The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research - Seminars

Seminars - Melbourne

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CAWCR SEMINARS 2011

Date	Time	Title	Speaker	Affiliation
Wednesday 14th December 2011	2:00pm	UAV-based Atmospheric Tomography	Anthony Finn	University of South Australia
Wednesday 14th December 2011	10:00am	Bridging the gap: Dynamical intraseasonal prediction	Debra Hudson	CAWCR
Wednesday 7th December 2011	10:00am	Development of a fast surface solar radiation scheme for improving diurnal cycle simulation of solar radiation in NWP model and solar energy forecasting	Zhian Sun	CAWCR
Wednesday 30th November 2011	10:00am	General Overview of the Sino-Australian Research Centre for Coastal Management	Xiao Hua Wang	The Sino-Australian Research Centre for Coastal Management, UNSW Canberra
Wednesday 23rd November 2011	10:00am	Wind ressource prediction using 100m resolutiom version of the Unified Model (UM)	Stuart Webster	UK Met Office
Tuesday 22nd November 2011	10:00am	High-resolution nearshore wave and circulation modeling with the NWPS system	Andre van der Westhuysen	NOAA/NCEP
Wednesday 2nd November 2011	10:00am	Meteorological information for solar energy use and electricity grid integration.	Marion Schroedter-Homscheidt	German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Tuesday 25th October 2011	10:00am	The discovery of Fire, human evolution and climate change	Andrew Glikson	ANU
Friday 21st October 2011	9:15am	Extreme gust measurements - are Dines or cup anemometers the answer?	Bob Cechet	Geoscience Australia
Wednesday 19th October 2011	10:00am	Ensemble Progress Update	David Smith	CAWCR
Friday 7th October 2011	10:00am	Atmospheric Rivers and Heavy Rainfall in California: Verification and Observations	Ed Tollerud	NOAA
Wednesday 5th October 2011	10:00am	Choosing a boundary-layer parameterisation for tropical cyclone modelling	Jeff Kepert	CAWCR
Thursday 29th September 2011	10:00am	High resolution simulations for tropical cyclone Megi	Stuart Webster	UK Met Office
Wednesday 28th September 2011	2:00pm	Clouds, Aerosols and Oceans Observed with the CALIPSO Lidar	Yongxiang Hu	NASA Langley Research Center
Wednesday 28th September 2011	10:00am	A new long-term daily temperature data set for Australia	Blair Trewin	NCC
Monday 26th September 2011	3:00pm	Introduction to Long-range Forecast Service in KMA	Youngho Lee	KMA Climate Prediction Division
Wednesday 21th September 2011	10:00am	ACCESS-TC: vortex specification, 4DVAR initialization, verification and structure diagnostics	Noel Davidson	CAWCR
Wednesday 31st August 2011	10:00am	Ocean Forecasting System in KMA	Sung Hyup You	Marine Meteorology Division, KMA, Republic of Korea
Wednesday 17th August 2011	10:00am	Modifications to UM atmospheric physics for improving ACCESS model simulations for the AR5 experiments	Zhian Sun	CAWCR
Wednesday 10th August 2011	10:00am	Plant responses to global change: consequences for food security	Roslyn Gleadow	Monash Cyanogenesis Group, Monash University
Monday 8th August 2011	10:00am	Extreme Precipitation in Global High-Resolution Precipitation Products: Seasonality, Floods, and Landslides	George Huffman	NASA GSFC
Wednesday 27th July 2011	10:00am	Diurnal Variation of Rainfall over Eastern China	Haoming Chen	CMA China
Wednesday 13th July 2011	10:00am	Large scale features of the Western Pacific monsoon and their representation in climate models. Climate feedbacks under unforced climate variability: useful analogues for secular climate change?	Ian Smith Robert Colman	CAWCR
Tuesday 12th July 2011	10:00am	Tri-agency radar networks: Where are we heading?	Gyuwon Lee	Dept. of Astronomy and Atmospheric Sciences, Kyungpook National University, Deagu, Korea
Friday 8th July 2011	10:00am	How to measure the potential predictability of the tropical seasonal precipitation	June-Yi Lee	International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii
Tuesday 5th July 2011	10:00am	Modulation of the Extratropical Circulation by Combined Activity in the Madden-Julian Oscillation and Equatorial Rossby Waves	Paul Roundy	DAES, SUNY Albany, NY
Friday 1st July 2011	10:00am	Hybrid 4D-VAR and Ensemble Covariance Inaccuracy	Craig Bishop	Naval Research Labs, Monterey, CA
Thursday 30th June 2011	10:00am	Developments to the Met Office Global and Regional Ensemble Prediction System	Richard Swinbank	UK Met Office
Wednesday 29th June 2011	2:00pm	NRL ocean forecasting developments	Pat Hogan	NRL, Stennis (US Navy)
Tuesday 28th June 2011	10:00am	The Russian Heat Wave and other Climate Extremes of 2010.	Kevin Trenberth	NCAR
Friday 3rd June 2011	10:00am	Very high-resolution global climate and NWP modelling.	Martin Miller	ECMWF
Wednesday 1st June 2011	10:00am	Southern Ocean Clouds in climate - Forgettable or just forgotten	Christian Jakob	School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University
Wednesday 25th May 2011	10:00am	Hindcast of NEMO Ocean Module in GloSea4-Next Seasonal Prediction System of KMA. Statistical Model for Seasonal Prediction of Tropical Cyclone Frequency around Korea	Sangwook Park and Ki-Seon Choi	National Typhoon Center, Korea Meteorological Administration
Wednesday 18th May 2011	2:00pm	Reef Aerosol Emissions and Links to Regional Climate Variation	Graham Jones	School of Environmental Science & Management, Southern Cross University
Thursday 12th May 2011	10:00am	Monitoring and short-range forecasting of atmospheric composition.	Martin Miller	ECMWF
Friday 6th May 2011	10:00am	The ECMWF forecast systems: Progress, problems and plans.	Martin Miller	ECMWF
Wednesday 4th May 2011	10:00am	New Sea Surface Temperature Products from the Bureau of Meteorology	Helen Beggs	CAWCR
Postponed		Development of python-FALL3D and the integration of ACCESS-T for modelling volcanic ash fallout in Indonesia: An example from recent eruptions at Mount Merapi, Central Java	Adele Bear-Crozier	Geoscience Australia
Thursday 28th April 2011	10:00am	Introduction of Institute of Heavy Rain in CMA, China	Cui Changing	Director of Institute of Heavy Rain in CMA, Wuhan, China
Wednesday 13th April 2011	10:00am	Ocean Model Analysis and Prediction Systems version 2	Gary Brassington	CAWCR
Friday 18th March 2011	10:00am	Evaluation of the TIGER SuperDARN over the horizon radar systems for providing remotely sensed marine and oceanographic data over the Southern Ocean	Robert Greenwood	CAWCR, Bureau of Meteorology
Wednesday 9th March 2011	10:00am	Seasonal Forecasting of Australian region tropical cyclones	Angelika Werner	Macquarie University
Wednesday 2nd March 2011	10:00am	Experimental Dynamic Seasonal Streamflow Forecasting	Narendra Kumar Tuteja	Water Forecasting Branch
Thursday 24th Feb 2011	10:00am	What controls the interannual variability of tropical cyclone activity over the western North Pacific?	Yuqing Wang	University of Hawaii
Wednesday 23rd Feb 2011	10:00am	Synoptic Typer Tools	Robert Dahni	Information Technologies Branch
Tuesday 22nd Feb 2011	10:00am	Beyond the classical El Nino	Dietmar Dommenget	Monash University
Friday 18th Feb 2011	10:00am	Assessing the Predictability of Seasonal Rainfall in the south-west Pacific Region	Yahya Abawi	Bureau of Meteorology
Wednesday 16th Feb 2011	10:00am	Modelling and observations of mesoscale wind fluctuations over the North Sea	Claire Vincent	Risoe and the Danish Technical University
Monday 14th Feb 2011	10:00am	Scale Interactions in the Tropical Pacific: The Role of Ocean Mixing	Kelvin Richards	University of Hawaii
Friday 11th Feb 2011	10:00am	Models for site assessment for wind turbines	Morten Nielsen	Risø DTU, National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, Wind Energy Division, Roskilde Denmark
Wednesday 9th Feb 2011	10:00am	Australia’s Interface to Open Access Marine Data	Wiebke Eberling & Patrick Gorringe	University of Tasmania
Tuesday 8th Feb 2011	10:00am	Tropical Indo-Pacific climate drivers: impacts, prediction, and challenges	Ashok Karumuri	Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology
Wednesday 2nd Feb 2011	10:00am	Seasonal prediction and coupled model development activities at JAMSTEC	Jing-Jia Luo	JAMSTEC

The venue is the seminar room (Floor 9, east side) at 700 Collins Street, Docklands

Seminars are run typically with duration of 30 to 45 minutes + questions. Dates and times are shown. If you are a vistor to the Bureau, you need to register at reception in the foyer.

