Bulletin 27 no. 2 April

AMOS

AustralianMeteorological & OceanographicSociety

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society Vol 27, No. 2, April 2014 ISSN 1035-6576

Contents Editorial ..........................................................................................................................................................................21 President’s Column ........................................................................................................................................................21 News ..............................................................................................................................................................................22 News from the Centres ..................................................................................................................................................24 Conference report ..........................................................................................................................................................25 Science Article ...............................................................................................................................................................27 T.F. Loughran and K.J.E. Walsh—Climate model simulations of the meteorological effects of superflare events .............27

Meet a Member .............................................................................................................................................................34 Snapshot ........................................................................................................................................................................35 Charts from the Past with Blair Trewin: 6 February 1925 .............................................................................................36 The Research Corner with Damien Irving......................................................................................................................37

ISSN 1035-6576 Cover picture: A typical winter scene (taken on 2 July 2013) looking west across Wellington, New Zealand at sunset. The image shows low level cumulus overridden by altocumulus lenticularis, which is caused by air passing over the hilly terrain of the lower North Island.

Image: © Matt Evans Photography 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.

Editorial

New Editorial roles

This is likely to be my last or second-to-last piece as the Editor of BAMOS. While it has been a fantastic experience and I have enjoyed contributing to the Society very much, I have found it to be very time consuming and the role has eaten into a lot of my working time. In order for BAMOS to continue to flourish, I believe the Society needs to have an Editor who is able to work on BAMOS as part of their normal working duties (not on a weekend/voluntary basis).

Back in November I had a meeting with the BAMOS Editor in Chief and the immediate past Editor in order to discuss how the BAMOS Editor role could be restructured. We came up with the idea to split the role into three positions (see below), each with a specific set of defined responsibilities. We then discussed and refined this proposal further with the AMOS Executive, where it became clear that the Editor could play a more active communications role for the Society. The proposal was presented to the Council for consideration and was agreed upon at the last meeting on 14 March 2014.

A brief description of the new positions is given as follows: 1.

The Editor: responsible for gathering the news items and for collating and editing the articles for the issue before typesetting. The new Editor will also be active on social media and actively engage with other institutions (for example the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO and the Universities) to bring the latest news to the Society’s members. The Editor will additionally be responsible for the content and publication of the eNewsletter. The Editor will therefore fulfill a communications role within the Society and will be a paid position.

2.

Science Editor: this person will be responsible for the scientific content only (akin to a typical journal associate editor). They will be responsible for

President’s Column

Strategic goals and awards

After more than a year of effort, driven primarily by our past President Blair Trewin, AMOS now has a formal strategic plan. The plan defines the strategic goals of the society, which were formed through consultation with all members and accepted by Council last year. We have also developed a framework for operational implementation of that plan, which prioritises current and future AMOS activities in the context of the Society’s strategic goals.

These documents can be found on our website1; any further feedback on these documents is welcome as they will be periodically reviewed by Council. Over the next year AMOS Council will be putting some new processes 1

www.amos.org.au/aboutus/

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 21

organising the peer review of science articles and will actively engage with scientists to bring interesting articles into BAMOS. 3.

Typesetter: this role will simply be to take the collated acrticles from the Editor and produce the finished publication. The typesetting is particularly time consuming in the current setup.

We already have the Typesetter position filled and I have volunteered for the position of Science Editor in order to help the new Editor and Typesetter into their roles.

However, we do not currently have anyone in position to be the Editor. A full advertisement and position description will be publicly available soon. If anyone would like any further details and/or to be considered for the Editor’s job then I encourage you to contact me directly.

The new structure will have a probationary period of one year, after which it will be reviewed by the Council. I hope that the new setup will prove to be successful and improve the communication network for those within the Society, as well as maintaining the quality and value of BAMOS. Finally, I would also like to announce the winners of the Student Oral and Poster presentations at the recent AMOS conference (report to appear in the June issue). First prize in the Oral Presentation category went to Tim Cowan with honourable mentions to Linden Ashcroft, Sjoerd Groeskamp, Michelle Ho, Stephanie Jacobs, Andrew King and Teresa Parker. In the Poster Presentation category, first prize went to Chloe Lucas with honourable mentions to Mitchell Black, Darren Cox, Henry Ellis, Andrew Magee, Fiona McRobie, Henrique Rapizo and Jackson Tan. Many congratulations to all of those people. I will be in touch with the winners soon about possible contributions on their award winning work to BAMOS.

