CLEX researchers and colleagues found the Aridity Index was too simplistic to capture the many aspects that define landscape aridity, including the amount of rainfall, water resources and vegetation productivity, and is a poor indicator of future aridity changes.
With projected increases in temperature in the future, the amount of water vapour that can be held at saturation – before it condenses into clouds, dew or water film – increases exponentially. As this deficit increases plants tend to close their stomata, which reduces water fluxes into the boundary layer. Do models currently capture the observed leaf-level response to increasing vapour pressure deficit? What about at very high levels of this deficit?
This paper documents the efforts of the international weather data rescue initiative ACRE, the International Surface Temperature Initiative and researchers that took part in workshops held in Bern, Switzerland, in June 2018 to rescue and digitize meteorological measurements taken prior to 1850 from around the world.
Melbourne’s existing water supplies may face pressure if global warming hits the 2℃ level. The effects of drying and warming in southern Australia are expected to reduce natural water supplies. If we overshoot 2℃ of warming, even the desalination plant might not provide enough drinking water to a growing population.
This study showed that phosphorus availability reduced the projected CO2-induced biomass carbon growth by about 50% over 15 years compared to estimates from carbon and carbon-nitrogen models.
This release is to advise the community that an ACCESS Oversight Committee has been formed initially comprising Christian Jakob, Rachel Law, Helen Cleugh, Andy Pitman, Tony Hirst, Peter May, David Karoly and Ben Evans. Terms of reference have been agreed to by the group and can be found at the end of this document.
The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) Model Analysis Workshop was held in Barcelona from March 25-28, 2019, and provided the first opportunity for results from CMIP6 models to be discussed and presented by the modelling community.
CLEX researchers working with colleagues from the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment revealed a method to predict the probability of tree mortality during droughts.
CLEX researchers and colleagues revisit the quasi-equilibrium analytical framework introduced by Comins and McMurtrie (1993) and explore the consequences of specific model assumptions for ecosystem net primary productivity (NPP).
New CLEX research finds land cover misclassifications over South East Asia based on remote sensing products have negligible impact on the outcomes of climate model experiments. However, land cover experiments that incorporate uncertainties must use large numbers of simulations to get robust results for rainfall and air temperature.