For further details contact the seminar coordinators

ABSTRACTS

Wednesday 14th December, 2:00pm - 3:00pm, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

UAV-based Atmospheric Tomography

Anthony Finn

Defence And Systems Institute, University of South Australia

A novel technique for remotely monitoring the near-surface air temperature and wind fields based on measurements of the Doppler shift in frequency exhibited as a result of the varying propagation delays between an unmanned aerial vehicle (or UAV) and different acoustic ground receivers will be presented. The technique measures the onboard spectrum of sound signals emitted by the engine of an UAV, transmits them to the ground using high bandwidth radio communications and compares them to the Doppler shifted spectra received over propagation paths to several ground-based acoustic receivers. The data are then converted into effective sound speed values using tomographic techniques to reconstruct a two or three-dimensional grid of spatially varying atmospheric temperature profiles and wind fields. Such observations are important in many practical applications such as boundary layer meteorology, theories of turbulence, wave propagation through a turbulent atmosphere, etc.; and the use of a UAV allows temporal and spatial studies of atmospheric phenomena in locations previously inaccessible through reasons of cost or safety.

Wednesday 14th December, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Bridging the gap: Dynamical intraseasonal prediction.

Debra Hudson

CAWCR

The Bureau of Meteorology has recently developed the capability to make dynamical intraseasonal (multi-week) climate forecasts based on modifications to the coupled-model seasonal forecast system, POAMA. This work has been stimulated by increasing demand for intraseasonal forecasts in Australia, particularly from the agricultural and water management communities. This seminar will provide an overview of this research and development, which is focussed on understanding the sources of intraseasonal predictability of rainfall and temperature over Australia and improving POAMA’s capability through appropriate system development.
The seasonal prediction version of POAMA was not designed for intraseasonal forecasting and has deficiencies in this regard. Most notably, the growth of the ensemble spread in the first month of the forecasts in the seasonal system, generated primarily from perturbed ocean initial conditions, is too slow to be useful on intraseasonal timescales. This deficiency has been addressed through enhancements to the ensemble generation and initialisation strategy. An innovation of this new multi-week forecast system is a novel pseudo-coupled data assimilation system which produces an ensemble of perturbed atmosphere and ocean states that can be used to initialise the forecasts. It will be shown that this new scheme impacts favourably on the intraseasonal forecast skill of rainfall and temperature over Australia, as well as on the prediction of key climate drivers.

Wednesday 7th December, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Development of a fast surface solar radiation scheme for improving diurnal cycle simulation of solar radiation in NWP model and solar energy forecasting.

Zhian Sun

CAWCR

A parameterization of the global horizontal and direct normal solar radiation at the earth’s surface has been developed based on the full radiative transfer scheme SES2. The parameterization includes effects of gaseous absorption, Rayleigh scattering, clouds and aerosols absorption and scattering. The initial aim of this work is to improve the surface radiation budget modelling in a global NWP and climate model. The results can now be used to estimate solar energy distribution or forecasting in NWP model.
The scheme has been tested against the SES2 code and observations from 3 ARM observational sites and 3 stations on the Tibetan Plateau. The results have demonstrated that the scheme is accurate enough for estimation of global radiation at the surface.

Wednesday 30th November, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

General Overview of the Sino-Australian Research Centre for Coastal Management.

Xiao Hua Wang

Sino-Australian Research Centre for Coastal Management, UNSW Canberra

While Australia and China have vastly different populations with 1.3 billion in China and only 22.3 million in Australia, both have the majority of people living near the coast, and there is a continuing migration of people towards the coast. In Australia more than 83% of people live within 50 km of the coast, while in China, the estimate is that 60% of people live in the 12 coastal provinces. A recent comprehensive assessment shows that Australian marine industry contributes 25 billion Australian dollars annually to the national economy. Over the next ten years, China will develop the Blue (Marine) Economic Zones (BEZ) with the government and industry funding exceeding CNY1.4 trillion (A$200 billion). This leads to increasing pressures being put on the coastal zone and the requirement for research to better understand these complex zones and improve their management.
Unprecedented economic growth and increasing investment in science and research has contributed to China becoming one of the world’s leading science producers. Following Australian Government and community calls to increase cooperation in science and technology with China, University of New South Wales has signed Memorandum of Intent (MOI) for academic exchange and research collaboration with four top Chinese universities (so called ‘985 universities’) in 2008/9. Through these agreements, University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW@ADFA) and these four Chinese Universities agree to seek ways of developing collaborations and programs for the purpose of facilitating academic, scientific and technological exchange and cooperation. Furthermore, each of these Chinese Universities agrees to send up to a total of fifteen China Scholarship Council (CSC) scholarship students per annum to UNSW@ADFA. CSC supports high quality students (top 1% in China) for a four-year PhD program. To date, more than 50 CSC HDRs have enrolled at UNSW@ADFA, some of them are near their completion or completed.
Against above background, a Sino-Australian Research Centre for Coastal Management (SARCCM) was established in November 2010. SARCCM is a Research Centre of the University of New South Wales with a multidisciplinary/multi-faculty focus. It works closely with the Ocean University of China (OUC is one of UNSW MOI universities, and a key partner for the BEZ construction in China) in collaborative research on coastal science and management. The UNSW Canberra campus and several faculties of UNSW in Sydney contribute to the Research Centre. The SARCCM has strong team of 17 researchers from UNSW and its collaborative organizations, as well as 2 external funded posdoc fellows, 9 HDR students and one visiting fellow from OUC.
Since the launch, SARCCM has attracted strong interest from national and international scientific community as well as industries. An article was published in the American Geophysical Union Newsletter EOS describing SARCCM research collaboration with China. SARCCM scientists and students have also been active to carry out research activities in five programs including coastal oceanography, coastal engineering, remote sensing, marine policy and law, and climate change and socio-economics. Two special issues with a total of fifteen papers in highly ranked international journals have been published; and an external research grant has been obtained. Through SARCCM seminars, workshops and international visits, SARCCM has established a strong collaborative research network of scientists, government and industry people in China and Australia, with several research projects being developed for funding by national and international funding sources.
If you are interested in working with us at SARCCM, in collaborative research or as a postgraduate, please contact us to discuss how we might progress our common interests. We look forward to working with you.

Wednesday 23rd November, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Wind resource prediction using 100 m resolution version of the Unified Model (UM).

Stuart Webster

UK Met Office

The UK Met Office has recently developed a wind-energy site-screening and planning tool (the Virtual Met Mast) which is designed to assess the feasibility of potential wind farm sites. The tool can be used for both onshore and offshore locations and provides virtual wind climatological data for periods of up to several decades. The approach relies on data from Met Office regional-scale numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, to which downscaling corrections are applied to account for local complexity. The corrected NWP data are extended to cover long periods (several decades) using a technique in which the data are related to alternative long-term datasets.
For highly complex terrain, the optimal way of deriving the corrections applied to the NWP data is to model explicitly the effects of the local complexity. In this presentation results are presented from applying this approach using the Unified Model at 100 m horizontal resolution. The 100 m model is nested inside a global model simulation by using intermediate models at 12 km, 4 km, 1 km and 333 m resolution to provide appropriate lateral boundary conditions.
Simulations of a month or more have been performed and example results, including verification against wind mast observations, will be presented. Finally, the technique used to apply these results to improve our existing multi-year predictions will be described.

Tuesday 22nd November, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

High-resolution nearshore wave and circulation modeling with the NWPS system.

Andre van der Westhuysen

NOAA/NCEP

The United States National Weather Service (NWS)’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) currently produces coastal wave forecasts using the WAVEWATCH III® spectral wind wave model, at resolutions of down to 4 arc-minutes. However, the demand for high-resolution (<1 km) nearshore forecasts in U.S. territories has been steadily increasing over the past decade. To address this information need, the Nearshore Wave Prediction System (NWPS) is being developed at NCEP, in close collaboration with NWS Regional Headquarters (RHQs) and various Weather Forecasting Offices (WFOs). This system is to provide local on-demand high-resolution nearshore wave model guidance to forecasters. The aim is to implement NPWS as part of the baseline of the new Advanced Weather Information Processing System (AWIPS) II. NWPS is to be run locally at RHQs and WFOs, and driven by forecaster-developed wind grids, offshore wave boundary conditions from NCEP’s WAVEWATCH III, and current and water level fields from NCEP’s Real-Time Ocean Forecast System (RTOFS) and Extratropical Surge and Tide Forecasting System (ESTOFS). The nested nearshore wave model used is SWAN, and optionally a new nearshore version of WAVEWATCH III. In future, the nearshore modeling system will also include two-way wave-current coupling, using the ADCIRC® coastal circulation model. The talk will include various aspects of the new system, including its architecture, a description of the underlying models, and the implementation of wave partitioning and spatial/temporal tracking algorithms in SWAN and WAVEWATCH III.

Wednesday 2nd November, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Meteorological information for solar energy use and electricity grid integration.

Marion Schroedter-Homscheidt

German Aerospace Center (DLR)

The talk will concentrate on the needs of concentrating solar thermal energy technologies for meteorological information and show examples of existing projects at DLR. These include solar resource mapping (with a focus on aerosol monitoring), site-specific parameter generation such as the scatteredness of clouds or cloud movement speed, solar nowcasting using geostationary satellites, and day-ahead forecasting using numerical weather prediction.

