls? The life history of most coral reef organisms involve a sedentary and a pelagic phase. The pelagic phase is important to dispersal of animals on small, regional and global scales. It is widely recognized that ocean currents transport pelagic larvae from their native populations to new settlement reefs. While currents between atolls facilitate the exchange of propagules between atolls, it is likely that a large proportion of recruitment is derived from native populations (Jones et al. 1999, Swearer et al. 1999). Advection-diffusion processes are altered by near-shore retention zones, where diffusion processes prevent "wash-out", thereby giving flexibility in design of marine reserves (Largier 2003).

In this talk I will be explaining the computational fluid dynamic models I have been applying to atolls.

Friday 4 August, 11.15-12.15am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Where are the most intense thunderstorms on earth? 1: How do we know? This can be answered. 2: Why are these storms where they are? We can speculate about this.

Ed Zipser
University of Utah, USA

Abstract:

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite has provided over 8 years data, the main purpose being rainfall estimation. However, the combination of radar, passive microwave, visible, IR, and lightning data also provides unparalleled opportunities for studying the structure and intensity of storms. Before 1987, IR satellite data were used as proxies for almost anything, from rainfall to intense convection to MCCs to climate change to stock market cycles. In the deep tropics, it is now well known that the rainiest areas tend to have near-moist adiabatic lapse rates, and therefore low values of convective available potential energy (CAPE) and also storms with weak-to-moderate updrafts. We use the multi-parameter TRMM database to define more appropriate proxies for convective intensity, such as maximum height of the 40 dBZ contour, minimum brightness temperature at 85 and 37 GHz (related to ice water path), and lightning flash rate. The global distribution of intense storms has some expected "hot spots", such as Oklahoma-Texas, Argentina, central Africa, and parts of northern Australia. (Hector is close, but not quite as prominent as the Kimberley.) Explaining some of the results requires some speculation, and the audience is invited to join in and help write the next paper in the series.

Tuesday 8 August, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Understanding and predicting terrain-induced turbulence using high-resolution numerical models

Todd Lane
School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne

Abstract:

The presence of topography influences the atmosphere in many ways. These influences include the enhancement and suppression of precipitation, drag or friction exerted near the surface, and the effect of vertically propagating mountain waves on the momentum budget of the middle atmosphere. Another process that is less well understood is the generation of turbulence and mixing due to terrain-induced flows. This turbulence can reside close to the surface in the mountain lee, be produced by wake effects, or can occur in the upper troposphere or stratosphere due to the breakdown of vertically propagating gravity waves well above the surface. In addition to being responsible for the vertical redistribution of atmospheric constituent species and contributing to the atmospheric momentum budget, terrain-induced turbulence poses a significant hazard to aviation.

Increased computing power has allowed a better representation of terrain-induced turbulence in mesoscale models. Such models can now resolve at least part of the turbulent cascade induced by topographic flows, while still possessing large enough domains to incorporate larger-scale synoptic features. With this in mind, and as computing power increases, there is much promise for future deterministic real-time forecasting of terrain-induced turbulence for aviation. This seminar will present a number of examples where high-resolution numerical modelling has successfully been used to examine encounters between aircraft and severe terrain-induced turbulence.

Wednesday 16 August, 10.00-11.00am, BMTC Training Room1, 9th floor north, 700 Collins St

New High-Resolution Sea Surface Temperature Analyses and Products

Helen Beggs
BMRC

Abstract:

This seminar is aimed at anyone who needs to use high-resolution (1 - 25 km) satellite sea surface temperature products or analyses in their work, and will cover exciting new products available through the GODAE High Resolution SST Pilot Project (http://www.ghrsst-pp.org/) and at the Bureau through the BLUElink> Ocean Forecasting Australia Project (http://www.marine.csiro.au/bluelink/).

