The Royal Society has called for an international next-generation climate modelling centre (pdf), based on new cutting-edge high-performance computing and data services to support efforts toward net-zero emissions and to enable effective climate adaptation.
The most intense and destructive tropical cyclones generally go through a period of rapid intensification, where "rapid" means that the near-surface winds increase by more than 15 m/s (54km/hr) in 24 hrs. However, the physical processes by which storms rapidly intensify are not well understood. This study uses very high-resolution simulations with the UK Met Office Unified Model of the 2016 north-Pacific tropical cyclone, Nepartak, to explore the processes responsible for its rapid intensification.
A new paper by Martin Jucker and colleagues reveals the choice of a particular convection-resolving model (CRM) has a much larger impact on the results than increasing resolution. It also suggests the behaviour of CRMs is tied to model internals instead of the phenomena they are trying to reproduce.
This release is to advise the community that an ACCESS Oversight Committee has been formed initially comprising Christian Jakob, Rachel Law, Helen Cleugh, Andy Pitman, Tony Hirst, Peter May, David Karoly and Ben Evans. Terms of reference have been agreed to by the group and can be found at the end of this document.
Claire Carouge and Aidan Heerdegen attended the Collaborative Conference on Computational and Data Intensive Science 2019 and explored a future where high-performance supercomputers were being replaced with analyses services to the cloud. It's a future that is very close and we can expect these changes to occur during the lifetime of the Centre.
Rob Chadwick (UK Met Office). Understanding Tropical Precipitation and Atmospheric Circulation Responses to Climate Change
CLEX now has a Knowledge Brokerage Team headed up by Ian Macadam. Ian has been working hard to reach out to some of the Centre’s key stakeholders in government and business to better understand what they need in the way of information from our scientists.
In a major achievement, a version of the Australian community land model is now running in the ACCESS modelling system. This version includes the science advances led by Mark Decker around hydrology and soil evaporation, and the science advances led by Martin de Kauwe and Jatin Kala. It also includes major bug fixes identified by collaborators in the UK, and by colleagues in CSIRO. For the first time, we have a version of the Australian community land model coupled with an up to date version of the UK Meteorological Office’s atmosphere model.