Tuesday 25th October, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

The discovery of Fire, human evolution and climate change

Andrew Glikson

ANU

The ascent of plants on the land some 420 million years [Ma] ago has created a flammable carbon layer at the surface of the terrestrial biosphere, with recent biomass estimated at ~1900 billion ton carbon [GtC]. Fires lighted by lightning, volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts constituted one of the triggers of geological Mass Extinctions. The control of fire by Hominids, perpetrating energy dissipation/entropy within the biosphere orders of magnitude higher than their own metabolic processes, constitutes a genusbased blueprint for the current Sixth Mass Extinction of species. The temporal association between the mastery of fire and abrupt descents into glacial periods during the Upper part of the Lower Palaeolithic suggests it may have been an invention driven by necessity. During the Holocene extensive burning and land clearing, culminating with internal combustion, have magnified entropy by orders of magnitude. A rise in CO2 during the Holocene, interpreted by Ruddiman (2003) in terms of land clearing and cultivation, is regarded by other authors as a natural trend based on comparisons with the 420-405 kyr Holsteinian interglacial (Broecker and Stocker, 2006), CO2 mass balance calculation (Stocker et al., 2011), CO2 ocean sequestration rates and calcite compensation (Joos et al., 2004). The anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases may be retarding a descent into the next glacial stage, while increasing the entropy of the system. Since the early 20th century the composition and thermal properties of the atmosphere have been shifting at geologically unprecedented rates, adding approximately 2 parts per million CO2 per year, tracking toward pre-Pleistocene and potentially pre-Oligocene (pre-34 Ma) ice-free Earth conditions.

Friday 21st October, 9:15am - 10:15am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Extreme gust measurements - are Dines or cup anemometers the answer?

Bob Cechet (Geoscience Australia), John Ginger (James Cook University), John Holmes (JDH Consulting) and Jeff Kepert (CAWCR)

In Cyclone Vance, a Dines anemometer measured a then-record gust of 144 kt. A co-located cup anemometer recorded 122 kt. Other examples of similar discrepancies exist. Such differences are crucial to understanding wind risk in Australia, since buildings are engineered to withstand, and the Bureau forecasts, the peak gust in tropical cyclones.
This study seeks to understand such differences, by a multi-pronged approach across several institutions. The seminar will outline the results of (a) a comparison of gust measurements from colocated Dines and cup anemometers, (b) laboratory measurements of the transient response of Dines anemometers, (c) a physical model of the dynamical behaviour of a Dines anemometer in response to a fluctuating wind field, and (d) the calculation of transfer functions for cup and Dines anemometer response.
The results across these four strands are consistent with measurements such as those in Vance, and explain and quantify a systematic bias between gust measurements from the two anemometer types. The equivalent gust response time of a Dines anemometer has also been determined, and is different from earlier estimates. The implications for Australia's extreme wind climate and engineering standards will be discussed.

Wednesday 19th October, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Ensemble Progress Update

David Smith

CAWCR

The ACCESS Global and Regional Ensemble Prediction System (AGREPS) is now running daily, producing 3 day regional and 5 day global forecasts, with 24 members. This talk will review the essential ensemble features, including initialisation, and consider a selection of forecast results. Recent forecast data will initially serve to demonstrate the basic operation, followed by a closer look at a certain extreme weather event from February 2011. Verification results will be given, in both standard and multiscale formats, the latter case employing a multiscale decomposition tool specifically tailored to local area domains. Future ensemble plans will also be discussed.

Friday 7th October, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Atmospheric Rivers and Heavy Rainfall in California: Verification and Observations

Ed Tollerud

NOAA

The ability to make longer-term (3-5 day) predictions of extreme rainfall in the California Sierras and Coastal Mountains during the cold season is heavily dependent on accurate forecasts of streamers of low- to mid-level moisture from the central Pacific. Popularly called ‘Atmospheric Rivers’ (ARs), these features, which are clearly evident on satellite imagery of integrated water vapor (IWV), are relatively thin. For this reason, the location and timing of their point of impact on the Pacific West Coast is difficult to predict but can have critical impact on water resource management. During several winters, the US Hydrometeorological Testbed (HMT) at NOAA, in collaboration with the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) at NOAA and at NCAR/RAL, have performed real-time and retrospective verification studies of research and operational ensemble models to assess their QPF performance. In particular, object-based spatial verification methods that may better assess the model forecasts of ARs than traditional methods have been investigated. This talk will summarize some diagnostic results from these continuing studies and suggest further methods to improve their value. Since precipitation observations are particularly difficult in the heavy terrain in the HMT study domain, issues involved with maintaining and assessing quality verification datasets (here and elsewhere) are also considered.

Wednesday 5th October, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Choosing a boundary-layer parameterisation for tropical cyclone modelling

Jeff Kepert

CAWCR

The boundary layer in a tropical cyclone is quite unlike that elsewhere in the atmosphere. It is therefore necessary to ask which boundary-layer parameterisation(s) are suitable for use in tropical cyclone simulation. Previous work by others has shown substantial sensitivity to the choice of scheme and identified some specific shortcomings in some schemes, but without arriving at recommendations for which scheme is “best”. Here, several schemes, representative of those available in popular modelling systems, are reviewed and applied in a simplified modelling framework. Based on a comparison to observations and on theoretical grounds, it is shown that one highly popular class of schemes is badly flawed and should not be used. Another is shown to be sensitive to diagnosis of the boundary-layer depth, a difficult problem in the core of the tropical cyclone, and caution is advised. The Louis scheme and a higher-order closure scheme are, so far as we can discern, without major problems, and are recommended.

Thursday 29th September, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

High resolution simulations for tropical cyclone Megi

Stuart Webster

UK Met Office

Super-typhoon Megi made landfall in the Philippines on 18 October 2010. The central pressure of 885hPa was the lowest seen for 20 years and one of the lowest ever recorded at landfall. The extreme nature of this tropical cyclone therefore makes it an ideal case study to test (to the limit!) the Unified Model's ability to simulate and potentially forecast such phenomena.
In this presentation the ability of the Unified Model to simulate this event is assessed at horizontal resolutions ranging from 40 km (the global model) down to 1. 5km. The simulations were all initialised 5 days prior to landfall when the storm was still an unnamed tropical disturbance. In order to capture the full evolution of the super-typhoon the nested 4 km and 1.5 km domains covered a region of 3000 km x 2000 km. The 1.5 km resolution was therefore very computationally demanding and, with the present generation of supercomputers, could not be run to produce real time forecasts. However, the simulation produced a remarkably realistic super-typhoon as illustrated by the animation of the model's simulated outgoing longwave radiation with the MTSAT satellite imagery (click here to see the animation).
Using the 1.5 km simulation as a "high resolution truth", a set of sensitivity experiments have been performed at 4 km resolution. The "out of the box" configuration, which is that used operationally by the Met Office for the UK area, shows only a small additional deepening compared to the 12 km and 40 km models. In marked contrast, when the 4 km model is configured in the same way as the 1.5 km model, it produces a much more realistic simulation that is very similar to the 1.5 km simulation. The key difference in these two 4 km model configurations is shown to be the vertical (boundary layer and free troposphere) mixing. The 4 km model using this configuration therefore offers the potential to produce improved real-time forecasts of tropical cyclones with the present generation of supercomputers.

Wednesday 28th September, 2:00pm - 3:00pm, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Clouds, Aerosols and Oceans Observed with the CALIPSO Lidar

Yongxiang Hu

NASA Langley Research Center

The dual wavelength (532 nm and 1064 nm), dual polarization lidar on-board the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite has been profiling clouds and aerosols in the atmosphere since June 2006.
The lidar measurements provide vertical structure statistics of the clouds and aerosols. It provides unambiguous discrimination of various particulates in the atmosphere, such as dust, smoke, ice clouds, water clouds and polar stratospheric clouds.
Cloud physical properties, such as cloud thermodynamic phase and extinction coefficient, can be derived from CALIPSO’s dual polarization measurements of light backscattered by clouds. One of the findings from CALIPSO cloud statistics is the unexpected high frequency of occurrence of supercooled liquid water clouds over Southern Oceans and high latitude regions.
While the lidar system is designed for atmospheric studies, the CALIPSO lidar also collects backscatter signal of ocean surface and ocean sub-surface. The ocean surface lidar backscatter intensity is a direct measurement of mean square wave slope. The depolarization ratio of the ocean surface backscatter can be used for characterizing bubbles at high sea-surface wind speeds. Referencing to ocean surface wind speed product from collocated AMSR-E measurements, CALIPSO also measure self-calibrated ocean sub-surface lidar backscatter profiles.
This talk will introduce the physics behind these measurement concepts and discuss scientific applications and findings using the space-based lidar measurements.

Wednesday 28th September, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

An extended high-quality temperature data set for Australia

Blair Trewin

National Climate Centre/CAWCR, Bureau of Meteorology

A new homogenised daily temperature data set for Australia has been developed by the Bureau of Meteorology. This data set extends from 1910 to the present and includes data from 112 locations, with nearly all locations having at least 50 years of data and 60 of them extending through the full post-1910 period.
The new data set draws on large amounts of daily data that have only been digitised in recent years. This allows daily coverage to be extended to the full post-1910 period, whereas previously there was only very limited daily coverage prior to 1957. The new data set also includes some new locations which were not in the previous daily data set, particularly in Western Australia.
The data have been homogenised at the daily timescale, using a combination of statistical methods and metadata. The technique used for homogeneity adjustment involves a percentile-matching algorithm, allowing different adjustments to be made to different parts of the frequency distribution. This is important for homogenising extremes since the impact of some inhomogeneities on extremes differs substantially from their impact on means. All adjustments and amendments made to the data have been comprehensively documented.
The new data set will allow more robust analyses of changes and variability in Australian temperature over the last 100 years, in particular allowing analyses of century-scale changes in extremes for the first time.