As part of the BLUElink> Ocean Forecasting Australia project the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has modified its existing operational sea surface temperature (SST) analysis system to produce 1/12 degree resolution, daily SST analyses over the Australian region (20N - 70S, 60E - 170W). The current Bureau system provides a 1 degree weekly global bulk SST analysis at approximately 1 m depth (SST1m) and 1/4 degree daily regional SST1m analysis based on a univariate statistical (optimal) interpolation system. The new high-resolution analysis system combines skin and sub-skin SST data from infrared and microwave sensors on polar-orbiting satellites with in situ measurements to produce daily "foundation" SST estimates. The foundation SST product provides an SST that is free of any diurnal variations (daytime warming or nocturnal cooling) and approximates the nighttime surface temperature minimum or pre-dawn SST at depths of around 1-5 m. The "foundation" ocean temperature is the SST that most closely represents the top layer (10 m) of ocean models. The analysis system is expected to become operational at the end of 2006 as part of the Bureau's NWP suite and has been in beta test phase in NMOC since 12 June 2006. Daily, 1/12 degree resolution, foundation SST analyses are produced routinely by 0200 UT of the day following data measurement (see http://gale.ho.bom.gov.au/nm/oceanography/new_reg_sst/) and are available in netCDF or the Bureau's UARCH format for evaluation.

Wednesday 23 August, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Global changes in synoptic activity with increasing CO2

Eun-Pa Lim
BMRC

Abstract:

Over the last century, increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gases and global temperature in the atmosphere have drawn our attention to changes in extratropical cyclones. This study was aimed at examining changes in extratropical cyclones: observed over the past two decades using the NCEP-DOE reanalysis II data (NCEP2); and simulated in the CSIRO Mark2 atmosphere-ocean coupled general circulation model with increasing CO2. Furtheremore, we attempted to explore the physical mechanisms driving such changes by modelling idealised experiments with the Melbourne University atmospheric GCM. Cyclones were found and tracked automatically by the Melbourne University cyclone finding and tracking scheme.

Our results have shown that in NCEP2 SH winter extratropical cyclones have been fewer in their number, but deeper in their maximum depth for the last two decades, and there are overall similarities in the changes in cyclone system density and depth simulated with doubled CO2 to the observed trends. Also, cyclones have been vertically better organised in the observation, and cyclones are vertically better organized as CO2 increases. Lastly, latitudinal temperature gradients in the upper troposphere over the tropics appear to be somewhat responsible for the changes in Z500 cyclone features in the SH.

Wednesday 30 August, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Shifts in synoptic systems and total rainfall over south-west Western Australia

Pandora Hope
BMRC

Abstract:

A step-drop in rainfall in the mid-1970s to a new winter rainfall regime has caused concern for water users in south west Western Australia. There is also great concern about whether low rainfall totals will continue into the future. To investigate the drivers of the rainfall changes, an analysis of the synoptic conditions was undertaken. Rainfall in the south west of Western Australia (SWWA) is sensitive to shifts in the hemispheric scale circulation due to its location at the northward extent of the influence of mid-latitude fronts. A clustering method (self-organising map) was used to classify the winter synoptic systems and their time-series reveals that the rainfall drop is associated with a decline in the frequency of occurrence of deep trough systems crossing the region. In simulations of the future, under a business-as-usual emission scenario, the frequency of those rain-bearing systems continues to further decline.

Wednesday 6 September, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

The Role of the MJO in Ensemble Forecasts of the 1997/98 El Ni�o in the POAMA1 System

Li Shi
BMRC

Abstract:

To shed light on the possible role of the MJO on generating the spread of ensemble forecast, an ensemble of ninety 9-month forecasts for the 1997/98 El Ni�o has been made starting on 1 December 1996 by using the current operational coupled model seasonal forecast system (POAMA1).

Each hindcast starts with the same ocean and atmospheric initial conditions except a very small sea surface temperature (SST) perturbation added to perturb the chaotic component of the atmosphere. The atmospheric initial condition is gotten from an ensemble mean of 36-member AMIP style atmospheric states, and hence do not contain stochastic noise. And then, the ninety ensemble forecasts are separated into terciles of strong, neutral and weak group according to the intensity of monthly Nino3.4 index for the four months.

After compared the difference behaviour of the composited first MJO event between the strong group and the weak group, it is shown that the MJO-related convective activity in the strong group, which can be traced back to the eastern Indian Ocean, propagates further east into the centra-eastern Pacific, compares to that of the weak group during the first four months. Further analyses show that the relatively stronger and further eastward expanding westerly surface stress, associated with the MJO activity in the strong group, definitely generate a relatively stronger downwelling eastward Kelvin wave that propagates into the centra-eastern Pacific and contributes to perturb a stronger warming SST over there.