Duncan Ackerley

in place to allow us to efficiently deliver in the areas of high priority.

As described in the strategic plan, one of our goals is, “To recognise excellence in the sciences covered by AMOS”, and accordingly we have a number of AMOS awards that honour the achievements of our members at all levels of seniority. For example, we present the Uwe Radok Award for the best Australian Ph.D. in the sciences covered by AMOS. Applications are now open for this award2 and I encourage you to nominate your eligible students to help acknowledge their achievements. We also honour the extended contributions of our members with the election 2

see www.amos.org.au/awards/ for details

to the rank of AMOS Fellow. There are currently twenty AMOS Fellows and each of them has made a notable contribution to our discipline. Incidentally, all Fellows are entitled to use the FAMOS suffix (and I hope they do, at the very least to help promote AMOS). I congratulate our newest Fellow, Dr Mike Pook FAMOS, who was elected earlier this year. I’d also like to applaud those students who received awards and honourable mentions for their presentations at the Hobart conference—the list of the awardees is in the Editorial.

In addition to presenting awards, we also enjoy celebrating when those in the AMOS community receive accolades from other groups. I congratulate Prof. Matt England FAA who was recently elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and Dr Julie Arblaster who was awarded the Academy’s Anton Hales Medal. Both Julie and Matt will receive their honours at the Science at the Shine Dome event in May. I’d like to devote the remainder of this column to recognising the dedicated group of people who allow AMOS to function as a successful professional society and achieve our goals: the volunteers. Without the

volunteerism that underpins AMOS we would simply not exist. The group of volunteers is extensive and includes the Regional Centre Committees, the Education Committee, the Awards Committee, the Selection Committees for each of the individual awards, the Conference Committees, National Council, and those involved in BAMOS and AMOJ. In fact, there are more than eighty people currently in formal AMOS roles and many others who make notable contributions elsewhere on behalf of AMOS. I thank each of you for donating your valuable time to help make AMOS thrive.

As identified in the operational plan there are many other activities that we’d like to tackle, but even the current AMOS volunteer group can’t do everything and we need help. In the coming year there should be opportunities to participate in new AMOS roles, which will help us continue to serve the meteorology, oceanography, and climate science communities. As these opportunities arise, please consider putting up your hand.

Todd Lane

News

International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS) News Tom Beer

National IAMAS Correspondent

Antarctic Meteorological Observations, Modeling, & Forecasting Workshop The 9th Antarctic Meteorological Observations, Modeling, & Forecasting Workshop will be held at the College of Charleston’s, School of Education Health and Human Performance Center from 8–11 June 2014 in Charleston, USA. This workshop brings together those with research and operational/logistical interests in Antarctic meteorology and forecasting and related disciplines. As in the past, the annual activities and status of the Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (AMRC), Automatic Weather Station project, and Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System efforts will be addressed. Feedback and results from their user communities will also be solicited. More broadly, this workshop is also a forum for discussing current results and ideas in Antarctic meteorology, numerical weather prediction, and weather forecasting, from contributors around the world. There will be discussions on Antarctic forecasting, logistical support, and science. We welcome papers and posters on these topics.

The registration and abstract submission deadline is 9 May 2014 through the AMRC website1.

1

amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/meetings/meeting2014/deadlines.shtml

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 22

First Workshop of the International Union of Geodesy Geophysics (IUGG) Commission on Climatic and Environmental Change (CCEC).

IAMAS was instrumental in the establishment of the IUGG Commission on Climatic and Environmental Change. This Commission is chaired by Tom Beer of Australia, the Vice-Chair is Jianping Li of China, and the position of Secretary-Treasurer is held by Keith Alverson who presently works for United Nations Environment Programme in Kenya.

The Inaugural meeting of CCEC will be held in Beijing, China, 11–12 April 2014. It will consist of a business meeting and workshop to discuss the following topics: 1.

To strengthen internal IUGG linkages;

2.

to examine how CCEC can link in to Future Earth;

3.

to further investigate linkages outside of IUGG; and

4.

to plan for the XXVI IUGG General Assembly in Prague in 2015.

