The Weather and Climate Interactions Research Program is now bedded down, and work is beginning apace. We have also started to see our researchers bring their expertise to a range of stakeholders, peer networks, and the broader community.
Sadly, once again as I write this, staff and students across CLEX are in varying degrees of lockdown as community transmission of the Delta variant of COVID continues to interrupt many aspects of our lives.
The ocean extremes research program is underway with regular meetings, split between marine heatwaves meetings on the first Friday of the month and ocean biogeochemistry meetings every fortnight. We have also been engaging externally with industry stakeholders and our peer networks.
It has been an incredibly busy time for the Knowledge Brokerage Team. We've hired a graphic designer, Ally Crimp, added 3 key briefing notes, become deeply involved with industry sectors, developed our climate classrooms and so much more.
Here we are, roughly a third of the way through 2021 and also at about the mid-point of CLEX’s seven-year lifecycle. Many of you will no doubt be aware we were formally reviewed by the ARC in the second half of last year and the review findings were delivered early this year.
The past four months have seen a lot of activity with the release of Weathex 2.0, a short video Q&ARC introducing some of our researchers, two combined Centre of Excellence media workshops, and a pilot interview program featuring Christian Jakob that explored the challenges of climate science.
A major component of the research in the Drought program over the past four months has focused on the interface between real-world data and climate models. The aim of much of this research has been to improve how land surface models represent some of the key processes that influence the length, and severity of drought.
The Drought program farewells Michael Roderick who has retired and looks over an extensive range of research that has been carried out despite the global pandemic. Some significant model improvements, new datasets and deeper insights into past and future climates show the depth of the research effort.
As well as winning a Pulitzer Prize, the RP2 team has been working closely on improving models, developed two new metrics and through studying marine heatwaves may have revealed a method of forecasting these heatwaves around Tasmania up to two years ahead.
At the start of the Covid pandemic Stephen hypothesised that many people would go through three stages in our personal responses to remote working arrangements and isolation.