Monday 26th September, 3:00pm - 4:00pm, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Introduction to Long-range Forecast Service in KMA

Youngho Lee

CAWCR

In this presentation, the current status of long-range forecast (LRF) service in Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) will be briefly introduced. Firstly, outline and main contents of the KMA’s Climate Monitoring and Outlook System will be presented. The intranet system are composed of three parts, Part 1) climate outlook/LRF, Part 2) ENSO(El Nino and La Nina) monitoring and prediction, and Part 3) climate monitoring system.
In Part 1, one- and three- month climate outlooks are operated. That kind of contents is finally serviced by KMA’s homepage. In the part, precipitation chance (or possibility) with intensity at a given day is also displayed. The information was made by climatological precipitation data base during the past 40 years. In part 2, ENSO monitoring and prediction are displayed. KMA is now operating dynamical and statistical ENSO prediction models. The prediction results are sent to the US. IRI (International Research Institute for Climate and Society, http://portal.iri.columbia.edu) for making ensemble model results on ENSO evolution. In part 3, climate monitoring over Korea and East Asia with global pressure pattern information is included. Time series of temperature and precipitation for each time scale are displayed with record-breaking information.
And the LRF information serviced through KMA’s homepage (http://www.kma.go.kr) includes one- and three- month climate outlook with seasonal climate and ENSO outlook. Data type of monthly climate outlook provided by KMA is the deterministic tercile information of temperature and precipitation (i.e., any of the two points that divide an ordered distribution into three parts, each containing a third of the population. Data type of seasonal climate outlook for the next season (for example, summer climate outlook at a given year are released on February 23 every year) is the probabilistic tercile information of temperature and precipitation.
KMA’s LRF service information is being applied to many user groups such as agriculture, water resource management, energy sectors, health, ministry, various sectors of industry as well as news media for public. KMA now has a plan to expand the service contents and develop new data type (e.g., strengthening the graphical or digitized format) in order to provide user-friendly or user-oriented LRF information.

Wednesday 21st September, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

ACCESS-TC: vortex specification, 4DVAR initialization, verification and structure diagnostics

Noel Davidson, Yi Xiao, Harry Weber, Yimin Ma, Lawrie Rikus, Mai Nguyen, Robin Bowen, Jeff Kepert and Jim Fraser

CAWCR

ACCESS has been configured for operational and research applications on Tropical Cyclones. The base system runs at a resolution of 0.11 and 50 levels. The domain is re-locatable and nested in coarser-resolution forecasts. Initialization consists of 5 cycles of 4DVAR over 24 hours and forecasts to 72 hours are made. Without vortex specification, initial conditions usually contain a weak and misplaced circulation. Based on estimates of central pressure and storm size, vortex specification is used to filter the analysed circulation from the original analysis, construct the inner-core of the storm, merge it with the large scale analysis at outer radii, and locate it to the observed position. Using all available conventional observations and only synthetic surface pressure observations, the 4DVAR builds a balanced, intense 3-D vortex with a secondary circulation. Synthetic cloud imagery from the model is used to validate initial conditions and forecasts against actual satellite imagery. Mean track and intensity errors for Australian region storms during 2010-2011 are rather encouraging, as are results from real-time running at NMOC. From preliminary diagnostics, we illustrate interesting structure change features during intensification, dissipation, extratropical transition and landfall. Validation of storm structure, so crucial for rainfall and storm surge prediction will be illustrated. Current limitations, future enhancements and research applications will also be discussed.

Wednesday 31st August, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Ocean Forecasting System in KMA

Sung Hyup You

Marine Meteorology Division, KMA, Republic of Korea

Since the introduction of 3rd supercomputer, the KMA developed and applied high resolution weather and ocean forecasting system. This presentation shows present status of operational weather/ocean forecasting system in Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). Since 1992, the KMA has operated numerical ocean wave prediction system. At present, KMA has operated the high resolution global/regional/coastal wave forecasting system using 3rd supercomputer of KMA. The operational wave model is WAVEWATCH III which is a third generation wave model. The global/regional/coastal WAVEWATCH III covers the global ocean, northwestern Pacific Ocean and coastal ocean with about 50/8/1km horizontal resolutions, respectively. The wave model predicts 72(regional) 252(global) hours wave patterns at 00 UTC and 12 UTC every day. The operational storm surge/tide model area covers northwestern Pacific Ocean based on POM (Princeton Ocean Model) and the horizontal grid intervals are also 8km in both latitudinal and longitudinal directions same as Regional wave model. From July, 2006 the STORM have been applied to formal forecasting model in KMA. Also ocean circulation forecasting system is based on ROMS (Regional Ocean Modeling System). The ROMS covers the northwestern Pacific Ocean with 8km horizontal resolutions including the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and the East Sea, marginal seas around Korea. The model had 20 vertical levels that followed the bottom topography. Atmospheric conditions from the Global/Regional Data Assimilation and Prediction System (GDAPS/RDAPS) based on UM(Unified Model) are used for forcing input of ocean forecasting system. Establishing of newly devised weather/ocean prediction systems have operated in conjunction with high computing environment.

Wednesday 17th August, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Modifications to UM atmospheric physics for improving ACCESS model simulations for the AR5 experiments

Zhian Sun, X. Zhou, Yimin Ma, C. Franklin, H. Zhu, D. Bi, M. Dix, A. Hirst, S.J. Marsland, and J. Shonk

CAWCR

After the ACCESS model becomes major component of the Bureau operational forecasting system, another breakthrough is the start of IPCC AR5 experiments using the ACEES coupled system. In order to improve the SST simulations in the ACCESS coupled system we have worked very hard over the years on modifications to the UM atmospheric model physics for improving the coupled-model simulation for the AR5 experiments. This is a highly collaborated team work involving the model physical team members and coupled-team members. This seminar will report the modification works contributed from the model physical team to the development of the coupled system. The talk will cover the modifications to the model cloud field, interaction between cloud and radiation, effect of surface wind stress and convection. The major focus of the talk will be on the improvement in representation of sub-grid scale horizontal cloud inhomogeneity and vertical overlap. We implemented a new scheme representing cloud structure in a general circulation model which combines the ‘tripleclouds’ parameterization, introducing horizontal inhomogeneity in the model grid box in each layer, with ‘exponential-random’ overlap, in which clouds in adjacent layers are not overlapped maximally, but according to a vertical decorrelation scale. The impacts of this new scheme and modifications in other areas are evaluated one by one. The results from several experiments running more than 100 years will be presented.

Wednesday 10th August, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Plant responses to global change: consequences for food security

Roslyn Gleadow

Monash Cyanogenesis Group, Monash University

In order to feed a growing population, and support the trend towards a higher meat diet in many parts of the world, world food production needs to double by 2050 but using less arable land, less fertilizer and in a time of uncertain climate change. While the climate adaptation debate has largely focused on yields, the nutritional quality of food is also fundamental. The decrease in nutritional value of plants in direct response to CO2 represents an under-appreciated side effect of atmospheric change. Inherent inefficiencies in photosynthesis are reduced when the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increases. Plants acclimate to this by synthesizing less photosynthetic enzyme resulting in lower leaf protein. Another consequence of acclimation is that the CO2-fertilisation effect may not be as great as originally predicted. The reduced demand for nitrogen by the photosynthetic machinery in high-CO2 environments results in a reallocation of N away from photosynthetic protein to herbivore defence compounds such as cyanogenic glycosides that release toxic cyanide when consumed by herbivores. Too much cyanide in mammalian diets (including humans) can cause death or, more commonly, neurological disorders and paralysis. The likely combination of increased episodic drought and higher atmospheric CO2 in coming decades may lead to a significant increase in cyanide-related diseases in the future.

Monday 8th August, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Extreme Precipitation in Global High-Resolution Precipitation Products: Seasonality, Floods, and Landslides

George J. Huffman

NASA/GSFC Laboratory for Atmospheres and Science Systems and Applications, Inc.

Two quasi-operational data sets led by the author are now long enough, each in excess of 10 years, that it is reasonable to examine the behavior of global extreme precipitation. The TRMM Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) provides 0.25°x0.25° 3-hourly estimates of precipitation in the latitude band 50°N-50°S for the years 1998-present, while the GEWEX/Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) One-Degree Daily (1DD) precipitation product provides 1°x1° daily global estimates of precipitation for 1997-present. The TMPA incorporates many (intercalibrated) microwave estimates of precipitation, augmented by microwave-calibrated infrared (IR) estimates, while the 1DD consists of microwave-calibrated IR estimates in the band 40°N-40°S and TOVS (or AIRS) sounding-based estimates at higher latitudes. Both datasets incorporate monthly raingauge analyses, but it should be emphasized that the day-to-day occurrence of precipitation is entirely based on the satellite data. The two are compared at annual and seasonal time scales for basic parameters that are stable and well suited to comparison with station data or model estimates. These include means, frequency of precipitation, 95th percentile values, and the longest spans of consecutive dry and wet days in each season or year (depending on the time period being examined). Overall, there is fair consistency between the 1DD and TMPA datasets. One result of the comparison is that the longest span of consecutive dry days is sensitive to the details of the retrieval algorithms. Another is confirmation that several of the parameters, including frequency of precipitation and 95th percentile values are sensitive to the spatial scale. The TMPA tends to have drier estimates than the 1DD at higher latitudes, ~40-50°, particularly in the winter hemisphere, where the microwave algorithms currently lack sensitivity to the reduced precipitation signals.

