Using ocean model simulations, this study demonstrates that the unusual behaviour of Indian Ocean temperatures over the past 60 years was mainly due to wind conditions.
A landmark new international review of climate sensitivity led by ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes researcher Prof Steven Sherwood has reduced the uncertainty in Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity. Estimates of likely values now vary by less than a factor of two. The new assessment concludes that the climate is more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than some previous estimates.
In a new study published in Nature Scientific Reports, a group of oceanographers, atmospheric scientists, ecologists and fisheries experts got together to identify the most severe marine heatwaves over recent decades. The objective was to understand what triggered these events and led to their ultimate demise.
As a La Niña event intensifies in the Pacific, bringing increased rain to parts of Australia and a powerful hurricane season to the Tropical Atlantic, a new book reveals the dynamics and impacts of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the irregular cycle that switches the Pacific Ocean between these cool La Niña and warm El Niño events.
New study shows November-to-March precipitation (when rainy season peaks over most of the Southern Hemisphere land mass) was significantly reduced both in the Southern Hemisphere tropics and subtropics due to a weakening of the subtropical convergence zones during the mid-Pliocene Warm Period.
An international team including CLEX researchers examined models used by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) over three model phases linked to IPCC reports – CMIP3, CMIP5, and the most recent, CMIP6, to see if they improved representation of tropical rainfall.
CLEX researchers and colleagues have developed a new six-dimensional semantic space to describe sensations and comfort outdoors.
An international group of researchers performed a critical review of the information infrastructure that connects ecosystem modelling and measurement efforts. This group has now proposed a roadmap to community cyber-infrastructure development that can reduce the divisions between empirical research and modelling, accelerating the pace of discovery.
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.
An international review of IPCC reports since 2001 has found that as the science has improved with each report, a trend has appeared showing climate related impacts like heatwaves, the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and coral bleaching are likely to occur at lower global mean temperatures than estimated in earlier reports.