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Darwin workshop helps PCCSP partner countries better understand
their climates
At the beginning of June, 31 representatives from PCCSP partner
countries, together with 18 PCCSP staff from the Bureau of Meteorology
and CSIRO, and five representatives from regional and international
organisations met in Darwin for an intense eight-day workshop.
The PCCSP Climate Data, Variability and Change: Research and Training
Workshop was specifically designed for representatives from the National
Meteorological Services (NMS) and was an excellent opportunity for
collaboration, information exchange, training and research.
The workshop included presentations on climate science, as well
as significant hands-on technical training and collaboration on managing
and analysing climate data. Participants also got the chance to put
to the test a variety of tools being developed by the PCCSP for use
in partner countries. These tools included a specially designed database
management system, a website for accessing tropical cyclone historical
data, a web-based climate data portal and the ‘climate futures’ web
tool which will enable partner countries to access climate projection
information.
As a key part of the research at the workshop country representatives
produced short reports and presentations on the observed climate,
climate variability and change in their respective countries. These
reports will be developed further and provide the basis for individual
country climate summaries to be included in the PCCSP’s final technical
report 'Climate Change in the Pacific'.
Participants have now returned home and are actively road-testing
these short presentations with a variety of audiences including their
NMS colleagues, members of government climate change advisory groups,
student groups and the media. Initial feedback shows these presentations
have been well-received. Not only is this feedback invaluable to
the PCCSP and will inform the ongoing development of our communications,
but representatives from the partner countries have also indicated
that this has proved to be a useful exercise for them.
The PCCSP team hopes to continue to build on this training workshop
with its in-country program of visits being planned to start later
this year.
Salesa Kaniaha
Salesa Kaniaha is the Manager of the Vanuatu Climate Center at the
Vanuatu Meteorological Service (VMS) and is the PCCSP technical representative
for Vanuatu. He was part of the team which hosted the first PCCSP
workshop in Vanuatu in October 2009 and has been an active participant
in other PCCSP workshops. Salesa has worked for the VMS for over
ten years and over that time he has seen the climate office, which
he now oversees, grow from two to seven staff. Salesa has been involved
in a variety of significant climate change projects including the
community vulnerability and adaptation assessments and rural community
awareness activities related to the Pacific Islands Climate Change Assistance
Program.
Salesa holds a Bachelor of Environmental Science from Lincoln University
in New Zealand, a Post-graduate Diploma in Climate Change from the
University of the South Pacific, Fiji, and a Master of Science in
Meteorology from the University of the Philippines.
It is Salesa’s view that the science and capacity developed by the
PCCSP will provide an essential foundation for further research to
be carried out in each partner country. He hopes the gaps in understanding
of climate science in the Pacific will be fulfilled by the PCCSP
and eagerly awaits the final research outcomes and technical report.
Katja Dommenget
Katja Dommenget (formerly Lorbacher) is one of the more recent recruits
to the team of PCCSP scientists. She joined the team in April 2010
as a part-time researcher. She is helping build a better
understanding of sea level rise in the Pacific Ocean and the regional
distribution of sea level rise. In particular, she is exploring how
ice-sheet melting contributes to the distribution of sea level in
ocean models.
Katja was born in the German soccer-town Kaiserslautern. Her fondness
for the ocean led her to becoming a physical oceanographer at the
University of Hamburg. For her PhD Katja studied ocean transports
(volume, mass and heat) across the North Atlantic at the Federal
Maritime and Hydrographic Agency of Germany in Hamburg. She then
completed a two-year post-doc at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
in California working on the ocean mixed layer.
Prior to joining the PCCSP, Katja spent four years working at the
Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel. There she worked in
the theoretical and physical oceanography groups on simulated changes
in sea level and climate indicators of deep ocean observatories in
the North Atlantic Ocean. Katja, her husband and two sons made the
move to Melbourne in February 2010.
Publications
Durack, P.J., Wijffels, S. 2010. Fifty-year trends in global ocean
salinities and their relationship to broad-scale warming, American
Meteorological Society, Journal of Climate, doi: 10.1175/2010JCLI3377.1
Paul Durack and Dr Susan Wijffels have published a paper showing
the surface ocean beneath rainfall-dominated regions has freshened,
whereas ocean regions dominated by evaporation are saltier. The study
also confirms that surface warming of the world’s oceans over the
past 50 years has penetrated into the oceans’ interior changing deep-ocean
salinity patterns. |
