BAMOS Feb 2015

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological& Oceanographic Society

Vol 28, No. 1, FEBRUARY 2015 ISSN 1035-6576

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ContentsEditorial ............................................................................................................................................................................1President’s Column ..........................................................................................................................................................2News ................................................................................................................................................................................3News from the Centres ..................................................................................................................................................10Special Features .............................................................................................................................................................12

Lost in the depths ......................................................................................................................................................12AMOS School Art Competition ..................................................................................................................................14

Articles ...........................................................................................................................................................................17The Feng Shui element .............................................................................................................................................17Sir Brian Hoskins visits Australia ...............................................................................................................................18Tips on tipping with Harvey Stern ............................................................................................................................19

Snapshot: Fallstreak Hole ..............................................................................................................................................20Charts from the Past with Blair Trewin: 7 June, 1967 ...................................................................................................21The Research Corner with Damien Irving: Software Carpentry and the AMOS conference: a growing tradition .......22

ISSN 1035-6576

Cover picture: “Vivid” an already sold piece by Australian artist Martine Emdur from her upcoming exhibition. Emdur specialises in painting “liquid landscapes”.Image: Artist supplied.

Unless specifically stated to the contrary, views expressed in the Bulletin are the personal views of the authors, and do not represent the views of the Society or any other organisation or institution to which the author(s) may be affiliated.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 28 page 1

Editorial

Exploring the science of artWelcome to the first issue of BAMOS for 2015. I hope you all enjoyed the holiday break—though that seems quite a while ago now!

In my break, I was lucky to experience James Turrell: A Retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in Canberra. Turrell’s art plays with perception by manipulating light itself—he is an architect of light, if you like. The son of an aeronautical engineer, Turrell’s interest in becoming such an architect emerged through his own studies in the psychology of human perception, in mathematics, and from his journeys as a pilot where he observed the play of light and shadows from the air. The exhibition app says that when Turrell attended art history lectures, he was more interested in the function of the light projector itself than in the lecture. (But unlike those of us who’ve experienced lectures in similar ways, Turrell has now made a world-renowned career out of such a distraction). The exhibits are mainly physical experiences, but there are a few images to help illustrate aspects of his work that could not be transported to Canberra—the views from inside the crater he bought in the Arizona desert, for example, where he has created a naked eye observatory. His scientific knowledge is strong in his work and I would encourage anyone reading this who is able to get to Canberra, to explore the exhibition at the NGA before it finishes in June.

Images have been, and continue to be, a powerful form of storytelling—they are indeed an essential element of communication.

I grew up with National Geographic magazines and David Attenborough documentaries. The creative use of visuals across both is beautifully executed and helped fuel my own curiosity in science. I find that today they still prove useful and popular tools for learning about the world—my son is also a huge fan of both.

But before the invention of the camera and of video, there was Leonardo DaVinci. In order to accurately portray human expressions and gestures in his work, DaVinci observed physiology and anatomy closely—his scientific and artistic investigations were often pursued as one, co-existing naturally. A timeless quote of his that I enjoy is: “Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.”

In this issue of BAMOS we take a closer look at art and imagery.

This month, twin tropical cyclones battered Australia’s north: Marcia and Lam. While satellites gave us a view of the storms from above, many people experienced the devastation up close, such as cameraman Glenn Adamus. He reported for media directly from the eye of Tropical

Cyclone Marcia. Adamus very kindly shares a couple of his images from the ground with us on page 9.

It also gives me great pleasure to feature the work of acclaimed Australian artist Martine Emdur on this month’s front cover of BAMOS. You can find out more about her paintings, which explore the human relationship with the sea, on pages 12–13.

And, following on from this, we feature the winners of the 2014 AMOS School Art Competition on pages 14–16. Thanks to this competition, AMOS is able to actively engage with children all across the country in the AMOS sciences. I was amazed at the calibre of creativity and talent displayed in the competition and hope you enjoy the winning images. Thanks to the competition coordinator Phil Riley for penning the accompanying report on the competition.

On the topic of competitions, we do have the AMOS Weather Tipping Competition coming up soon. In this issue we interview our 2014 winner, Harvey Stern. Do those with forecast knowledge have an unfair advantage in this competition? Find out more on page 19.

Also sneaking up quickly is the AMOS 2015 conference in Brisbane. In this issue, our regular columnist, and AMOS Secretary, Damien Irving, writes about his popular software carpentry bootcamp, which he will once again run ahead of the conference on 13 and 14 July. The bootcamp does book out well ahead of the conference, so please do read more about it on page 22 to see if you might like to spend a few days in Brisbane before the conference.

Jeanette Dargaville has also informed me that Liverpool FC will be playing in Brisbane on 17 July, so best to get your plane tickets, registration and accommodation sorted sooner, rather than later! Early bird registrations are open now until mid-April. Late registrations start mid-June.

In anticipation of this year’s conference, the next issue of BAMOS will feature more on the speakers and sessions. We’ve got some exciting announcements that I am looking forward to sharing with you then.

If you do have any sessions you would like to promote, or if there’s something else based on the conference, or its theme of Research to Community that you would like us to feature in BAMOS ahead of the event, please do get in touch about writing an article to include in the April issue.

There is a lot more to explore in this February issue of BAMOS, and I hope that you enjoy the read ahead.

Melissa LyneEditor


President’s Column

Building the future of AMOS

This column marks the end of my first year as President of AMOS, so I’ll use it to reflect on the achievements of AMOS over the past twelve months.

The year commenced with a very successful conference in Hobart. Not only did that conference highlight the breadth and depth of activities in the Australian weather, climate, and oceanography community, it also acted to revitalise the Hobart Regional Centre. Since then, the Hobart Centre has met numerous times and hosted a successful public event on the topic of El Niño. The other Regional Centres have also had a busy year with a broad range of local events that engage with the profession and with the general public.

The AMOS Awards Committee had a number of major tasks this year, which included introducing some new prestigious awards. The Gibbs Medal, the Early Career Researcher Award, and the Morton Medal (formerly the AMOS Medal) were all decided for the first time at the end of 2014. Another new award for senior researchers will be decided for the first time at the end of 2015. Proposing and finalising these awards has been a major undertaking for the Committee, alongside their normal duties of managing the awards processes.

There were a number of changes to the AMOS Committees in 2014. We introduced the AMOS Equity and Diversity Committee, a group designed to tackle a range of issues that relate to professional development, disadvantage, gender issues, and any (in)equity in the AMOS profession. The AMOS Education Committee was expanded to become the AMOS Education and Outreach (E&O) Committee. The membership of the E&O Committee expanded considerably and contains a large number of enthusiastic members. In addition to these changes, AMOS Council developed formal Terms of Reference for each of the Committees. These Terms of Reference help to define each Committee’s roles and responsibilities.

2014 was a challenging year for the AMOS Community, with wide-ranging budget cuts, job losses, and threats to ongoing funding of some crucial activities. Throughout the year, the AMOS leadership were busy advocating for our profession behind the scenes. We provided advice to the Minister for the Environment, as well as a number of other federal MPs. We also used our connections with Science and Technology Australia to ensure that the issues facing the AMOS community were at the forefront of their advocacy for science. Early in the year, AMOS also made a submission to the National Curriculum Review. We

participate in these activities to achieve the AMOS goal of being an independent voice of authority and advocacy for the profession.

