With the drama and instability of 2020, many of our ECRs have faced unprecedented challenges including loneliness, homesickness and the mounting uncertainties for their future careers. That latter concern may be why the majority of ECRs wanted this year's virtual ECR workshop to focus on the Future in academia and planning your research career.
It has been remarkable how much we have achieved in this extraordinarily difficult year. Research coming out of the Teleconnections and Variability program over the past four months has strongly focused on how influences in one part of the world can have direct impacts on another.
The past four months have seen the Heatwaves and Cold Air Outbreaks research program focus very much on improving our capacity to understand and help others in research and industry get an insight into the impact of extreme heat events.
Despite what has been a very challenging year, the Extreme Rainfall research program continues to produce high-quality research, develop deep and wide datasets, extend the reach of our citizen science, and has seen our researchers continue to achieve at a national and international level.
Two new ACCESS models have been released (ACCESS-CM2, ACCESS-ESM1.5), the Aus400 dataset has been published, the ERA5 collection is being transferred to NCI and there is now a new quick process to book meetings with our CMS team.
The challenges of 2020 have impacted our briefing notes but we combined forces with NESP ESCC to produce an impressive overview of climate sensitivity. Our mid-term review has invigorated the team and a science-teacher workshop is well underway for AMOS.
The cross-institutional, collaborative nature of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centres of Excellence has allowed a re-imagining of the Australian PhD experience. Here we outline the steps the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes has taken to support our graduate students during COVID.
It has been an unprecedented year in academia in 2020, a year where many people have been doing it tough in particular those of you in Victoria. The impact of COVID will take a long time to be fully realized of course, with impacts on our students, researchers, administration and technical teams that we could not anticipate.
A constant stream of research has seen some major papers receive international coverage, Kim Reid has shown how to attract opportunistic media, and an online media workshop may be on the cards.
While the Extremes Rainfall RP has found itself in challenging times as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have still found moments to celebrate and have been delighted by the enormous range of extraordinary research.