CLEX, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes

The Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX) is an international research consortium of five Australian universities and a network of outstanding national and international partner organizations supported by the Australian Research Council.

Climate extremes are the confluence of high impact weather and climate variability. The Centre will improve our understanding of the processes that trigger or enhance extremes and build this understanding into our modelling systems. The improved predictions of climate extremes will help Australia cope with extremes now and in the future.

Breaking news

Research brief: Indian Ocean warming modulates global atmospheric circulation trends

Photo (above): Maldives sunset: Credit: Asad Photos (Pexels). Indian Ocean warming is one of the most robust features of anthropogenic warming. Its sea surface temperature is now...
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Research brief: Land surface models struggle to reproduce evaporative processes

Picture (above): Misty morning. Credit: Icon0 (Pexels). This paper details a new approach to evaluating the performance of land surface models, the component of climate and...
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Research brief: Sea ice cover independently validates air temperature over Antarctic

Picture: Antarctic sea ice. Credit: Pixabay (Pexels). Direct observations of the atmosphere are few and scattered in the remote ocean region around Antarctica, so most studies of...
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Research brief: How a glacier tongue break influenced phytoplankton blooms in Antarctica

Picture (above): Iceberg B-09B (right) collides with the Mertz Glacier tongue in 2010. Credit: NASA Images. The Southern Ocean is a place where water sinks and recirculates over...
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News

Research hub

Student hub

Outputs

Research briefs

Research brief: Towards reliable extreme weather and climate event attribution

Picture above: Abandoned homestead. Credit: John Coppi (CSIRO Science Image) The field of event attribution aims to quantify the role that human activities have played in recent...
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Research brief: New global runoff estimates help define past energy and water budgets

The land surface water budget describes how precipitation flows into water running into rivers and reservoirs, moisture added to the atmosphere (through evaporation and...
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Research brief: Selecting the correct model is more than a “beauty contest”

The perspective discusses where the community is headed (or needs to head) on the evaluation and use of climate models.   The problem has always been that although many...
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Research brief: Predicting the risk of drought-induced tree mortality in Australia

Photo: Dead tree. Credit: Indigo Skies Photography (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.) Australia has recently experienced two of the worst droughts on record (Millennium Drought, 2000–2009...
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CLEX Research programs

Extreme rainfall

Drought

Heatwaves and cold air outbreaks

Climate variability and teleconnections