As you should have seen already, AMOS has recently embarked on a new membership management and renewal system, which should help rectify some of the difficulties we’ve faced in the past with the membership database. This is also part of a broader project to replace the AMOS website with the more modern and functional system that should be completed within the first half of 2015. We still have a very strong membership base, but there is certainly room for improvement. Increasing our membership will provide the funding to allow us to continue to embark on a range of new initiatives. One such initiative for 2014 was to add another employee to the AMOS team, and we welcomed Melissa Lyne as our Publications and Communications Officer. This addition could not have occurred without the increases in membership we’ve experienced in the past five years.

In terms of plans for 2015, we have a busy year ahead with two conferences within eight months of each other. The rule changes passed at the AGM earlier in the month also pave the way to create AMOS Expert Committees—I plan to propose the creation of a number of these Committees in 2015. We have a range of other activities and new initiatives that will keep us busy, and I will report on these throughout the year.

Finally, I’d like to finish this column by congratulating Andy Pitman and Mary Voice who were both elected to the position of AMOS Fellow at the end of 2014. See this issue of BAMOS for more details.

Todd Lane

Neville Nicholls, Todd Lane and David Karoly at the AMOS AGM, held on 9 February 2015. Image: Melissa Lyne.


News

New AMOS FellowsTodd Lane, AMOS President

Andy PitmanAndy Pitman has been a major contributor to atmospheric science in Australia for more than two decades. He has conducted a large volume of innovative research in the area of land surface processes and climate science and is an established international leader in those areas. Andy has shown significant leadership in the Australian community in the climate sciences. He has helped transform activity in the Australian university sector through his leadership of the ARC Network for Earth System Science (ARCNESS) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (ARCCSS). He has also used his positions to enhance the engagement between the universities, the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO. Andy has received numerous awards, including several from AMOS. He is the only person to have received both the Priestley Medal and the AMOS Medal (now Morton Medal). Andy currently serves on the AMOS Council and is the Director of ARCCSS.

Mary VoiceMary has been an integral part of the Australian climate science community and of AMOS for nearly 40 years. Mary spent a large portion of her career at the Bureau of Meteorology, including serving as the head of the National Climate Centre (NCC). She provided leadership that was crucial to cementing operational climatology as a priority for the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Her legacy includes the establishment of the climate section of the Bureau of Meteorology website, and the NCC’s SILO website for rural and agri-research users. These websites are now some of the Bureau’s most widely used tools for obtaining Australian climate data and information by the public and professionals in the Australian climate science community. Since leaving the Bureau of Meteorology, Mary has expanded her contributions through teaching. She has lectured in climate science, impacts and policy at the University of Melbourne since 2002 as well as at La Trobe University from 2002–2009. Mary is the current Vice President of AMOS.

(Note: all AMOS Fellows are entitled to use the post-nominal letters FAMOS).

The election to the category of AMOS Fellow is one of our highest honours, reserved for those members who’ve made “major contributions to the fields of meteorology, oceanography, or related fields”. Congratulations to our two newest fellows!

Congratulations on being FAMOS! Andy Pitman (above) and Mary Voice (below).


Comment

Global warming trend unaffected by “fiddling” with temperature dataNeville NichollsProfessor Emeritus, School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University

Attacks on institutions that keep records of global temperatures, such as NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK Met Office, and Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, continue to appear in the press.

Recent articles have raised concerns about the temperature record in Paraguay and the Arctic. The Australian newspaper has published a series of articles on similar concerns about the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s temperature data.

The thrust of these articles is that data adjustments, made to correct for biases caused by changes in location, exposure or instrumentation, have exaggerated the apparent warming trend.

A bemusing debateFor the scientists who identify, and adjust for, these biases in regional, national, or global climate records, this sudden burst of interest in our work is both bemusing and gratifying.

When this work began 25 years or more ago in Australia, not even our scientist colleagues were very interested. At the first seminar I presented about our attempts to identify the biases in Australian weather data, one colleague told me I was wasting my time. He reckoned that the raw weather data were sufficiently accurate for any possible use people might make of them.

I begged to differ and my colleagues and I continued the work to document how the Australian climate had been changing. So now I’m chuffed that there is sufficient interest in the climate to have a public debate about the data and what climate scientists do with them.

In the old days those of us involved in this “rehabilitation” of weather data to monitor the climate published our methods and results in obscure meteorological journals, unknown and ignored by the public. Nowadays, as a result of the increased media interest, you can find descriptions of our work and results in blogs and the data (the raw data as well the adjustments needed to correct for biases) are freely available to anyone with an internet connection.

Despite adjustments to temperature data in the Arctic, the overall global warming trend remains the same. Image: “Arctic Sunset” , 30 March 2006, by P.J. Hansen, www.flickr.com/photos/artic/361563162, shared under CC By-SA: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/artic/361563162

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


Arctic answersThe ready availability of the data, and the public debate, has encouraged other groups to improve on the efforts of the old timers. Among them is Kevin Cowtan from the University of York, UK, who is producing videos explaining how to access the raw and adjusted data and check what adjustments have been made, and what effect these adjustments make to the historical record of regional and global surface temperature. Cowtan, besides his expertise in computer crystallography, has some highly-regarded climate data science publications to his credit.

And his conclusions? That the adjustments (and there are a large number of them, to be sure) make essentially no difference to the global pattern of warming we have seen over the past century or so.

In some regions, the adjustments have tended to decrease the warming seen in the raw data, while elsewhere the adjustments increase the apparent warming (usually for well understood reasons and biases in the raw data).

But on a global scale the adjustments make almost no difference to the pattern of warming. The same conclusion

has been reached by another group of “newbies” at Berkeley Earth.

So was my critic 25 years ago correct? Have we wasted our time trying to identify biases in the weather and climate data, and taking these into account in the time series of regional and global climate?

In one sense he was—despite all our work the warming trend hasn’t been changed. So we could have simply used the raw data to calculate global warming over the past century.

But at least we know that biases in the raw data, such as the warming caused by increased urbanisation, have not “caused” global warming. Nor have the adjustments that have been applied to correct for biases caused by changes in instrumentation, exposure, and location.

This article originally appeared in The Conversation on 18 February 2015 at http://theconversation.com/global-warming-trend-unaffected-by-fiddling-with-temperature-data-37700

Comment

News

Bureau publishes definitive climate report Bureau of Meteorology

The Bureau of Meteorology’s Annual Climate Report 2014 is now available.

The main points of interest out of the report are:

• 2014 was Australia’s third-warmest year on record

• Australian mean rainfall was slightly above average

• Parts of the eastern states and Western Australia experienced below-average rainfall

• The year was marked by significant heatwaves, bushfires and storms.

Nationally, Australian temperatures have warmed approximately one degree Celsius since 1950, and the continued warmth in 2014 adds to this long-term warming trend.

Assistant Director for Climate Information Services, Neil Plummer, said 2014 was characterised by frequent

heatwaves and warm spells, with a notable reduction in cold weather.

“Much of Australia experienced temperatures very much above average in 2014, with mean temperatures 0.91°C above the long-term average,” said Mr Plummer.