Wednesday 27th July, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Diurnal Variation of Rainfall over Eastern China

Haoming Chen

CMA China

The diurnal cycle of precipitation is an important aspect of Earth’s weather and climate. By using hourly rain gauge data, our group has studied the diurnal variation of warm season rainfall in China and investigated its related rainfall characteristics. We found that summer precipitation over contiguous China has large diurnal variations with considerable regional features. (1) Summer precipitation over the region between the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers has two diurnal peaks, which is closely related to different duration rainfall events. The long-duration rainfall events tend to have their maximum hourly rainfall around early morning, while short-duration ones have their peak rainfall around late afternoon. (2) The diurnal phase changes eastward along the Yangtze River Valley, with a midnight maximum in the upper valley, an early morning peak in the middle valley, and a late afternoon maximum in the lower valley. This phase transition is found to be due to the diurnal clockwise rotation of the low tropospheric circulation, especially the accelerated nocturnal southwesterlies. (3) The contrast diurnal variation between southeastern and southwestern China is associated with local thermal contrast.

Wednesday 13th July, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Large scale features of the Western Pacific monsoon and their representation in climate models.

Ian Smith, A. Moise and R. Colman

CAWCR

Features of the West Pacific Monsoon The West Pacific Monsoon region encompasses a number of nations in both hemispheres affected by the annual cycle of the large-scale Australia-Asian monsoon. The region experiences a westerly wind reversal during the summer months accompanied by a peak in rainfall. We investigate the ability of climate models to capture these key features. While a seasonal wind reversal appears to be reasonably well simulated by most models, it is more difficult to simultaneously capture both a seasonal wind reversal and a seasonal rainfall contrast. This potentially casts doubt on any associated climate projections but, as it turns out, this does not appear to be important. It appears that the projections simply reflect a tendency for wet regions to become wetter and dry regions to become drier as a result of global warming.

Tuesday 12th July, 10:00am - 11:00am, Meeting/Conference rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Tri-agency radar networks: Where are we heading?

Gyuwon Lee

Dept. of Astronomy and Atmospheric Sciences, Kyungpook National University, Deagu, Korea

Korea owns three radar networks operated from three agencies: Korea Meterological Administration (KMA), Korean Air force, and Flood control office. The three agencies operate their networks based on their own purpose. There was a tri-agency agreement for common use of data, furthermore unification of maintenance procedure and operation, and possibly unification of radar types. In addition, to facilitate this agreement, KMA built the Weather Radar Center (WRC) by benchmarking Radar Operation Center in US and plans to utilize WRC as a focal point of Korean radar network. In this presentation, we will show current status and future plans of radar networks. Some advantages of use of tri-agency networks are demonstrated through the simulation study in terms of measurement near surfaces and multiple Doppler analyses. Although new implementation plans and cooperation among agencies promise an excellent opportunity, many issues in the networks are present such as 1) quality control (elimination of non-meteorological echoes and unfolding of Doppler radial velocity), 2) radar calibration (single/dual pol.), 3) scanning strategies, 4) hardware, 5) their operation, etc. We will demonstrate these issues and on-going development to improve reliability of radar data by resolving them.

Friday 8th July, 10:00am - 11:00am, Meeting/Conference rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

How to measure the potential predictability of the tropical seasonal precipitation

June-Yi Lee and Bin Wang

International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii

The tropical seasonal precipitation is a principal atmospheric heat source that drives tropical and extratropical circulation and has profound impacts on agricultural planning and water resource management. Thus, reliable prediction of the seasonal variation in the tropical precipitation is one of the most important and challenging tasks in climate prediction. This study strives to evaluate how accurately the state-of-the-art coupled models predict the tropical seasonal precipitation one-month ahead deterministically and probabilistically, and to determine to what extent the tropical seasonal precipitation is potentially predictable. The one-month lead multi-model ensemble (MME) seasonal prediction was made for the 20 years of 1981-2000 using thirteen coupled models which participate in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Climate Center/Climate Prediction and Its Application to Society (APCC/CliPAS) and Development of a European Multi-model Ensemble system for seasonal to interannual prediction (DEMETER). The MME prediction for the tropical precipitation in September-October-November (SON), December-January-February (DJF), and March-April-May (MAM) is evidently better than June-July-August (JJA) due to coupled models’ capacity in capturing the teleconnection around the mature phases of El Niño and Southern Oscillation (ENSO). We demonstrate that the MME prediction skill basically comes from the coupled models’ ability to capture the first four leading modes of the season-reliant empirical orthogonal function (S-EOF) of seasonal precipitation. How to determine the practical predictability of the tropical seasonal precipitation in coupled climate models remains an unresolved issue. This study estimates the potential predictability of the tropical seasonal precipitation based on the fractional variance accounted for by the “predictable” leading modes in comparison with the conventional definition based on the signal-to-noise variance.

Tuesday 5th July, 10:00am - 11:00am, Meeting/Conference rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Modulation of the Extratropical Circulation by Combined Activity in the Madden-Julian Oscillation and Equatorial Rossby Waves

Paul Roundy

DAES, SUNY Albany, NY

Extratropical Rossby waves occasionally propagate into the tropics of the central and eastern Pacific basin, where they disturb the equatorial waveguide and generate equatorial Rossby (ER) waves that then subsequently interact with the MJO to organize convection in the tropics. We apply a simple composite averaging approach to diagnose a quasi-systematic feedback loop between the MJO, the extratropcal waves, and the ER waves. We find that the composite extratropical wave signals associated with simultaneous activity in the MJO and ER waves are more than a factor of two stronger than those generated by taking the sum of composite MJO or ER waves calculated separately. This increase in associated extratropical signals results from both a better resolution of the tropical convection from which many extratropical waves originate and from a better assessment of the phasing of the extratropical waves because these waves are the source of the ER waves.

Friday 1st July, 10:00am - 11:00am, Meeting/Conference rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Hybrid 4D-VAR and Ensemble Covariance Inaccuracy

Craig Bishop

Naval Research Labs, Monterey, CA

An update of progress on Hybrid 4D-VAR at NRL with some new stuff on estimating the distribution of true error variances given an imperfect ensemble variance.

Thursday 30th June, 10:00am - 11:00am, Meeting/Conference rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Developments to the Met Office Global and Regional Ensemble Prediction System

Richard Swinbank

UK Met Office

The Met Office Global and Regional Ensemble Prediction System (MOGREPS) was developed to produce operational short-range probabilistic forecasts. A regional ensemble covering the North Atlantic and Europe is embedded in a lower resolution global ensemble; both ensembles have 24 members. MOGREPS follows the principle that the ensemble spread should reflect uncertainties in the both the initial conditions and the forecast. Uncertainties in the initial conditions are estimated using an Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter, while stochastic physics schemes are used to represent model uncertainties. This talk will focus both on developments of MOGREPS that have been recently implemented and those that are planned for the coming year.

To improve the realism of the ensemble spread, a new version of the stochastic kinetic energy backscatter scheme has been implemented. Further improvements include the introduction of perturbations to sea surface temperature and land surface properties to increase the ensemble spread at low levels. In the near future, it is planned to integrate MOGREPS with the 4D-Var data assimilation system to introduce flow dependence into the background error covariance information.

To address the need for detailed short-range probabilistic forecasts, a new high-resolution short-range UK ensemble will be introduced in 2012. This will be based on a 2.2km version of the UK variable-resolution model. The initial implementation will be a downscaling ensemble, with initial and boundary conditions from a regional ensemble, over a new European domain. The regional ensemble will in turn be driven by the global ensemble. Each ensemble will comprise 12 members run four times day, with forecast products based on a pair of successive ensemble predictions.

Medium-range ensemble forecasts are provided by MOGREPS-15, a 24-member extended range configuration of the global MOGREPS ensemble. It is planned that this medium-range EPS will be integrated with the seasonal forecasting system to provide probabilistic forecasts at medium-range, monthly and seasonal timescales.

Tuesday 28th June, 2:00pm - 3:00pm, Meeting/Conference rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

NRL ocean forecasting developments

Pat Hogan

NRL, Stennis (US Navy)

Results from the Navy forecasting efforts will be presented, including the HYCOM-based global ocean forecasting system and the NCOM-based regional forecasting system. From the global system results from both a 1/12 degree and 1/25 degree system will be shown. Applications from the regional system that will be discussed include forecasting of Lagrangian sonobuoy trajectories, particle tracking and risk assessment from the current Fukushima power plant accident, and forecasting support for Deep Water Horizon Oil spill during the summer of 2010. The methodologies of the NCODA data assimilation will also be discussed, including recent efforts involving the 3D and 4DVar systems.