Home computers to power climate change research Alvin Stone

Media and Communications Manager ARC Centre of Excellence Climate System Science, UNSW Any Australian with a home computer and an internet connection can now power up a climate model and help scientists find the causes of record high temperatures and drought that hit Australia and New Zealand in 2013.

The online climate experiment, Weather@Home, has been created by a group of scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, the University of Melbourne, University of Oxford in England, the UK Met Office, the University of Tasmania, and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand.

By signing up to Weather@Home, computer users can create climate model simulations that produce threedimensional representations of weather for 2013. They can watch these evolve in real time or let them run quietly in the background.

“This project is an example of citizen science at its finest, producing important scientific results that can be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and which have powerful implications for our future,” said Prof.

David Karoly from The University of Melbourne.

“Through the Weather@Home application, home computer users can produce climate model simulations and help answer the question—’Did human-caused climate change play a role in the extreme heat events of 2013?’.”

“We need thousands of users, so we are encouraging people to sign up at the Weather@Home website1.”

1 www.climateprediction.net/weatherathome/australia-newzealand-heat-waves/

The weather simulations produced by the personal computers for this experiment will be divided into two groups.

One will run simulations of weather in 2013 based on the current atmospheric composition with greenhouse gas emissions as they appear today. The other will simulate the weather in a world where humans have not changed the atmosphere with greenhouse gas emissions.

These simulations can be run simultaneously across thousands of home computers. As each is completed and the results collated, the footprint of global warming will become clearer.

“With thousands of simulations we can see how often the extreme temperatures of 2013 appear when there are no additional greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. We can then compare those results to the simulations produced in an atmosphere that is like our own,” said Prof. Karoly.

“This will reveal the patterns of global warming and give us a clear idea of how the risk of extreme events has changed with the rise in greenhouse gases.”

Prof. Karoly said this is only the first of many experiments that will use the Weather@Home application to assess the impacts of climate change in Australia and New Zealand.

In the future, it will be used to assess the possible role of climate change in Australia’s Black Saturday bushfires in 2009, the record rain events in New Zealand in 2011 and the record rain events in eastern Australia in 2010 and 2011.

I worked with climateprediction.net while I was undertaking my Ph.D. and I strongly encourage AMOS members to get involved with this fantastic initiative—Ed.

Cloud cover as simulated by a climate model over the Earth. Image: Mitchell Black.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 23

News from the Centres

Melbourne Centre News Michael Horn

University of Melbourne

State of the Climate 2014—Melbourne Release Event To mark the release of the State of the Climate 2014 report from CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, the AMOS Melbourne Centre hosted a public discussion on 12 March 2014, with the five leading scientists involved in the production of the report and related scientific work.

Over one hundred people turned out to the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, to hear a discussion of how Australia’s climate has changed, and how it may change in the future.

The expert panel was composed of Dr Karl Braganza and Dr Scott Power (Bureau of Meteorology), Dr Penny Whetton (CSIRO), Dr Ailie Gallant (Monash University), and Dr Sophie Lewis (University of Melbourne); Peter Christoff (University of Melbourne) was the moderator and MC. Karl Braganza gave an overview of the report, discussing the main ways in which anthropogenic climate change has affected Australia so far, and how these effects

are projected to develop in the future. Scott Power showed current work on the relationship between El Niño and climate change that suggests that, although projections of future El Niño variability are uncertain, the effects of El Niño events on rainfall are expected to amplify in a warmer climate. Ailie Gallant discussed rainfall extremes, pointing out that while the rainfall in southern Australia had decreased with a warming and drying trend, in the north the proportion of rainfall from extreme events has increased. Sophie Lewis discussed temperature extremes and the potential for an exceptionally warm year like 2013 to become commonplace by 2030—and relatively cool by 2090! Finally Penny Whetton discussed projections and the impacts of likely future conditions on sea level rise, water insecurity and fire danger. The panel also addressed a range of engaging questions from the audience.

The AMOS Melbourne Centre would like to thank the panel, moderator, and all involved for helping to make this a great public event.

AMOS President Dr Todd Lane (far right) opens the State of the Climate event. Seated from left to right are the panellists: Dr Penny Whetton, Dr Sophie Lewis, Dr Ailie Gallant, Dr Scott Power, Dr Karl Braganza and Dr Peter Christoff. Image: Sarah Mason.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 24

NSW Centre News Fiona Johnson Chair, NSW Centre

The AMOS NSW centre has been busy organising a series of events to promote both AMOS and careers in atmospheric sciences and oceanography, to undergraduate students at the universities in NSW. We will be holding events at the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales and the University of Newcastle. These will be held during April and May and hopefully free food will encourage good attendance!