“This follows the warmest year on record in 2013, which was 1.20°C warmer than average. Particularly warm conditions occurred in spring 2014, which was Australia’s warmest spring on record.”

“El Niño-like effects were felt in drier and warmer conditions in much of eastern Australia during 2014.”

Globally, the World Meteorological Organization ranked 2014 as the warmest year on record.

To read more, please see: www.bom.gov.au/climate/annual_sum/2014/

http://theconversation.com/global-warming-trend-unaffected-by-fiddling-with-temperature-data-37700

www.bom.gov.au/climate/annual_sum/2014/

www.bom.gov.au/climate/annual_sum/2014/


News

International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS) Awards and FellowshipsIUGG Gold MedallistThe IUGG Gold Medal was bestowed upon Professor Sir Brian Hoskins (Imperial College London and the University of Reading, UK) for “his scientific contributions that have been pioneering and profound in almost all aspects of the atmospheric and climatological sciences, with strong linkages to IUGG and its Associations”, in the words of the jury’s citation.

Brian Hoskins has made fundamental theoretical and practical contributions that have shaped meteorological science. His research in meteorological science is of a breadth and depth that is unparalleled worldwide in the modern era. He has fostered the development of the interdisciplinary sciences needed to predict weather and climate. For these reasons Sir Brian has received the highest honours, including being made Commander of the British Empire in 1998 and receiving a knighthood for services to environmental sciences in 2007.

His international roles have included being IAMAS President, Member of the IUGG Executive Committee, Vice-chair of the Joint Scientific Committee for the World Climate Research Programme, and involvement in the 2007 IPCC international climate change assessment. Brian Hoskins has the privilege and distinction of having been made a Member of the USA National Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Academia Europaea. He received a number of awards including the top prizes of the UK and US Meteorological Societies and honorary DScs from the Universities of Bristol and East Anglia.

The Gold Medal will be presented to Professor Sir Brian Hoskins by the IUGG President at the Opening Ceremony of the XXVI IUGG General Assembly on 23 June 2015 in Prague, Czech Republic. The Medalist will also receive a certificate of IUGG Honorary Membership, and a Fellow pin.

(Please see page 18 for David Karoly’s account of Sir Brian’s talk given to the AMOS community last year—Ed.)

Eleven IAMAS scientists appointed IUGG Honorary Members (Fellows)“Fellowship of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics is a tribute, awarded by the IUGG Bureau, to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to international cooperation in geodesy or geophysics and

attained eminence in the field of Earth and space sciences” (IUGG By-Law 22).

The IAMAS scientists elected as IUGG Fellows are:

Burrows, John (Germany/UK) for accomplishing a sustained series of innovations, which are essential for the global monitoring of atmospheric constituents, and his sustained leadership efforts in voluntary international cooperation;

Flossmann, Andrea (France/Germany) for her undisputed reputation as a top scientist in cloud and precipitation physics studies, for her research achievements in the community and for teaching the young generations of students;

Godin-Beekmann, Sophie (France) for her outstanding contributions to long-term monitoring of the ozone layer and for increasing understanding of its evolution in the Earth’s atmosphere and for her service to the community;

Li, Jianping (China/USA) for his contribution to climate dynamics and climate prediction and for his active promotion of international scientific cooperation in Earth sciences.

The IUGG Bureau also announced the following Union Fellows from IAMAS, who served in the IUGG Executive Committee and Finance Committee and as Association Secretaries General, contributing exceptionally to international cooperation in geosciences, and attaining eminence in the field of Earth and space sciences:

H. C. Davies (Switzerland), R. A. Duce (USA), B. J. Hoskins (UK), M. Kuhn (Austria), R. List (Canada), M. C. MacCracken (USA), G. Wu (China).

The full list of IUGG Honorary Members can be found at: http://www.iugg.org/publications/special/IUGG_Fellows_Announcement.pdf

The 2015 IAMAS Early Career Scientist MedalThe IAMAS Early Career Scientist Medal Award Committee received altogether 10 nominations from commissions and decided to award the 2015 IAMAS Early Career Scientist Medal to Dr. Yuan Wang, a Post Doctorate research associate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, for his seminal contributions in elucidating the role of natural and man-derived atmospheric particles in air quality, atmospheric dynamics and climate.

http://www.iugg.org/publications/special/IUGG_Fellows_Announcement.pdf

http://www.iugg.org/publications/special/IUGG_Fellows_Announcement.pdf


An international ocean study to track the massive internal tides of the Tasman Sea began last month out of Hobart.

The 10-week project, termed T-TIDE, involves two U.S. research vessels, Roger Revelle, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Falkor, operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, along with US, Canadian, and Australian scientists. Falkor is now back from its journey.

The study will ultimately lead to major improvements in global climate models, and an understanding of biological production-concentrating nutrients for fisheries.

According to Australian biological oceanographer, Dr. Pete Strutton, from the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), the Tasman Sea is considered a global internal tide hotspot and a natural laboratory for the study.

Internal tides form when the more familiar regular tides push water across seafloor features such as seamounts or ridges. The forces created by this movement spawn underwater waves that can travel great distances in the interior of the sea. These waves reflect off the sea surface and seafloor, and can be found at any depth. Far below the surface, waves can be hundreds of metres high, with wavelengths of up to 200 km.

Tasmania is a special place, in that it stands in the path of a powerful, focused beam of internal tidal waves generated on the Macquarie Ridge, south of New Zealand. Computer

models predict, and satellite observations confirm, that these waves slam into the East Coast of Tasmania after a four-day, 1,400 km transit through the Tasman Sea. What happens next is not so clear, since the wave-breaking and turbulence that results from this impact will happen far below the sea surface.

Dr. Strutton said one challenge is to carefully tease out the effects of the internal tide wave from the region’s renowned eddies, which are almost permanent features of the ocean in south-east Australia. Eddies are circular currents that spin off larger currents and can reduce the width of the tide wave, or change its path.

“The goal of this research expedition is to discover and measure the procession of those internal tidal waves and to document the various phenomena that occur when they impact the deep continental slopes.”

“The internal tides and turbulent mixing that occurs in the deep sea off Tasmania is thought to affect the overall circulation of the global ocean. Understanding these processes is a critical step in predicting our climate,” says Dr. Strutton.

The project is funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Schmidt Ocean Institute, The University of Tasmania and The University of Western Australia.

Follow the crew onboard at: scripps.ucsd.edu/projects/ttide/.

News

Tracking the deep ocean tides of the Tasman Sea Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania

Image: Falkor, courtesy of the Schmidt Ocean Institute/Mark Schrope.

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/projects/ttide

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/projects/ttide


News

Five questions and answers about tropical cyclonesSimon TorokCSIRO

Tropical cyclones are an ongoing threat during Australia’s cyclone season, which generally lasts from November to April. On average, the Australian region experiences 13 cyclones a year.

But as the coastlines of Queensland and the Northern Territory are threatened on two simultaneous fronts (Marcia and Lam), we’ve asked our climate scientists what we can expect from tropical cyclones in the future, as Australia’s climate continues to change.

1. Has the frequency of tropical cyclones changed?Some scientific studies suggest no change and others suggest a decrease in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones in the Australian region since the 1970s.

