Recent studies have debated whether the two types of sudden stratospheric warming – displacement events when the vortex is displaced off the Pole and split events when the vortex splits into two smaller vortices – have differing near-surface impacts.
In this paper, the researchers investigated how a major glacier tongue break in the Mertz polynya in Antarctica impacted phytoplankton blooms. Larger phytoplankton blooms increase the amount of carbon that can be stored in the deep ocean.
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.
CLEX researchers examined the uncertainties of the input data of three commonly used drought indices, with the data coming from different sources, including observations and reanalysis. The ability of these indices to detect drought was assessed against soil moisture from multiple global land surface models.
CLEX researchers used real-world observations with satellite observations to calculate the quantity of nutrients carried into the Subantarctic Zone by mesoscale eddies. They found these eddies carried high nitrate and low silicate waters into the Subantarctic Zone.
New research suggests that increasing spatial resolution alone is not sufficient to obtain a systematic improvement in the simulation of precipitation extremes, and other improvements (e.g. physics, tuning) may be required.
To better assess the degree of organisation in radar observations CLEX researchers developed the Radar Organisation Metric (ROME). ROME's statistical properties suggest it is able to distinguish between the degree of convective organisation, and it also captures different regimes of the monsoon in Northern Australia.
CLEX researchers found that regions where there is a larger drying trend tend to be more sensitive to land water availability and have more heatwave days. They found that the effect of dry soils before a heatwave varies considerably across Australia.
This observational study of radiative convective equilibrium finds that this equilibrium breaks down in areas of a few thousands kilometres on a side. This has implications cloud model simulations in climate models.
CLEX researchers and colleagues have developed a downscaling methodology using the HiDRUS model that accurately projects future rainfall in 1km grids at six minute intervals. This will be a boon for urban planners who need to build infrastructure to cope with the different future heavy rainfall events that will occur in a changing climate.