Tuesday 28th June, 10:00am - 11:00am, Meeting/Conference rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

The Russian Heat Wave and other Climate Extremes of 2010.

Kevin Trenberth

NCAR

The atmospheric and ocean environment has changed from human activities in ways that affect storms and extreme climate events. It is argued that the main way climate change is perceived is through changes in extremes because those are outside the bounds of previous weather. In 2010 a number of large impact climate extremes occurred and the focus here is on the Russian heat wave and the Pakistan floods. We show how they are related and how both are driven by natural variability, especially ENSO, and global warming from human influences. Together these resulted in very high sea surface temperatures in the northern Indian Ocean that provided a source of unusually abundant atmospheric moisture for monsoon rains. The resulting atmospheric monsoonal circulation had a direct link into southern Russia and supported persistent atmospheric “blocking” anticyclones, setting the stage for the Russian heat wave and wild fires. The inability of climate models to simulate these linkages well means that attribution studies fall short of being definitive, and care must be taken not to err on the side of saying there is no human influence, when there really is, as has happened in some studies.

Friday 3rd June, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference Room 1 and 2, 6th floor east, 700 Collins St

Very high-resolution global climate and NWP modelling.

Martin Miller

ECMWF

Some results and experience from Project Athena, a recently completed opportunity to run long simulations with global models at unprecented resolutions will be presented. The benefits or otherwise of very high resolutions will be considered and future research issues raised for discussion.

Wednesday 1st June, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Southern Ocean Clouds in Climate - Forgettable or just forgotten?

Christian Jakob

Monash University

Clouds over the Southern Ocean are generally poorly represented by climate models, but they make a significant contribution to the top of the atmosphere radiation balance, particularly in the shortwave portion of the energy spectrum. In the first part of this study we seek to better quantify the organization and structure of Southern Hemisphere mid-latitude clouds by combining measurements from active and passive satellite-based data sets. Geostationary and polar orbiter satellite data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) are used to quantify large-scale, recurring modes of cloudiness, while active observations from CloudSat and CALIPSO are used to examine vertical structure, radiative heating rates, and precipitation associated with these clouds.
The second part of the study then applies the techniques used to identify cloud structures from the observations to a version of the ACCESS model. Two different error regimes are identified. North of about 50 S the model simulates the radiation budget fairly well, but this is caused by compensating errors in the cloud structures and associated radiative effects. South of 50 S the model misses key cloud structures altogether, leading to large errors in the radiation budget, very similar to those found in many climate models.

Wednesday 25th May, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Hindcast of NEMO Ocean Module in GloSea4-Next Seasonal Prediction System of KMA

Sangwook Park, Youngyun Jeong, and Hyun-Suk Kang

National Typhoon Center, Korea Meteorological Administration

The GloSea4 which is used for seasonal prediction in UK Met Office will be employed as a next seasonal prediction system of KMA from 2012. The GloSea4 is a version of the HadGEM3 climate model, which uses the UM (Met Office Unified Model) atmosphere, NEMO (Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean) ocean and MOSES (Met Office Surface Exchange Scheme) land surface. The model resolution, as used in GloSea4, is N96 (1.25° in latitude and 1.875° in longitude) - approx 120 km in mid-latitudes, in the horizontal - and 38 levels in the vertical for the atmosphere, and the ORCA1 grid (1° ocean with 1/3° refinement between 20° S and 20° N) and 75 levels in the vertical for the ocean. The model contains no flux corrections or relaxations to climatology. The seasonal forecast consists of two parts: a forecast and a hindcast. The forecast calculates a seven-month prediction. The hindcast uses the same numerical model as the forecast suite to make predictions from historical data. The results from the hindcast are used to estimate systematic errors in the model. Once these errors are characterised they are used to calibrate the forecast. The aim of present work is to discuss some seasonal time-scale features of the NEMO hindcast (1992~2005) in comparison with ECCO reanalysis.

Statistical Model for Seasonal Prediction of Tropical Cyclone Frequency around Korea

Ki-Seon Choi

National Typhoon Center, Korea Meteorological Administration

A multiple linear regression model (MLRM) for the seasonal prediction of summer (July-September) tropical cyclone (TC) frequency around Korea was constructed. Stepwise multiple regression statistics using various synoptic potential predictors showed that the 200-hPa meridional wind in March to the west of India and the 200-hPa zonal wind in April to the east of India are optimal independent variables. The validity of the MLRM was tested using cross validation and by examining the composite differences of hindcasted high and low TC frequency years. In a high frequency year, the Tibetan Plateau (TP) snow cover (SC) was below normal during the preceding spring, which formed a strong upper-troposphere anomalous high over the TP. The effect of the below normal TPSC for the preceding spring lasted well into summer and then a thermal-forced anomalous low over northern China and an anomalous high over Japan developed. This anomalous pressure pattern led the strengthening of anomalous southerlies in the mid-latitudes of East Asia, and these anomalous flows provided a favorable environment TCs to migrate toward Korea. Consequently, this study suggests that TPSC is a key precursor for the seasonal prediction of TC frequency around Korea.

Wednesday 18th May, 2:00pm - 3:00pm, Meeting Room 2, 6th floor, 700 Collins St

Reef Aerosol Emissions and Links to Regional Climate Variation

Graham Jones

School of Environmental Science and Management, Southern Cross University

Studies carried out in the Great Barrier Reef have shown that coral reefs produce abundant amounts of dimethylsulphide (DMS) aerosol substances that could affect cloud cover lowering sea surface temperatures (SST) and thus participating in a climate feedback similar to that described for the western Pacific warm pool (WPWP) where the greatest concentration of coral reefs on Earth occur and where significantly fewer coral reefs have bleached during the last 25 years because of a cloud-SST feedback. These reef derived aerosols potentially affect cloud condensation nuclei and cloud droplet concentration and are mainly produced from the algae in the coral. Pristine reefs produce far more of these naturally produced aerosols than human impacted reefs. We present evidence that shows that from 1954-1992 seawater temperatures in the northern part of the GBR were not warming as fast as waters in the southern GBR, possibly due to the accumulation of these reef aerosols in this part of the reef and when fewer coral reefs bleached. When seawater temperatures reach 30-31oC however, coral reef DMS aerosol production shuts down, potentially increasing solar radiation levels over reefs, and exacerbating coral bleaching. Our results are beginning to suggest that coral reefs to the north and north east of Australia may have a significant effect on our regional solar radiation climate since the emission of these DMS aerosols from reefs in the hot monsoonal summer months is very large and raises the question of whether there is a link between this reef-aerosol-cloud-SST climate feedback and the severity of El Nino events in the western Pacific.

Thursday 12th May, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference Rooms 1 and 2, 6th floor east, 700 Collins St

Monitoring and short-range forecasting of atmospheric composition.

Martin Miller

ECMWF

An overview of the major European programme entitled "Monitoring atmospheric composition and climate" (MACC) will be presented. This is a 48-partner project funded by the European Union with ECMWF as the project coordinator.

Friday 6th May, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

The ECMWF forecast systems: Progress, problems and plans.

Martin Miller

ECMWF

This talk will review recent progress in the development of the ECMWF forecast systems, outline its future plans and consider selected performance problems.

Wednesday 4th May, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

New Sea Surface Temperature Products from the Bureau of Meteorology

Helen Beggs, Leon Majewski, George Paltoglou and Ruslan Verein

CAWCR

With the advent in recent years of higher resolution NWP and ocean general circulation models at the Bureau of Meteorology, it became clear that there was a need for a wider range of sea surface temperature (SST) data products for either ingestion into or validation of the Bureau's models. With support from the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) and BLUElink Ocean Forecasting Australia Project the Bureau now produces a range of ship and satellite SST products over the Australian region for various applications. The products include single pass/scene level 2 (“L2P”) products which are composited using a nearest neighbour technique onto a regular grid to produce level 3 (composite) products from a single sensor and single pass (“L3U”), single sensor and multiple passes (“L3C”) or multiple sensors (“L3S”). In order to produce a gap-free SST product, several satellite SST data streams from both microwave and infrared sensors are blended using optimal interpolation to produce daily SST analyses (“L4”) over both the global and Australian domain (“GAMSSA” and “RAMSSA”). All these level 2, 3 and 4 SST products are available in the netCDF format specified by the Group for High Resolution SST (GHRSST: http://www.ghrsst.org), including quality flags and error estimates per pixel. The following is a list of real-time and reprocessed satellite SST products available internally at the Bureau from Flurry:/g/ns/cw/imos/www-data-1/GHRSST and externally from the Bureau's www6 OPeNDAP server:

Twice daily, 1 km resolution, HRPT AVHRR skin SST L2P (from NOAA-12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 polar-orbiting satellites)
One day or 3 day daytime-ony or nighttime-only, 0.02° x 0.02° resolution, HRPT AVHRR skin SST composite L3C (currently from NOAA-17, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19)
Legacy 14 day, 0.01° x 0.01° resolution, weighted mean composite HRPT AVHRR subskin SST L3S (from NOAA-17 and NOAA-18)
Hourly, 4 km resolution, infrared imager skin SST L2P (from geostationary satellites MTSAT-1R and MTSAT-2) - by June 2011
Hourly, 0.05° x 0.05° resolution, composite infrared imager skin SST L3U (from geostationary satellites MTSAT-1R and MTSAT-2) - by June 2011
Regional, daily, 1/12° x 1/12° resolution, foundation SST L4 analyses (RAMSSA)
Global, daily, 1/4° x 1/4° resolution, foundation SST L4 analyses (GAMSSA)
Regional, hourly, 1/12° x 1/12° resolution, skin SST L4 analyses (RAMSSA_skin)
Global, 3-hourly, 1/4° x 1/4° resolution, skin SST L4 analyses (GAMSSA_skin)

IMOS level 2 and 3 files are also publicly available from http://www.marine.csiro.au/remotesensing/imos/ and BLUElink level 4 files from http://ghrsst.jpl.nasa.gov/.