The Bureau of Meteorology’s satellite record is short and there have been changes in the historical methods of analysis. Combined with the high variability in tropical cyclone numbers, this means it is difficult to draw conclusions regarding changes.

However, it is clear that sea surface temperatures off the northern Australian coast have increased, part of a significant warming of the oceans that has been observed in the past 50 years due to increases in greenhouse gases. Warmer oceans tend to increase the amount of moisture that gets transported from the ocean to the atmosphere, and a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and so has greater potential for intense rainfall events.

2. Will the frequency of tropical cyclones change in future?The underlying warming trend of oceans around the world, which is linked to human-induced climate change, will tend to increase the risk of extreme rainfall events in the short to medium term. Studies in the Australian region point to a potential long-term decrease in the number of tropical cyclones each year in future, on average.

On the other hand, there is a projected increase in their intensity. In other words, we may have fewer cyclones but the ones we do have will be stronger. So there would be a likely increase in the proportion of tropical cyclones in the more intense categories (category 4 or 5). However, confidence in tropical cyclone projections is low.

3. What are the impacts of tropical cyclones?Today, coastal flooding is caused by storm tides: when low-pressure weather systems, cyclones, or storm winds elevate sea levels to produce a storm surge, which combines with high or king tides to drive sea water onshore. Although rare, extreme flooding events can lead to large loss of life, as was the case in 1899 when 400 people died as a result of a cyclonic storm surge in Bathurst Bay, Queensland.

4. How will impacts of tropical cyclones change in future?With an increase in cyclone intensity, there is likely to be an increased risk of coastal flooding, especially in low-

ABOVE LEFT: The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this view of Tropical Cyclones Marcia (right) and Lam around midday on 19 February 2015. The image is a composite of satellite data from two Suomi NPP passes over the area. Image: NASA.

ABOVE RIGHT: ERIC, the CSIRO emergency response tool, displays the paths of Tropical Cyclone Marcia and Lam across the north-eastern coastlines. Image: CSIRO.


lying areas exposed to cyclones and storm surges. For example, the area of Cairns’ risk of flooding by a one-in-100-year storm surge is likely to more than double by the middle of this century.

5. How can we adapt to expected changes?Almost all of our existing coastal buildings and infrastructure were constructed under planning rules that did not factor in the impacts of climate change. However, governments are now taking account of changes in climate and sea level through their planning policies. Just as the

building codes and rules for Darwin changed in the wake of Cyclone Tracy, so they should now be re-assessed for each region and locality in Australia to take account of climate change.

Tropical Cyclones Marcia and Lam were tracked using our Emergency Response Intelligence Capability tool (ERIC)—please see previous page graphic.

This article originally appeared on the CSIRO blog on 20 February 2015 at http://csironewsblog.com/2015/02/20/here-are-five-questions-about-tropical-cyclones-that-you-need-answered/

News

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia

From the ground: semi-retired TV news cameraman Glenn Adamus this month found himself in the thick of TC Marcia on the Capricorn Coast. “The news hound in me is still alive and well,” he jokes.

The images to the left are a small glimpse of what he saw when the cyclone hit. At the time of going to print, Glenn was still without power. He credits his portable solar power kit and inverters, as well as the short wave aerial attached to his iPhone, in being able to upload images and stories to News Corp. Australia (and BAMOS!) direct from the eye of the cyclone.

“I have witnessed many cyclones in my media days in the Northern Territory and southeast Asia,” says Glenn. “However they were nothing compared to this recent event that decimated this region.”

TOP: Property damage at Emu Park.

BELOW: Emu Park old jetty got a battering.

Images: Glenn Adamus, aka. @ glenn.adamus on Instagram.

http://csironewsblog.com/2015/02/20/here-are-five-questions-about-tropical-cyclones-that-you-need-answered/

http://csironewsblog.com/2015/02/20/here-are-five-questions-about-tropical-cyclones-that-you-need-answered/


News from the Centres

Melbourne Centre NewsShannon Mason and Louise WilsonMelbourne Centre

AMOS Melbourne Centre AGM 2014The AMOS Melbourne Centre’s Annual General Meeting was held on Friday 5 December following the Priestley Cup soccer tournament at the University of Melbourne.

The outgoing Chair, Louise Wilson, led the meeting and presented a recap of another successful year for the AMOS Melbourne Centre. Highlights of the year’s activity included public outreach events for the State of the Climate 2014 and IPCC Working Group 2 reports, the 10th annual Pearman Lecture at CSIRO Aspendale, the Fire Weather workshop and the Victorian Postgraduate Symposium. The AGM was well-attended by members from the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, Monash University and the University of Melbourne—many of whom also participated in the Priestley Cup.

The 2014 committee offers its congratulations and best wishes to incoming AMOS Melbourne Centre Chair Andrew King and the rest of the 2015 committee, and thanks all AMOS members for their participation and enthusiasm throughout the year.

Priestley CupThe Priestley Cup, the AMOS Melbourne Centre’s annual soccer tournament, was held at the University of Melbourne on Friday 5 December in conjunction with the AMOS Melbourne Centre’s Annual General Meeting.

The round robin, 8-a-side soccer tournament between the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, the University of Melbourne and Monash University was well-attended by players and spectators. The Bureau of Meteorology were the clear winners with two wins and a tie, defending their

2013 victory; CSIRO were runners-up with one win and two ties. The friendly competition of the 16th Priestley Cup inspired many feats of skill and daring; both the rivalry and physical discipline soon dissipated over pizza and beers on the balcony of the School of Earth Sciences’ McCoy Building.

The 2014 AMOS Melbourne Centre committee would like to thank all players and spectators, the University of Melbourne Sport Centre and Kane Stone for providing and organising the facilities, and our volunteer referees David Karoly, Nicholas Tyrell and Damien Irving.

Fire weather workshopFollowing on from the success of the 2013 Tornadoes event, the Melbourne Centre last year hosted a Fire Weather Workshop in early October at the Bureau of Meteorology. This was attended by members from the operational and research communities. Presentations were given by Dr David Jones (Bureau of Meteorology), Associate Professor Kevin Tolhurst (University of Melbourne), Dr Robert Fawcett (Bureau of Meteorology) and Dr Will Thurston (Bureau of Meteorology) on the environmental impacts bushfires have on our country. The case studies and vigorous discussion session led by forecasters Claire Yeo and Tony Banister were a particlaur highlight of the afternoon. These focussed on the critical issue of communication and information exchange between the different members of the fire weather community. The event concluded with wine and cheese and the opportunity for general discussion, with feedback from attendees indicating that it was a successful event.

The Bureau takes out the 2014 Priestley Cup. Image: Damien Irving.


News from the Centres

ACT and NSW Centre NewsBob Cechet Chair, ACT Centre

The ACT and NSW branches teamed up for the update in this issue. The only activity for the two branches over the summer break was a joint social weekend held in Canberra and Goulburn.

This involved a number of activities commencing on Saturday with a tour of a few of the cool-climate wineries in the Canberra region. Saturday afternoon saw an activity at the Australian War Memorial where Clem Davis (ACT AMOS member) premiered his new tour called “Climate Weather & War”. The tour examined losses experienced by the armed services that were officially attributed to “weather only” causes (in number of conflicts), as well as considering the role that climate played in planning a number of major battles.