Wednesday 13 September, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Slow Modes of Climate Variability and Seasonal Prediction

Carsten Frederiksen
BMRC

Abstract:

The provision of skillful seasonal forecasts of temperature, rainfall and other climate variables has obvious potential benefits for countries whose economic activity is dependent on agriculture, tourism and other climate-sensitive industries. At extra-tropical latitudes, a substantial component of interannual variability of seasonal mean climate fields arises from variability within the season (i.e. intraseasonal variability). This "intraseasonal" component is mainly contributed to by weather variability with time scale longer than the deterministic prediction period (about ten days) and therefore it is essentially unpredictable on seasonal, or longer, timescales. After removing this component from seasonal mean fields, the residual component is more likely to be associated with slowly varying external forcings (e.g. sea surface temperatures) and from slowly varying (interannual/supra-annual, slower than intraseasonal time scale) internal atmospheric variability and therefore, it is more potentially predictable at the long range. This component is referred to commonly as the "slow" or "potentially predictable" component.

Recently, the authors developed a methodology for estimating, from monthly mean data, spatial patterns, or modes, of the slow and intraseasonal components. This methodology provides a way to better identify and understand the sources of predictive skill as well as the sources of uncertainty in climate variability. Here, we illustrate this by applying the methodology to an analysis of New Zealand rainfall variability and the Southern Hemisphere and Northern Hemisphere 500hPa geopotential height field, often used to characterize the general atmospheric circulation. In particular, we show how the information obtained can be used to develop improved statistical seasonal forecasts of these two variables. The methodology for constructing the forecast schemes is based on determining predictors for the principal component time series of the dominant slow modes and then using these to construct a forecast of the climate field as a linear combination of the slow modes. We compare the skill of our statistical schemes with dynamical seasonal forecast models and show how our methodology can be used to analyse the sources of model predictive skill.

Friday 15 September, 11.00-12.30am, Level 6 Conference Room , 700 Collins St

Weathering the balance of Work and other aspects of Life

Siusan Mackenzie
Equilibrium Worklife Solutions

Abstract:

Siusan is highly regarded and highly sought after, both within Australia and overseas, for her innovative work in this field. She knows only too well how difficult it can be to achieve balance in life.

Through attending this seminar, you will become aware of techniques that may have a positive impact on managing your work and life balance.

Wednesday 20 September, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Ensemble Single Column Model Validation in the Tropical Western Pacific

Tim Hume
BMRC

Abstract:

Single column models (SCMs) are useful tools for the evaluation of parameterisations of radiative and moist processes used in general circulation models (GCMs).

In the past, SCM applications have usually been limited to regions where high quality observations are available to derive the necessary boundary conditions, or forcing data. This seminar will describe my recent research on using ensembles of single column models, forced with data derived from NWP analyses, at the Tropical Western Pacific ARM sites of Manus Island and Nauru. It will be shown that despite the uncertainties inherent in NWP derived forcing data, the ensemble approach is still able to highlight parameterisation deficiencies, and provides a useful tool for testing new or improved model parameterisations.

Wednesday 27 September, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Quantifying the Impact of the Madden Julian Oscillation on Rainfall in Australia for All Seasons

Matthew Wheeler
BMRC

Abstract:

Although a number of studies of the Madden Julian Oscillation's (MJO) impact on Australian rainfall already exist, none have yet considered that impact consistently across all seasons, over all locations, and quantified it through both its influence on the mean and the probability of exceedance of a rainfall threshold. We have done this using the Bureau's Real-time Multivariate MJO (RMM) index, whereby 8 distinct phases of the MJO, and a "weak" phase, are defined to account for its variability existing in the equatorial zone. For each of the defined MJO phases, two composite rainfall products are determined, one being the mean daily rainfall anomaly for each phase, and the other being the change in probability of exceeding the upper tercile of weekly rainfall. This is done separately for the seasons of December-February (DJF), March-May (MAM), June-August (JJA), and September-November (SON), using all available data from June 1974 through February 2006. Statistical significance is computed by the application of Monte Carlo resampling, and computations are made for both zero and non-zero lag between the index and rainfall.