In order to improve the spatial coverage of climate-quality in-situ SST data available in real-time over the Australian region, IMOS SST data streams from thirteen ships now report to the GTS. These data records are quality-controlled at the Bureau and are available in netCDF format internally from Flurry:/bm/gdata/rverein/IMOS and externally from http://opendap-tpac.arcs.org.au/thredds/catalog/IMOS/SOOP/SOOP-SST/catalog.html and http://opendap-tpac.arcs.org.au/thredds/catalog/IMOS/SOOP/SOOP-ASF/catalog.html. The data are of comparable accuracy to observations from drifting buoys and cover regions lacking in buoy observations such as Bass Strait, coastal Australia, Southern Ocean and Indonesia.

The presentation will outline the operational and research requirements for SST at the Bureau and give a brief overview of each SST product including its strengths, weaknesses and applications.

Postponed - date to be confirmed.

Development of python-FALL3D and the integration of ACCESS-T for modelling volcanic ash fallout in Indonesia: An example from recent eruptions at Mount Merapi, Central Java

Adele Bear-Crozier

Geoscience Australia

Volcanic ash is the most widespread of all volcanic hazards and has the potential to affect hundreds of thousands of people in the densely populated islands of Indonesia. Limited information is available in this region on the risk of volcanic ash and thus there is a need for models capable of accurately predicting volcanic ash hazard extents. To maximise the effectiveness of such models they should be readily accessible, easy to use, validated and well tested. A Python wrapper has been developed which modifies the modelling procedure of FALL3D to simplify its use for those with no background in computational modelling. Three modelling procedures are available through a unified interface: scenario-based modelling (single event), hazard mapping (probabilistic wind) and forecasting (ACCESS-T). Each procedure has been applied to the recent eruption of Mount Merapi, Central Java. Python-FALL3D outputs are geospatially referenced in a standard format and can be viewed alongside other datasets important for impact and risk analysis, such as population density, exposure of the built environment and crop extents. These hazard maps are intended for use by government agencies to assess the risk of volcanic ash for communities.

Thursday 28th April, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Introduction of Institute of Heavy Rain in CMA, China

Cui Changing

Director of Institute of Heavy Rain in CMA, Wuhan, China

This talk will give a brief overview of Institute of Heavy Rain (IHR) in China Meteorological Administration (CMA). Four research areas in IHR will be covered and these are: monitoring heavy rain, mechanism of meso-scale heavy rain, numerical prediction modelling of heavy rain and floor forecasting. I will introduce our research condition, the collaboration and exchanges with international organizations. We also seek possible collaboration with CAWCR in the area of heavy rain (precipitation) forecasting.

Wednesday 13th April, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Ocean Model Analysis and Prediction Systems version 2

Gary Brassington

CAWCR

OceanMAPSv2 is the next generation operational system for short-range, eddy-resolving ocean forecasting. The research system developed under a BLUElink-II project, a partnership of the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO and the Royal Australian Navy has undergone operational trials since Dec 2010. This new system includes an improved ocean model, data assimilation system, initialisation scheme and a daily forecast schedule. Owing to the latency of altimetry, the schedule is composed of four independent cycles with a repeat cycle of four days and time-lagged over four days. As a consequence this configuration has applications for consensus forecasting and time-lagged ensemble forecasting. The system and its performance will be presented.

Friday 18th March, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Evaluation of the TIGER SuperDARN over the horizon radar systems for providing remotely sensed marine and oceanographic data over the Southern Ocean

Robert Greenwood

Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, in conjunction with IPS Radio and Space Services

The Tasman International Geospace Environment Radars (TIGER) located in Tasmania and New Zealand are HF Over-The-Horizon (OTH) radars and represent Australia’s contribution to the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN). By using a specialised pulse sequence and radar operating system, the radars are able to collect high time resolution in-phase and quadrature samples of echoes largely free of range ambiguities out to ranges ~3000 km. Radio waves refracted by the ionosphere can backscatter from ocean surface waves of length equal to half the transmitted wave length. Wind driven waves propagate in all directions but with peak energy in the prevailing wind direction; the components of wave energy propagating directly towards and away from the radar will be observed in Doppler spectra. These two peaks are known as Bragg peaks and they are routinely revealed at many ranges in plots of backscatter power versus group range and Doppler frequency. For this reason echoes backscattered from the ocean are clearly distinguished from echoes backscattered from the ionosphere when viewed as a Doppler spectrum. The prevailing wind direction can be determined by constraining a model of the directional sea spectrum to the ratio of the fitted curve amplitude for the two Bragg peaks. Maps of dominant wind-wave directions have been generated from the ratio of the sea scatter Bragg peaks. Additionally, estimates of the energy density of the second-order can be used to roughly infer the significant wave height and mean wave period.

Wednesday 9th March, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Seasonal Forecasting of Australian region tropical cyclones

Angelika Werner

Dept of Environment and Geography, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

A new and potentially skilful sophisticated statistical seasonal forecast model system for Australian region tropical cyclones has been developed. The model utilises carefully selected climate predictors of variables known to be important for tropical cyclogenesis (TCG) (e.g., SST, CAPE, mid-troposphere relative humidity, SLP, relative vorticity at 850hPa and environmental vertical wind shear). This Poisson regression model is based on Bayesian inference applying the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. A stepwise approach ensures that the best combination of predictors has been chosen, by calculating the probabilistic root mean squared error of the leave-one out cross-validated model TCG hindcasts over the period 1968/69-2007/08. A three-predictor model shows the most cross-validated hindcast skill, and is based on derived indices of June-July-August average convective available potential energy (CAPE), May-June-July average meridional winds at 850hPa (v850) and June-July-August geopotential height at 500hPa (GPH). The corresponding correlation coefficient between observed annual TCG totals and cross-validated model hindcasts is r = 0.74 over the 40-year record between 1968/89-2007/08. Using four-fold cross-validation, model hindcast skill is also high with 77.5% of the observed seasonal TCG totals hindcast within the model variance. The model is also skilful in hindcasting seasonal TCG totals in Australia’s Western (eastern Indian Ocean) and Eastern (Coral Sea) tropical cyclone subregions (r = 0.50 and r = 0.75 respectively) between observations and leave-one-out cross-validated hindcasts. A separate model for the frequency of Indian Ocean TCs within the Australian region was developed with correlations between cross-validated hindcasts and observed TC frequency of r = 0.66. Forecasting the spatial probability for TC development in the Australian region on a 2.5°x2.5° grid, the previously selected GPH and v850 predictors in combination with austral winter NINO4 produce the highest forecast potential. Results demonstrate that the combination of synoptic, thermodynamic and dynamic features is most useful to identify climatic influences on the frequency and spatial distribution of TC development in the Australian region.

Wednesday 2nd March, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Experimental Dynamic Seasonal Streamflow Forecasting

Narendra Kumar Tuteja

Manager, Prediction Systems, Extended Hydrological Prediction Section, Water Forecasting Branch

Dr Narendra Kumar Tuteja has over 25 years of experience in industry, applied research and academia in hydrology, water resources and environmental science. He currently works for the Bureau of Meteorology and he leads the Prediction Systems Unit of the Extended Hydrological Prediction Section, Water Forecasting Branch and is responsible for developing operational hydrologic modelling systems required to support seasonal and long-term water forecasting services of the Bureau. His work in hydrology and water resources discipline, both nationally and internationally, has supported development of policies and decision making in the water sector. He has also published many peer reviewed papers and industry reports and he regularly reviews papers for many hydrology and water resources journals. Narendra will give a presentation on achievements and progress-to-date on the Bureau’s experimental dynamic seasonal streamflow forecasting work. This project is led by the Extended Hydrological Prediction Section of the Water Forecasting Branch and experimental phase of this project is due for completion by early March 2011. Research inputs to this project are supported through various collaborative arrangements with CSIRO through WIRADA Project 4.2, University of Newcastle and CAWCR. Seasonal streamflow forecast products from this work would be operationalised by December 2011. These products would further augment statistical streamflow forecast products currently available from the EHP’s seasonal streamflow forecasting service which was launched by the Bureau in December 2010.

Thursday 24th February, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

What controls the interannual variability of tropical cyclone activity over the western North Pacific?