The tour featured the new “Australia in the Great War” exhibition which is highly recommended if you are visiting Canberra: http://www.awm.gov.au/.

Saturday evening saw a get-together at the new Kingston Foreshore development (Thai restaurant) where meteorology and oceanography featured in the conversations (as well as further exploration of the local

wines).

Sunday morning saw a visit to the Lark Hill winery situated on the hills adjacent to Lake George. This was followed by lunch at the Kingsdale winery located 7 km north of Goulburn and owned by AMOS members Howard and Elly Spark. Howard and Elly provided a tour of their facility, “in-the-field” grape tasting (weeks from upcoming harvest) as well as tasting of the recent vintages.

The photograph displays a selection of the grapes picked by the AMOS team and discussed during the tour of the Kingsdale winery.

The Kingsdale 2013 Chardonnay was a favourite and excellent value with the AMOS discount (hurry to avoid disappointment! www.kingsdalewines.com ).

The first ever social get-together by the two branches was enjoyed by all, and there were significant learnings particularly concerning climate variability and wine making.

There are plans to hold another get-together later in the year (perhaps another wine region).

Wine grapes handpicked and discussed by the AMOS ACT and

NSW members as they toured Kingsdale winery. The winery is owned by two AMOS members

and offers discounts to other members. Image: Bob Cechet.

http://www.awm.gov.au

www.kingsdalewines.com


Special Feature

Lost in the depthsExploring the sea with front cover artist Martine Emdur

Melissa Lyne

Her paintings have graced the pages of Vogue, Marie Claire and Belle, and now it’s BAMOS’s turn to feature the works of one of Australia’s most intriguing artists, Martine Emdur.

Emdur only began her self-taught career in 1997, but her signature dream-like underwater creations are in constant high demand. Best described as “liquid landscapes”, they feature glimpses of submerged bodies, frozen in time and playful movement with the sea. The scenes are distinctly Emdur, and convey the feeling of being there in the moment itself—which is of course, the artist’s intent.

“I want people to stand in front of my paintings and get the feeling of being immersed,” Emdur said, in the lead-up to her first exhibition in 2009 at the then Tim Olsen Gallery in Sydney (now the Olsen Irwin Gallery).

And it works—the “immersion” factor is a common echo in reviews of her work. Most find the experience quite pleasant and even therapeutic, but, Emdur’s paintings are so immersive that a woman once returned one, citing “sea-sickness”.

The size of Emdur’s pieces helps achieve this immersion—

Immersion is a central theme in Martine Emdur’s paintings. Image: “Salt” a piece from her upcoming Sydney exhibition (artist supplied).


she says scale is one of the most important aspects of her work. Specialising in large pieces, some of these works are more than three metres in length—it is easy for the viewer to get lost within the depths.

The inspiration Emdur draws from nature is obvious, and is the main focus in her paintings. Emdur’s Instagram feed is full of cloud and ocean images. At times it can be difficult to identify whether an image is a photograph, or one of her paintings.

The Age shop online, where Emdur sells limited edition

prints, describes the water in her work as, “not just a formal convention for exploring space in a painting or a palette of cool colours. It is, quite simply, a place that you can feel. And the range of sensations shifts from figure to figure, molten sunbeam to icy undercurrent.”

Martine Emdur’s latest works “New Paintings 2015” will be showing at the Olsen Irwin Gallery in Sydney from 11–29 March 2015.

You can also follow her on Instagram at @martineemdur.

Special Feature

Pictured on this page are a few pieces

from Emdur’s upcoming

Sydney exhibition.

TOP LEFT: “Bask”.

TOP RIGHT: “Free Form”.

LEFT: “Limelight” a three-metre

wide piece.

Images are artist supplied.


Special Feature

AMOS School Art CompetitionPhilip RileyAMOS Education and Outreach Committee

How can we engage younger school children in the scientific interests of AMOS: the atmosphere and the oceans? One way is to engage their creativity and ask them to express their ideas and feelings about these subjects through art. In 2008 the members of the AMOS Education Committee (in 2014 renamed the Education and Outreach Committee) chose this path and inaugurated the AMOS School Art Competition. The competition has run each year since then, with 2014 seeing the seventh in the series. Many AMOS Education Committee members, and others, have contributed in one way or another to running the competition, but special mention should be made of Monica Long who first proposed it, and Rob Willis who has enthusiastically worked on it during the whole seven years of its existence. I joined the committee, and became involved in the competition, in 2009.

In its first three years the competition was open to both visual art and poetry entries. The number of poems entered was small however, and we found it very difficult to compare poems with visual art works. We found it hard enough to judge between works in the same medium! So from 2011 it became a competition for visual art only.

The competition is open to children in primary school grades and lower secondary school. In 2014 we had 3 sections: lower primary (up to Grade 3), upper primary (Grades 4 to 6) and Secondary (to Grade 10). In each section we award a first and second prize. The first prize is an individual cash prize of $50 for the artist, and a book prize to a similar value for their school library. The second prize is an AMOS/Bureau of Meteorology Weather Calendar.

Lower Primary first place: Yash Goel (Grade 1, Castle Hill Public School)

Artist’s description: It’s raining, It’s pouring, I can’t play outside. I used to have a lot of fun, But now I am stuck inside.


In some cases children enter the competition as individuals, with no direct involvement from their schools, in others teachers have organised entries from their classes. Having teacher involvement is more effective for promoting AMOS and its interests, since it involves a school community, and not just an individual child.

In its first two years the competition attracted only a handful of entries, but numbers are increasing: in 2014 we had 50 entries in total. In 2014 most entries were received by email and the judging was also conducted electronically.

Members of the Education and Outreach Committee were given access to images of the artworks via the web, and decided on the winners using an email discussion.

Each year we have a theme to guide the children’s exploration. In 2014 it was “Stormy weather—on land or at sea”, a topic that resulted in many dramatic images. In addition to their artwork, children are asked to write a few words about it and how it relates to the theme. These words on occasion also show considerable creativity, as you can see in the winning entries this year.

Special Feature

Upper Primary first place: Marium El-hajj (Grade 6, Carlton Public School)

Artist’s description: (Marium didn’t give a description of her work).


Special Feature

Secondary first place: Aleyna Akdemir (Grade 8, Amity College, Prestons, NSW)

Artist’s description: My work is of a stormy day at sea. It connects into the theme as it depicts my interpretation of a natural stormy day.


ABOVE: Feng Shui, commissioned by the Bureau of Meteorology at 700 Collins St Docklands, Melbourne. Image: courtesy the artist and ARC ONE Gallery. BELOW: The new look Bureau foyer: no more Feng Shui. Image: Clare Mullen.

Article

The Feng Shui element Melissa Lyne

The foyer of the Bureau’s head office is being refurbished, signalling growth and development for the area. But with the refurbishment comes the removal of a particularly memorable element of the building’s young history.

