Drought is a major risk to Australia with extended periods of drought affecting our social, economic and environmental systems. The newly released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contains significant new assessments of the science and future projections of drought.
Australian researchers in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes have made major contributions to the 2021 IPCC Working Group 1 report, through the authorship of the report, review and the many scientific papers cited in the report.
Andrew King recently presented his research into the seasonal prediction of extreme rainfall to an audience of federal government, state government, and agricultural industry stakeholders as part of the Forewarned is Forearmed Community of Practice (FWFA CoP).
This paper aims to catalogue the steps the authors have found make up a successful framework for event attribution analyses. The hope is that this paper will be useful for those considering how to undertake such work themselves and to highlight some of the potential issues and pitfalls that can arise along the way.
CLEX researchers explore the challenges of identifying atmospheric rivers and find that detecting these events is highly variable according to resolution, and choice of the integrated water vapour transport thresholds. The uncertainties in a single detection method and data parameters may be as large as uncertainties across AR detection methodologies.
A group of international researchers using CMIP6 models to determine how heavy precipitation events will alter with climate change. The northern hemisphere in particular showed a strong warming signal for increased precipitation.
Using a novel methodology applied to CMIP5 projections CLEX researchers found that the local temperatures experienced by 90% of people would be substantially higher in a transient (still warming) climate than an equilibrium climate where the temperatures have plateaued, for the same global temperature.
Extreme weather conditions and a changing climate are often recognised by their immediate effects. But as research coming out of the Heatwaves and Cold Air Outbreaks program has shown over the past four months, these events are often generated by distant influences and when they occur have further impact beyond their immediate vicinity.
The CLEX node at University of Melbourne is offering several PhD scholarships on a competitive basis. Details of how to apply can be found on this page along with some example projects offered by our researchers.
AMOS awards, international visitors, cross program research with the drought team, and multiple papers have made it a busy time for the Heatwaves and Cold Air Outbreaks Research Program.