Welcome to the first Weather and Climate Interactions RP report. The new program name is simply a result of rationalising CLEX’s continuing research program under new headings that more clearly delineate the focus of the work we do.
Clemente Lopez-Bravo has created two datasets – L1 and L2 – of satellite observations of cloud properties across Australia and the Maritime Continent. The datasets, which have been released for the scientific community, are at a 2km spatial resolution at hourly intervals and cover five Austral summers in the period from November 2015 to March 2020.
CLEX has introduced a new engagement prize for students and early career researchers on fixed contracts with the winner announced at the next annual workshop. The prize is for all forms of engagement but engagement outside the university sector and beyond our usual stakeholders will be considered particularly highly.
In 2020, PhD student Sopia Lestari was awarded the Hadi Soesastro Prize by the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, although, as a result of COVID, the official presentation of the prize by the Minister of Foreign Affairs may not occur until later this year.
The "WCRP-CLIVAR Workshop on Climate Interactions among the Tropical Basins" was held online on February 24-26, 2021. It was the first workshop organised by the CLIVAR Tropical Basin Interaction group, with logistic assistance from the US CLIVAR Project Office and UCAR, as well as financial support from NOAA and NSF.
Until now, flash drought research has been on the regional scale and has been limited to observations and reanalyses. CLEX researchers have been the first to examine flash drought in climate models.
Xinyang Fan was selected as part of the fifth 20 PhDs in 20 minutes group to present her research on the Einstein A Go-Go radio show on the Triple R 102.7 FM. This is how she found the experience.
A great deal of time in science is spent writing papers and grant proposals and then it goes to review. Something that might not be obvious to all of you is that rejection is normal, and entrenched, and part of the scientific method.
In 2021, the Knowledge Brokerage Team has hit the ground running with a paper in ECR, Climate Classrooms at AMOS, a new CLEX prize for engagement, and an increasing number of external links to new and old stakeholders.
In February CLEX took part in the 28th Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society annual conference. Ian Macadam reports on the conference, which was packed full of plenaries, panel discussions and parallel sessions and incorporated around 400 presentations, many presented by CLEX researchers.