My first visit to the Bureau head office was almost exactly 10 years ago. Upon entering the foyer of 700 Collins Street, I was immediately drawn to a large-scale mural unlike any other I’d seen before: Feng Shui by Guan Wei. The foyer was otherwise cold and bland. The image certainly demanded attention—made up of 120 painted panels, the piece was 18 metres long and nearly 6 metres high. For the very few years I was based in the building, Feng Shui both greeted and farewelled me each working day. To borrow the sentiment of former Bureau colleague Clare Mullen: it was a bit of whimsy in an otherwise formal setting.

In 2004, just before the transfer of the piece from Sydney to Melbourne, Guan Wei told The Age that Feng Shui explored the relationship between man and the environment. “It contains references to the Australian passion for water, the arrival of Captain Cook, our beach culture, and the need for harmony between mankind, the fish of the sea and the birds of the air.”

Because the Bureau head office was fairly new at the time, commissioning its own “Feng Shui” seems particularly significant. (The carpet chosen to decorate the offices above however, is another feng shui story for another day…)

The mural was often controversial and often talked about. For some, Guan Wei’s inclusion of various naked, playful, human-like creatures—which also appear in some of his other mural works—was a little baffling, a bit funny, maybe even offensive. But the Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier this month that Guan Wei “stresses the different levels of comedy because his pictures seem to slide between the most oblique symbolism and pure slapstick.” Guan Wei admitted himself that some of the most crucial elements of his work are wit and humour.

The piece was one of the largest commissioned works in Australia, taking Guan Wei and his four assistants almost a year to complete. It has been replaced by a more corporate look as the image below illustrates.


Professor Sir Brian Hoskins is recognised as one of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists. After more than a decade since his last trip to Australia, he visited the University of Melbourne as a Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow for two weeks in October 2014.

Sir Brian became the first Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London in January 2008. He now shares his time between Imperial College and Reading University, where he is Professor of Meteorology. His research is in weather and climate, in particular the understanding of atmospheric motion from frontal to planetary scales. He is currently a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change, which provides advice to the UK government on policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change. He is a member of the science academies of the UK, USA, China and Europe and has received the top awards of the American Meteorological Society and the Royal Meteorological Society. He was knighted in 2007 for his services to the environment.

On 13 October, Sir Brian presented his Miegunyah Lecture, Climate change: Are we up for the challenge? at the University of Melbourne to an audience of more than 500. He discussed the current status of climate change science and the risks due to the impact of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted through our activities. Looking beyond the here and now and responding to these risks is a challenge to our species. However the challenge to our social, economic and political ways of working, as well as technological development, could prove extremely valuable.

During his visit, Sir Brian was kept very busy. In addition to spending time at the University of Melbourne teaching an undergraduate lecture on climate policy and talking to graduate students and researchers, he also visited Monash University and the Australian National University. At Monash, he gave a seminar, Do we understand the Hadley Cell? and in Canberra gave his public lecture again and met with representatives from the Federal Department of the Environment and the British High Commission.

Article

Sir Brian Hoskins visits AustraliaDavid KarolySchool of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne

Professor Sir Brian Hoskins. Image: Imperial College, UK.


Article

Tips on tipping with Harvey SternMelissa Lyne

With the annual AMOS Weather Tipping Competition almost upon us, we thought we’d turn to the 2014 winner to see if he had any tips to help us through the season.

Dr. Harvey Stern is an honorary researcher at the University of Melbourne, specialising in forecasting methods. Prior to this he was the manager of the Bureau’s Victorian Climate Services Centre. He has also spent a number of years as a forecaster in the Bureau’s Victorian Regional Forecasting Centre. Some might say he had an unfair advantage in taking out the top prize in the AMOS Weather Tipping Competition last year, and he acknowledges that this may be true...

2014 was the first time Dr. Stern had entered the competition. Coinciding with the AFL season each year, competitors are required to submit their weekly predictions of minimum temperature, maximum temperature and rainfall for the given time and Australian/New Zealand location. The weekly deadline is Friday 8 p.m.

There are penalties for each degree you are out in the temperature forecast, and per range that you are out in rainfall.

The competition is open to anyone, not just AMOS members. But do those with an intimate knowledge of weather and climate have the upper hand when it comes to getting the correct results? “Probably,” says Dr. Stern.

“But,” he continues “there are a lot of studies comparing forecasters, which found there is not much difference across the profession once someone has been forecasting for one or two years. They’re all using the same computer models.”

“And it’s the same with students versus lecturers: with a similar level of knowledge it’s going to be pretty close. It has been found that there is not that much difference in skill once you have your basic techniques.”

And, that’s not to say that those outside the field of the AMOS sciences would be at a huge disadvantage. “There are many sorts of forecast guidance, all accessible on the web, that use objective forecast schemes,” said Dr. Stern.

“The information you need to play is out there—and from the Bureau, it’s there by 4 p.m. on Friday. Then you have a few extra hours to get your predictions in.”

So, Dr. Stern’s major tip for getting good results in the competition is pretty obvious: don’t forget to put your forecast in. “That is number one,” he said. “Forgetting to submit a prediction results in one being given “climatology”, often leading to a large penalty. You would see someone at the top of their game fall quite significantly simply for forgetting to submit one prediction.”

Still, remember to have fun! “One of the most interesting aspects of the competition is that you go to all these different locations,” said Dr. Stern. “This is a fantastic way to learn about local weather.”

The AMOS Weather Tipping Competition launch event will be held in late March. For more on the competition, please see: http://tipping.amos.org.au.

Dr. Stern holds regular midday Friday chart discussions at the University of Melbourne. For more on this and his work, please see: www.weather-climate.com.

The weather tipping competition is a great way to learn about local weather across Australia and New Zealand. Image: Cape Tribulation, QLD by Melissa Lyne.

http://tipping.amos.org.au

www.weather-climate.com


Snapshot

Fallstreak Hole4 November 2014Angela Barrow

On Melbourne Cup Day last year, Victorians were treated to a rare and unusual sight. This photo was taken in Moe, Victoria, looking north, at 1:03 p.m.

The photographer, Angela Barrow, says it was clear and warm—perfectly “normal” for this time of year. She had first spotted this strange but beautiful cloud about 30 minutes earlier, looking south.

“My husband and I were returning from an excursion to Mushroom Rocks in the Alpine National Park near Erica. We were descending into the valley, just before you enter Moe, from the hills when I saw the unusual cloud formation.

“At first it looked like a giant blimp, but when we pulled over to take some photos with my phone, it was clear that the phenomenon was natural, and very unique.”

A fallstreak hole, or hole punch cloud, is a gap that can appear in cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds. It occurs when the water temperature in the clouds is below freezing, but the water is not yet frozen. Once ice crystals form, this causes the water droplets to freeze on to the existing crystals, leaving the “hole” in the cloud.

“Another half an hour later, about 1 p.m., we arrived home to take another look, and it had morphed into the shape you see in the photo, with the rainbow inside. We kept checking it at about 10 minute intervals from then on, in case it did anything different, but it gradually dissipated from that point. I think I was very lucky to be there to capture it at its best.”

You can follow Angela on Instagram: @angehoney


Charts from the Past with Blair Trewin

7 June, 1967The Australian region rarely sees high-pressure systems of the strength and persistence that can occur in winter over the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere continents. Readings over 1040 hPa are rare; when they do occur, they are mostly over Tasmania in the colder months.