As expected, the greatest impact is seen in northern Australia in DJF, with a maximum anomaly of 6 mm day-1 occurring along several sections of the northern coast. These positive anomalies are seen during Phase 5, when the envelope of equatorial MJO convection is centred around 140�E, and low-level westerly anomalies extend across the far north of the continent. These rainfall anomalies augment the climatological DJF daily averages of between 8 and 12 mm day-1 in these locations. In the southern half of the continent, the composited anomalies do not exceed a magnitude of 2 mm day-1 in any phase. Interestingly, the Phase 4 anomalies are negative in the southeast during JJA, but positive during DJF, indicating the importance of the season-mean basic state through which the MJO-induced tropical-extratropical wave trains propagate.

The changes in probability of exceeding the weekly upper tercile are generally consistent with those of the mean. That is, locations that see an increase in mean rainfall during a certain phase also see an increased chance of exceeding the upper tercile. The climatological probability of the upper tercile is 33%. In the Top End during DJF this increases to be greater than 53% in Phases 5 and 6, but is less than 23% during Phases 8, 1, and 2. Probability swings in the south are generally less.

Wednesday 4 October, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Sources of variability of Australian surface climate

Simon Grainge
BMRC

Abstract:

The seasonal mean of a climate variable can be considered to be a random variable with a signal and noise component. Using monthly mean data, an estimate of the noise, or intraseasonal variability, can be made. By subtracting this from the total variance, an estimate of the signal, or slow variability, is obtained. This has been done for Ausralian precipitation and surface temperature for all seasons. By coupling the surface observations with atmospheric data from NCEP re-analysis, the leading modes of slow and intraseasonal variability can be obtained. ENSO dominates the slow variability in all seasons. For precipitation, two distinct ENSO-like modes of variability are found. Secondary slow variability modes include trends, Indian Ocean and high latitude variability. For intraseasonal variability, precipitation is dominated by tropical/extra-tropical interaction, particularly in the form of propagating wave trains. For surface temperature, mid-latitude systems dominate the intraseasonal variability. Theoretical improvements to the estimate of the intraseasonal variability will be discussed.

Friday 6 October, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

An Overview of the Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center

Steve Goodman
Earth Science Office, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama USA

Abstract:

The Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center was established in 2002 to accelerate the infusion of NASA Earth Science observations, data assimilation and modeling research to forecast operations and decision-making at the regional and local level. The primary goals of this program are to 1) develop, evaluate, and transition near-real time experimental NASA data and products to operational use at the regional scale, 2) develop a coordinated and sustained end-to-end framework to transition NASA-based experimental forecast and data products to National Weather Service forecasters, 3) provide a test-bed to enable data assimilation experiments focused at the regional scale, and 4) develop assessment baselines and metrics that demonstrate the benefits and identify the measurement gaps of operational and NASA-supported earth science data. The focus is directed to the regional scale and emphasizes forecast improvements on a time scale of 0-24 hours.

Dr. Goodman is the manager of the NASA Earth Science Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, USA, and an adjunct professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. His research interests include the remote sensing of lightning and thunderstorms, short-term weather prediction and nowcasting, and severe storms.

Wednesday 11 October, 10.00-11.00am, BMRC Seminar Room, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Fuzzy Forecast Verification

Beth Ebert
BMRC

Abstract:

High resolution forecasts from nowcasts and numerical models can look quite realistic and provide the forecaster with very useful guidance. However, when spatial forecasts are verified using traditional metrics such as probability of detection, false alarm ratio, and equitable threat score, they often score quite poorly because of the difficulty of predicting an exact match to the observations at high resolution. Recent years have seen the development of "fuzzy" verification approaches that reward closeness by relaxing the requirement for exact matches between forecasts and observations. Some of these fuzzy methods compute standard verification metrics for deterministic forecasts using a broader definition of what constitutes a "hit". Other fuzzy methods treat the forecasts and/or observations as probability distributions and use verification metrics suitable for probability forecasts. Implicit in each fuzzy verification method is a particular decision model concerning what constitutes a good forecast.

The key to the fuzzy approach is the use of a spatial window or neighborhood surrounding the forecast and/or observed points. The treatment of the points within the window may include averaging (upscaling), thresholding, or generation of a PDF, depending on the fuzzy method used. The size of this neighborhood can be varied to provide verification results at multiple scales, thus allowing the user to determine at which scales the forecast has useful skill. Other windows could be included to represent closeness in time, closeness in intensity, and/or closeness in some other important aspect.

This talk will describe a framework for fuzzy verification that incorporates several fuzzy verification methods. It will be demonstrated on high resolution precip