In relation to the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5°C and 2°C, new research shows the differences in results between pattern-scaling and climate model output were primarily due to forcings other than changes to greenhouse gas emissions.
Short, extreme rainfall events will increase in a warming climate, according to observations and climate models. Australian observations suggest these storms become smaller in size, with increased rainfall concentrating even more around the centre of the storm cell. However, there has been recent contradictory climate model research that suggests storm areas may become larger. To understand this contradiction the researchers compared two different model types to real world observations of storm cell changes that occurred with rising temperatures. An area... View Article
The CLEX node at Monash is offering several PhD scholarships on a competitive basis. The scholarships may cover fees and living expenses for 3 years. Generous travel support for PhD students to visit our international partners exists. Some projects may involve other universities, the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, or one of our international partners.
This research suggests some trees and in particular, Australian trees, may be more resilient than expected to future warming and extreme events. These findings have implications for planning around which species to plant in “green cities” to help mitigate future climate extremes.
Asthmatics and those affected by polluted environments living around major cities along Australia’s east coast could find life much harder over the next 50 years as stronger inversion layers caused by climate change trap more pollution.
Past observations suggest future global warming may eventually be twice as warm as projected by climate models under business-as-usual scenarios and sea levels may rise 6m at 2°C.
The application of a simple carbon balance model, combined with a data assimilation approach, has the potential to improve the process understanding embedded in models, which is used to predict responses of the carbon cycle to climate change.
Convective parameterizations are widely believed to be essential for realistic simulations of the atmosphere, but are crude in today's weather and climate models. CLEX researchers, report on what happens when a number of these models are run with these schemes simply turned off.
This study evaluated GCMs for common drought metrics during the past 55 years. It found different models can produce very different simulations of drought, depending on the type of drought and metric analysed. The study points to a need to improve GCMs for droughts to reduce uncertainties in future projections.
Presentations from the ARCCSS / CLEX Winter School 2018