The most intense high-pressure system of this type to be recorded occurred in June 1967. It was a highly unusual month in what was a highly unusual year; despite the lack of an El Niño, it was the driest year on record for Melbourne, Adelaide and many points in between. This particular June featured a subtropical ridge well to the south of its normal June position, strong easterly anomalies over New South Wales and Queensland, and several east coast lows.

The high formed over Tasmania on the 5th of June and intensified over the next two days, reaching its peak strength on the morning of the 7th. At 9 a.m. on the 7th, Launceston Airport observed a mean sea level pressure of 1044.3 hPa, which is the highest value ever recorded in Australia. Sea level pressure readings in Hobart (1043.6) and Devonport (1043.4) also surpassed any other Australian observation. Whilst its central pressure dropped slightly, the high remained near stationary for the next two days before moving slowly into the Tasman.

A strong easterly gradient north of the high-pressure system, combined with an upper-level low and surface trough over western Queensland, which peaked on the 6th, brought rain to most of Queensland and coastal New South Wales. There were particularly heavy falls in far southwest Queensland, where Orientos Station

had 120 mm on the 7th, and Durham Downs had 110 mm (the latter was its third-highest daily total in more than 100 years of data, and a June record). Daily totals exceeding 100 mm also occurred on the 7th, 8th and 9th of June around the Whitsundays and parts of the central Queensland coast. Near the centre of the high-pressure system itself, conditions were dry, as expected. There were some frosts and fogs in Tasmania and Victoria (Melbourne had fog each day from 5–9 June), despite only modestly low temperatures and a lowest minimum of −6.0°C at Bothwell on the 7th. Persistent fog did result in low daytime temperatures in some interior valleys of Tasmania (e.g. 2.9°C at Bushy Park on the 8th), as well as in the Melbourne area on the 5th (e.g. 6.8°C at Essendon). Where fog was not a factor, daytime temperatures were generally somewhat above average, with many western Victorian stations recording temperatures in the low 20s, and 22.2°C recorded at Adelaide. Further north, enhanced southeast flow in the tropics resulted in well-below normal night-time temperatures in northwest Australia, including 14.4°C at Darwin on the 9th, and 6.2°C at Victoria River Downs on the 7th.

The Queensland rains caused only minor local flooding in the state’s south-west. This was, however, a prelude to two other major events later in the month; the first of which caused significant flooding in the Brisbane region, and the second, which caused substantial beach erosion on the Gold Coast. At the time, it was the wettest June on record along much of the east coast between Port Macquarie and Townsville.

Synoptic chart for 0900 AEST (2300 UTC), 7 June 1967.


The Research Corner with Damien Irving

Software Carpentry and the AMOS conference: a growing tradition

In late 2009, I completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Melbourne. During the final honours (i.e. research) year of that degree, I had my first real taste of programming (in Fortran) and working at the command line. It was a fairly steep learning curve, but by the end of that year I was feeling fairly confident about my skills. So much so, in fact, that I managed to score a job at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in Aspendale, Victoria. Not surprisingly, it took about five seconds in my new role for the illusions regarding my programming skills to be shattered. Floundering in terabytes of climate model data and the vagaries of programming in Python, the next few years were a blur of ad hoc, self-directed learning experiences, as I tried to improve my skills whilst also meeting project deadlines.

I eventually discovered, much to my relief, that I wasn’t the only early career scientist feeling decidedly underprepared for the computational demands of working in the real world. My situation was being also being experienced by other people all around the world, and in many different disciplines. In response to this apparent crisis in the computational skills of scientists, an organisation called Software Carpentry started up in the late 1990s, with the simple mission of helping scientists to become more productive by teaching them basic computing skills. It bumbled along for a decade or more, trying various different lesson materials and delivery formats, but it never really exploded in popularity (Wilson, 2014). Then in early 2012, things changed dramatically when Software Carpentry started running two-day intensive workshops based on those pioneered by The Hacker Within, a grassroots group of graduate students at the University of Wisconsin whose mission was to help other graduate students develop programming skills. It seemed that this was the format that appealed to graduate students and early career researchers, and over the next 12 months numerous computationally-savvy scientists volunteered their time to teach about 50 workshops across Europe and North America (today close to 300 workshops have been held right around the globe).

I first stumbled upon the Software Carpentry website in mid-2012. Given my experiences over the previous few years, its mission and lesson materials really spoke to me. In my excitement, I sent an email to Greg Wilson

(the founder of Software Carpentry) who (much to my surprise) agreed to come out to Australia in February 2013 to teach a workshop alongside the AMOS conference in Melbourne. A feature of Software Carpentry workshops is the high tutor to student ratio, so it was very important that the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (ARCCSS) also got on board, lending us many of the members of their Computational Modelling Support team to help out. The Melbourne workshop was a great success, so I decided to train up as an official Software Carpentry instructor later that year, with a view to running a similar workshop alongside the 2014 AMOS conference in Hobart.

The Hobart event was even more popular than the previous year’s event in Melbourne, so a focus in the lead up to the 2015 AMOS conference in Brisbane has been to increase the pool of qualified instructors working in the AMOS sciences. Robert Johnson (Bureau of Meteorology) and Nic Hannah (UNSW / ARCCSS) have just completed the instructor training course and will teach for the first time in Brisbane, while Holger Wolff (Monash University / ARCCSS) and others are going to help out with a view to possibly training up as instructors in the future. I’ve also further refined the discipline specific (i.e. weather, climate and oceanography) lesson materials that were trialled for the first time in Hobart, so the Brisbane workshop is shaping up to be another great event. All the details are at the following link—if you’d like to attend you can register at the same time as registering for the AMOS conference, and if you’d like to help out please get in touch.

http://damienirving.github.io/2015-07-13-amos/

ReferencesWilson G (2014). Software Carpentry: lessons learned. F1000Research, 3:62. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.3-62.v1

(Congratulations to Damien for being featured in Nature recently: http://www.nature.com/news/my-digital-toolbox-climate-scientist-damien-irving-on-python-libraries-1.16805—Ed.)

http://damienirving.github.io/2015-07-13-amos/

http://www.nature.com/news/my-digital-toolbox-climate-scientist-damien-irving-on-python-libraries-1.16805




Calendar

2015

March23–27 IAMAS workshop, Rosendal, Norway.

April12–17 European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2015, Vienna, Austria.

May3–7 Joint Assembly (AGU-GAC-MAC-CGU), Montreal,

Canada.

June17–19 10th Antarctic Meteorological Observing, Modeling, and Forecasting Workshop (AMOMFW), Cambridge, United Kingdom

22 June–2 July 26th General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, Prague, Czech Republic.

July15–17 AMOS National Conference, Brisbane.

August2–7 12th Annual Meeting - Asia Oceania Geosciences - AOGS - Singapore

October5–9 11th International Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography, Santiago, Chile

12–14 (tentative) 8th ACRE Workshop

November19–21 Meteorological Society of New Zealand – Annual Conference. Forecasts: From minutes to decades, Wellington, NZ.

2016

February

TBC AMOS National Conference 2016

21–26 AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting, New Orleans, LA, USA.

Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal

Articles — Vol. 64 No. 2, June 2014Sophie C. Lewis and David J. Karoly. Assessment of forced responses of the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS) 1.3 in CMIP5 historical detection and attribution experiments.