Our first seminar for the year will be by Michael Logan, the manager of the NSW Severe Weather Service at the Bureau of Meteorology. The bushfires that burnt across

the Blue Mountains in October destroyed a large number of homes and disrupted many lives. They were some of the largest fires ever seen in the area so early in the fire season.

Michael will discuss the weather conditions leading into and during this fire event to give an insight into how such a dangerous situation occurred. The seminar will be held on Wednesday 16 April at the Bureau of Meteorology NSW Regional Office—see the calendar on the AMOS NSW website1 for more details.

1 www.amos.org.au/regionalcentres/list/asset_id/45/cid/19/ parent/0/t/regionalcentres/title/2008%20Calendar

Brisbane Centre News Michael Hewson

Secretary, Brisbane Centre AMOS members associated with the Brisbane Regional Centre should be receiving details on future events shortly via email. Firstly, we need to have an AGM and we’ll target the end of April for that.

The mooted but postponed “Climate Change Effects on Health” forum hosted by the Brisbane Regional Centre will now be included in the International Conference on Global Change and Health 2014 to be held in Brisbane in June1. Information on the associated AMOS forum, “The Climate Perspective”, will be disseminated shortly as we work out some logistics.

1

icgch2014.com

In recent weeks we have had two members volunteer to join the 2015 AMOS conference committees (to be held in Brisbane)—that’s good news! Nonetheless, it is quite critical that a few more people volunteer to be on the organising committee. Let me float an idea that might help—a lot of organisations allow for some of your working week to be set aside to contribute to social good—why not have a yarn with your seniors and see if you can get some work time to help advance your professional society in Brisbane? We’re looking forward to making the conference as successful an event as it has been in southern states—but we need some help.

Conference report

2014 Science Meets Parliament 17–18 March 2014, Canberra Hamish Clarke

PhD Student, University of New South Wales Senior Climate and Atmospheric Scientist, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage For each of the last fourteen years, an intrepid group of scientists has ventured into the heart of our nation. From Capital Hill, they are trained in the ways of communication, journalism and Twitter. They are given guided tours of the policy process and dabble in the mystical art of how to hold a political meeting. They are groomed and perfumed, wined and dined, feted and celebrated by the parliamentarians of Australia.

science and policy, I immediately signalled my interest to the Centre, only to be informed that the window had unexpectedly closed due to a clerical error.

This adventure is known as Science meets Parliament, and today I will tell you its tale.

This bullet pierced my heart but glanced harmlessly off the kevlar of the University of New South Wales’ (UNSW) Ian Macadam, who informed me that our beloved AMOS was sponsoring two places at this event. I thanked him and submitted my application. In short time Ian and I were informed by Jeanette Dargaville that the “golden tickets” were ours and we began preparations.

I first heard about the event through a single cryptic line in the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence’s weekly email update from Simone Purdon.

Obsessed as I am with the liminal space between

Science meets Parliament is organised by Science and Technology Australia, the peak body for 68,000 of Australia’s scientists and technologists. Their stated aims are:

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 25

t

to encourage dialogue between industry, government and the science and technology community.

t

to promote the public understanding of science and

t

to foster close relations between member societies (of which AMOS is one).

I made the short drive from the Blue Mountains down to Canberra on Monday morning, while my saner colleague Ian decided to arrive the night before. When we arrived at the National Gallery, we were confronted with a sea of dapper scientists looking surprisingly at ease in their formal attire. My main reason for pursuing a career in science is its slack dress code and I could not share this ease. Many times over the next 48 hours I longed to loosen my tie…

We began with an introduction to Inspiring Australia, an Australian Government Initiative to provide our country with a “strategic and coordinated approach to science engagement”. We then heard from the Honourable Bill Shorten MP, Leader of the Opposition. Mr Shorten wasted no time in declaring his support of science and intention to place science squarely on the national agenda. Bill was due to speak again that night at the gala dinner after the Honourable Ian Macfarlane MP, Minister for Industry.