Yuqing Wang

International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI 96822, USA

In this talk, attempts will be given to address what controls the interannual variability of tropical cyclone activity over the western North Pacific (WNP). In particular, contributions of ENSO and sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) in the East Indian Ocean (EIO) to the interannual variability of tropical cyclone (TC) frequency over WNP and the involved physical mechanisms are studied based on both observational analysis and numerical simulations using the IPRC regional climate model. The results show that both ENSO and EIO SSTA have a large control on the WNP TC genesis frequency, but their effects are significantly different. ENSO remarkably affects the east-west shift of the mean genesis location and accordingly contributes to the intense TC activity. The EIO SSTA affects the TC genesis in the entire genesis region over the WNP and largely determines the numbers of both the total and weak TCs. ENSO modulates the large-scale atmospheric circulation and barotropic energy conversion over the WNP, contributing to changes in both the TC genesis location and the frequency of intense TCs. The EIO SSTA affects significantly both the western Pacific summer monsoon and the equatorial Kelvin wave activity over the western Pacific, two major large-scale dynamical controls of TC genesis over the WNP. In general the warm (cold) EIO SSTA suppresses (promotes) the TC genesis over the WNP. Therefore, a better understanding of the combined contributions of ENSO and EIO SSTA could help improve the seasonal prediction of the WNP TC activity. Our results also show that the IPRC regional climate model can reproduce well the response of WNP TC genesis frequency to anomalous EIO SSTA forcing.

Wednesday 23rd February, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Synoptic Typer Tools

Robert Dahni

Information Technologies Branch, Bureau of Meteorology, Australia

The aim of the presentation is to facilitate the re-introduction of synoptic typing through the implementation of an innovative synoptic classification program called Synoptic Typer Tools (STT), a re-development of the Bureau of Meteorology’s original Synoptic Typer application at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. STT still utilises principal component and k-means cluster analyses to generate synoptic catalogues based on NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis data, but with significantly enhanced functionality including Varimax rotation of the eigenvectors, classifications statistics and graphics, and original methodologies to determine the optimum number of principal components and clusters to retain in any synoptic classification. There has always been a need for an automated synoptic classification tool, such as STT, as a common reference system in the production of synoptic types. The history of the original Synoptic Typer, its journey to Canada, importance of collaboration and “publishing of your computer code”, and the evolution of STT will be covered. Examples of the use of STT in the derivation of synoptic catalogues, and their application to the verification of Melbourne forecast temperatures, and identification of NSW East Coast Lows will also be presented. Find out how you may wish to use synoptic types in your own work. Feedback from the presentation will greatly influence the implementation of STT in the Bureau of Meteorology.

Tuesday 22nd February, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Beyond the classical El Nino

Dietmar Dommenget

Monash University

The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most prominant mode of internal climate variability, which is generally thought of to be well understood. However, recent studies have found some interesting aspects of ENSO, indicating that ENSO is indeed much more interesting, than one my have thought. The talk will discuss the potential of ENSO-type of variability in the other tropical oceans, the influence of the other tropical oceans onto ENSO, the causes of the ENSO asymmetry, the potenial of ENSO to exist in the absence of ocean dynamics and the climate change impact on ENSO.

Friday 18th February, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Assessing the Predictability of Seasonal Rainfall in the south-west Pacific Region

Yahya Abawi

Bureau of Meteorology

Climate variability in the Pacific is a combination of seasonal, inter-annual and decadal phenomena related to variations in the Southern Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ), the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). Of these, ENSO is the most dominant phenomenon affecting the climate of many Pacific Island countries and causes large variations in seasonal and inter-annual rainfall. A validation study using 44 rainfall stations across ten Pacific Countries was conducted to identify key ENSO predictors with highest forecasting skill and lead-time. The results showed that rainfall variability across the south-west Pacific can be predicted several months ahead with moderate to high skill for most of the year. The dominant predictors were SST anomalies in Niño 3.4, the Coral Sea, eastern equatorial Pacific and the Southern Oscillation Index. This presentation will discuss the implication of these results for an operational forecasting system for the south-west Pacific region and as a risk management tool for a drought early warning system and climate adaptation studies.

Wednesday 16th February, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Modelling and observations of mesoscale wind fluctuations over the North Sea

Claire Vincent

Risoe and the Danish Technical University (and formerly CAWCR)

Mesoscale wind fluctuations affect the large scale integration of wind power because they undermine day-ahead predictability of wind speed and power production, and because they can result in large fluctuations in power generation that must be balanced using reserve power. Large fluctuations in generated power are a particular problem for offshore wind farms because the typically high concentration of turbines within a limited geographical area means that fluctuations can be correlated across large numbers of turbines and because organised mesoscale structures that often form over water, such as convective rolls and cellular convection, can have length scales of tens of kilometres. Analysis of wind fluctuations over the North Sea reveals clear patterns in the local atmospheric conditions, large scale weather types and cloud patterns that tend to occur during severe wind variability events. In particular, cold air outbreaks and open cellular convection are linked to large hour-scale wind fluctuations. Realistic hour-scale wind fluctuations and open cellular convection patterns are simulated using the WRF model with 2km horizontal grid spacing, and an idealised version of the model is used to explore the sensitivity of the modelled open cellular convection to choices in model setup and to aspects of the environmental forcing. The cell-scale kinetic energy budget of the modelled cells is calculated.

Monday 14th February, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Scale interactions in the tropical Pacific: the role of ocean mixing

Kelvin Richards

University of Hawaii

The coupling between the ocean and atmosphere in the tropics on ENSO timescales is heavily influenced by the state of the thermocline in the equatorial ocean, which in turn is very much affected by oceanic mixing. I will present recent observations and numerical experimentation that show that both conventional measurements and climate models are missing a significant source of that mixing. High resolution measurements reveal that the vertical shear in the thermocline is dominated by small vertical scale features that are strongly related to regions of active mixing. Sources for this small scale activity include wind-generated near-inertial oscillations and instabilities of the current system. Accounting for this mixing in a coupled GCM induces a large change in the state of both the ocean and atmosphere. The nature of the generation mechanism of the small scale features suggests the potential for significant feedbacks between ocean mixing and the low frequency variability of the coupled system, such as ENSO. rkelvin@hawaii.edu

Friday 11th February, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Models for site assessment for wind turbines

Morten Nielsen

Risø DTU, National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, Wind Energy Division, Roskilde Denmark

Planning of wind farms includes assessment of wind conditions like extreme wind, velocity shear, flow inclination angle and turbulence. This turbulence must include added turbulence in wakes from neighbour turbines. The industry standard for turbine safety specifies how manufactures can classify turbines and how wind farm developers can verify that a chosen turbine is safe at a given position. This talk will focus on site assessment tools developed at Risø. Wind conditions are evaluated by a combination of observations, micro-scale flow models and extreme statistics. Turbulence is modelled by rapid distortion, which predicts how turbulence spectra adapt to variations in terrain topography and changes in surface roughness. Finally, the effective turbulence intensity is calculated in order to compare the variable turbulence in flow from different directions with the uniform turbulence used for turbine classification.

Wednesday 9th February, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Australia’s Interface to Open Access Marine Data

Wiebke Eberling and Patrick Gorringe

University of Tasmania

The Bureau of Meteorology and other major Australian Commonwealth agencies generate significant amounts of marine data, in addition to extensive marine research conducted by universities, private industry, and not-for-profit organisations. This data, however, is not commonly shared with stakeholders outside of the respective department or institution, and the Australian public is not aware of the quality, quantity, and diversity of marine data. Reasons for a general reluctance to share data can be the lack of a suitable infrastructure, licensing restrictions or simply mistrust in the marine community. The Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) was founded to mitigate this: six agencies of the Australian Ocean Data Centre Joint Facility (AODC-JF) with significant ocean data responsibilities were signatories to the AODN and committed to contribute considerable data holdings. The Bureau is one of them, together with: Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Geoscience Australia (GA), and Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Promoting the culture of data sharing, the aim of the AODN is to encourage cross-sector communication, to facilitate the identification of “knowledge gaps”, to reduce duplication of effort in data collection and analysis, and to make: Australian marine data, publicly available! In our presentation, we will explain how data and metadata are published in the AODN, and we will introduce the AODN Web Portal, an interactive map-based tool for easy access to the data. Please come and see us to discover how you, the contributor to and user of the AODN, can benefit from the functionality of this interoperable online network of marine and coastal data. Wiebke.Ebeling@utas.edu.au; Patrick.Gorringe@utas.edu.au

Tuesday 8th February, 10:00am - 11:00am, Conference/Meeting Rooms, 9th floor east, 700 Collins St

Tropical Indo-Pacific drivers, impacts, prediction, and challenges

Ashok Karumuri

Centre for Climate Change Research, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology

In this, a brief review of the tropical Indo-Pacific climate driver activity since late 1970s, and their impacts will be carried out, with emphasis on the recently discovered ENSO Modoki. The skills of a present day operational MME suite in predicting these climate drivers will be presented. The fidelity of some of the climate change projections in reproducing these drivers will also be discussed.

A PDF copy of all the presented seminars can be found at the "Find Seminar Presentation Documents..." link at the top of the page (available to BoM staff only). Seminars for previous years can be found at the "Goto list of BMRC seminars for ..." 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, with the permission of the presenter.

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 CAWCR Seminar Coordinator"