Andrew J. Dowdy and Yuriy Kuleshov. Climatology of lightning activity in Australia: spatial and seasonal variability.

Petter Nyman, Christopher B.Sherwin, Christoph Langhans, Patrick N.J. Lane and Gary J. Sheridan. Downscaling regional climate data to calculate the radiative index of dryness in complex terrain.

Matthias Reif, Michael J. Reeder and Mai C. N. Hankinson. Vacillation cycles in WRF Simulations of hurricane Katrina.

John D. Wilson. Downscaling a reanalysis of extremely cold weather in southern New Zealand.

Regular features:

Tamika Tihema. Seasonal climate summary southern hemisphere (spring 2013): Warmest Australian spring on record.

Xiaoxi Wu. Quarterly numerical weather prediction model performance summary—October 2013 to March 2014.


BAMOS Author Guidelines

For all submissions:The Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (BAMOS) accepts short (<2500 words) contributions of original research work for peer-review and consideration in the “Science Articles” section. Longer articles will be considered at the discretion of the Editor and Editor-in-Chief. Articles submitted to BAMOS should also be appropriate for the whole AMOS community (from weather enthusiasts to professional members) and should aim to be concise without using excessive scientific jargon.

For the peer-reviewed “Science Articles” section, authors should follow these guidelines:

1. Articles should be submitted as a PDF or Word document (or similar) for peer-review and include all figures and tables either within the main text or consecutively at the end of the article.

2. Articles should have a line spacing of 1.5 or more using a font size of 12. Articles should preferably be written using Times New Roman or Arial.

3. Articles should be split into sections, with the heading for each section numbered consecutively and using a font size of 14. For example (these are title examples, headings are made at the authors’ discretion):

1. Introduction

2. Method

3. Results

4. Conclusions

4. An abstract is required and should not be more than 150 words in length.

5. Acknowledgements to be included after the final work section and before the references.

6. References should follow these example formats:

• Journal Articles:

Jung, T., Ferranti, L. and Tompkins, A.M., 2006, Response to the summer of 2003 Mediterranean SST anomalies over Europe and Africa, Journal of Climate, 19, 5439–5454.

• Books:

Holton, J.R., 2004, An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology. Academic Press, New York. 535 pp.

• Book chapter:

Raymond, D.J., 1993. Chapter 2: Observational constraints on cumulus parameterizations. In: The representation of cumulus convection in numerical models, Meteorological Monographs, 24 (46), 17–28, American Meteorological Society, Boston, USA.

• Theses:

Trewin, B., 2001, Extreme temperature events in Australia. PhD Thesis, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia.

• Web sites:

Department of Sustainability and Environment, 2012, Bushfire history - Major bushfires in Victoria, www.dse.vic.gov.au/fire-and-other-emergencies/major-bushfires-in-victoria/

7. We recommend that the author(s) make five suggestions for referees to undertake the peer-review. Also, we ask for a list of five potential referees whom the author does not want as reviewers, due to conflicts of interest, or past close association..

8. Once peer-review has been completed, a final version of the document should be sent to the editor either in Word format or as plain text. The document should also include figure and table captions and the references but no figures. Figure files should be sent separately (they may be in any format and the editor will confer with the author(s) on the resolution and formatting).

9. Galley-proofs will be sent to the author(s) for final checking before publication.

BAMOS also accepts a wide range of non-peer-reviewed work, for example news items, charts from the past, conference reports, book reviews, biographical articles and meet a member. AMOS members are therefore encouraged to submit articles that would be of general interest to the AMOS community without necessarily requiring peer review. File formats should follow those given above; a word or plain text document should be submitted (which includes any figure captions and tables) along with any figure files given separately.

All articles should be either posted or emailed to the editor with any questions on the formatting also directed to the editor (see the inside back cover of this issue for contact details).

www.dse.vic.gov.au/fire-and-other-emergencies/major-bushfires-in-victoria/



Editor Melissa LynePO Box 3179 Tamarama NSW 2026Phone: 0415 514 328Email: [email protected]

Science Editor Willow HallgrenEmail: [email protected]

Editor-in-chiefDuncan AckerleyEmail: [email protected]

Assistant EditorsDiana Greenslade, Blair Trewin and Linden Ashcroft

2014 Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic SocietyISSN 1035-6576

2014 AMOS Council

Contributed articles, news, announcements and correspondence for the Bulletin should be sent to the editor no later than 27 March 2015. They will be reviewed and the galley proofs returned to the author if requested. An ASCII version of the text is required via e-mail or digital media to minimise typographic errors. The special features in the April issue will focus on the AMOS 2015 conference. The Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society is produced and distributed with the assistance of CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research and the Bureau of Meteorology.

AMOS Website: www.amos.org.au

ExecutivePresident Todd Lane 03-8344 6516 Vice-President Mary Voice 04-1994 9952 Secretary Damien Irving 03-8344 6911 Treasurer Angela Maharaj 02-9385 0593 Past President Blair Trewin 03-9669 4623

Ordinary MembersAilie Gallant 03-9905 3216Andrew Klekociuk 03 6232 3382 Adam Morgan 03-9905 4424 Neville Nicholls 03-9902 0111 Andy Pitman 02-9385 9766 Ian Watterson 03-9239 4544

AMOS Executive Officer Jeanette Dargaville GPO Box 1289, Melbourne VIC 3001(attn: AMOS admin officer) Phone 0404 471 143E-mail: [email protected]

Sub-Committee ConvenorsPublic Relations Vacant Awards Mark Williams 0419 519 4402015 Conference Andrew Weibe 04- 5046 0676 Education Melissa Lyne 0415-514-328 Angela Maharaj 02-9385-0593

Centre ChairsACT Bob Cechet 02-6268 8883Adelaide Darren Ray 08-8366 2664Brisbane Andrew Wiebe 04-5046 0676 Darwin Ian Shepherd 08-8920 3821 Hobart Andrew Marshall 03-6232 5184 Melbourne Andrew King TBA NSW Fiona Johnson 02-9385 9769 Perth Merv Lynch 08-9266 7540

RepresentativesAMOJ David Karoly 03 8344 4698 Science & TechnologyAustralia Steven Phipps 02-9385 8957

AMOS is represented on the relevant Australian Academy of Science committees.

Regional Sub-editorsMichael Hewson (Brisbane) Darren Ray (Adelaide) Shannon Mason (Melbourne)Fiona Johnson (NSW)Bob Cechet (ACT)Craig Macaulay (TAS)Jenny Hopwood (WA)

ContributorsBlair TrewinDamien Irving

Advertising ManagerPlease contact the Executive Officer.

PublisherAMOS,GPO Box 1289,Melbourne VIC 3001, Australia

mailto:[email protected]



http://www.amos.org.au


Because a Flashof Lightning CanChange Everything

Read more www.vaisala.com/gld360 or contact us [email protected]

Vaisala Global Lightning Dataset GLD360 is the highest performing worldwide lightning dataset in existence today.

Receive lightning data today - no need to own equipment and no maintenance concernsYou choose the area covered – local or global70% detection efficiency and < 5km location accuracy

www.vaisala.com

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