We then moved into the “meat” of the day, hearing from Fairfax and Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalists, a senior public servant, an expert tweeter (thesis whisperer Dr Inger Mewburn), some formidable lobbyists, the “Hamish and Andy” of academic science communication, and two professors. Each lecture was followed by a healthy dose of Q&A. The talk I took the most from was by the Australian National University’s Hugh White. Although his expertise is conflict and international affairs (my interpretation of his term, “strategic studies”), he had a keen sense for just how an academic might influence the policy process. Policy after all comes down to decisions, and if a scientist wants their science to contribute to a decision, it’s a good idea for the scientist to try and understand how specific decisions are actually made. This for me was one of the key themes across the two days: it is becoming less and less accepted for scientists to only do science. They are now being called on to communicate and engage, advocate and collaborate well beyond their usual disciplinary boundaries.

My interest in these matters stems partly from the fact that I have one foot in government and another in science. Most attendees had both feet and most of their ankles purely in science, so were perhaps more interested in learning how to spread the word about their field, whether it was to the general public or a purse string-holding politician.

Scientists then had a chance to let their hair down at the gala dinner in the great hall of Parliament House. I enquired with my hotel receptionist what “lounge suit”

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 26

dress code meant and was saddened to discover I had not packed in accordance with the code. Happily I was still admitted and got to rub shoulders with national treasure Robyn Williams, Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie, National Computational Infrastructure bosses and a great number of scientists.

With my shoulders still sore from all the rubbing, I found myself outside Parliament House shortly after sunrise the next morning, ahead of a breakfast forum addressed by the head of the ARC. Professor Aidan Byrne had many interesting things to say, not the least of which was “be careful what you say, Aidan”. He helped me understand some of the reality of administering such a giant grants scheme with an extremely lean staff. One of the delegates made the incisive point that the ARC might be considered less lean when one took into account the tens, if not millions of hours that scientists put into grant applications.

I then prepared for my meeting, along with two fine chaps from CSIRO, with Senator Sam Dastyari. It is quite impressive that so many parliamentarians gave some of their time to meet just about every scientist at the event during the day. Some even met the Prime Minster, although I sadly didn’t get to hear how that went. Senator Dastyari spoke about a Senate Inquiry soon to be launched on the state of science in Australia. It will be very interesting to see how this develops.

I’d barely gathered my breath before we were shuttled off to the National Press Club to hear from Professor Ian Chubb AC, the Chief Scientist of Australia. I foolishly thought that by his affiliation to the government, Professor Chubb might hold his tongue, but nothing could be further from the truth. He spoke eloquently, with humour and passion, about the importance of science.

We whizzed back to Parliament House to observe Question Time. It really was fascinating to see our nation’s leaders in person, sitting, speaking, heckling, being “sent out of the classroom” and so on. One can only wonder what the Mongolian delegation in attendance thought of the whole affair.

Before I hit the road there was one last event to attend, drinks hosted by the Honourable Adam Bandt MP and his colleagues from the Greens. They too promised their support of science, handing out Respect Research badges and mingling with the buzzing but tired delegates.

I am extremely grateful for the support of AMOS, including the tireless help of Jeanette Dargaville. I would also like to deeply thank my employer, the Office of Environment and Heritage, who also supported my attendance. It was a real privilege to attend an event like this, and I urge anyone interested to jump if given the chance to go next year.

Science Article

Climate model simulations of the meteorological effects of superflare events Tammas F. Loughran and Kevin J. E. Walsh School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria Address for correspondence: tammasfl@unimelb.edu.au Tammas Loughran was invited to submit an article following his presentation at the Victorian Postgraduate Student Symposium 2012. This article provides an insight into the presented work—Ed.

1. Introduction Flare events are common on the Sun and are sometimes associated with magnetic storms on Earth that cause havoc with our communication systems, satellites and power grids. However, observed solar flares pale in comparison to the events that can occur on other stars, where short duration events known as superflares release total energies of at least 1025 J. This is 100 times larger than the largest known event on the Sun—the Carrington event of 1859 (Tsurutani et al., 2003). They are thought to be caused by a similar mechanism to solar flares (Schaefer, 1989) and can occur on many different star types including those similar to the Sun (Schaefer et al., 2000). Since flares are caused by strong magnetic fields in the Sun’s atmosphere, observations of sunspots, and therefore the associated magnetic activity, indicate that superflares are unlikely to have occurred on the Sun in the last 400 years (Schrijver et al., 2012). Nevertheless, there exists evidence that there have been very large cosmic events in Earth’s history (Miyake et al., 2012) and a superflare is a good candidate for their origin (Melott and Thomas, 2012).

Maehara et al., (2012) used observations of superflares from the Kepler telescope to estimate the frequency of a flare with a total energy of 1027 J on Sun-like stars to be about once every 800 years. Although it is unlikely, the possibility that the Sun will suffer a superflare is not zero.

A superflare event could be devastating to modern society but the effects of such a flare on Earth’s weather have not yet been evaluated. In addition, what might a superflare imply for the habitability and likelihood of life on other Earth-like planets? In this study a climate model will be used to investigate the effects that radiation from a superflare would have on the weather and climate of Earth and Earth-like planets.

2. Calculating the Solar flux at Earth’s distance A method for calculating the evolution of radiation at the top of the atmosphere during a superflare is first developed. Here we follow Schaefer et al., (2000) who compiled a list of superflares that have been observed on

G-type main sequence stars1. Their total energies range from 1026 J to 1031 J and their durations range from minutes to days. Maehara et al., (2012) also compiled a database of superflare observations on G-type main sequence stars from the Kepler satellite where it can be seen that the energy emission of a superflare is characterised by a sudden increase in brightness followed by a gradual decrease.

Based on these observations we can approximate the evolution of the power output with a simple function (Eq. 1) that displays the observed behaviour. P(t) is the power output of the flare in watts at time t. A is a scaling factor that controls the amplitude of the flare and B is a scaling factor that controls the time of maximum output of the flare. E (Eq. 2) is the total energy emitted by the flare and can be found as the integral of (1) over the duration of the flare, D, in seconds. Solving this integral yields equation (3). Finally, substituting (3) into (1) results in an expression for the power of the flare (4).

!!!! ! !

! !! !! ! !

(1)

! ! ! !!!!!" !

(2)

!!

! ! !!!! ! !! ! !! ! !! !!!! !

!

!! !!!! ! !!

! !! ! !!

(3)

!!

!! !

(4)

The evolution of the flare output asymptotes to zero, so it must be truncated at the end of a specified duration. If the maximum is specified to be too late in the flare then the flare will end abruptly, which is uncharacteristic of the observations. In this study, B is defined as one ninth of the duration of the flare. Given that we know the total energy output of a superflare and its duration, we can then calculate an approximation of its evolution.

1 A main sequence star is a star that uses hydrogen as its main fuel for nuclear fusion. The Sun is one example of a G-type main sequence star.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 27

D (sec)

∆W(B) (Wm-2)

1.00×1028

1030

220.33

27

2400

19.83

28

600

386.00

26

2100

2.26

S For

31

2.00×10

1120

466585.30

BD + 10

3.00×1027

2940

24.28

o Aql

9.00×1029

432000

49.57

5 Ser

30

259200

642.63

28

3420

487.05

Star Gmb 1830 k Ceti MT Tau Pi Uma

UU CrB

Energy (J)

2.00×10 1.00×10 2.00×10

7.00×10 7.00×10

Table 1: A list of superflares from Schaefer et al. (2000), including S Fornacis, with their total energies, durations D and the maximum anomalous radiation flux at the top of the atmosphere ∆W(B).

Figure 1: Time evolution of top of the atmosphere incoming solar radiation of S Fornacis superflares assuming 3.5 hours and 6 hours duration at 1 AU from the Sun.

The next step is to calculate the resulting radiation flux at the Earth. In order to simplify the problem, we have assumed that the flare occurs at the closest point on the Sun to the Earth and is directed straight at the Earth. The inverse square rule is used to calculate the flux from the flare (∆W(t)) over a hemisphere with a radius that spans the distance from the flare to the Earth (e.g. Eq. 5), where r is the mean Earth-Sun distance and R is the radius of the Sun. The total flux at the top of the atmosphere would therefore be the regular solar constant (1365 Wm-2) plus the flux from the flare.

a maximum flux of 22978 Wm-2, which is more than 16 times the solar constant. That is, longer flares of the same energy have lower maximum output as shown in Figure 1.

!! ! !

! ! !! ! ! !

(5)

!

Table 1 lists some examples of the maximum anomalous radiation at the top of the atmosphere (∆W(B)) during a superflare for planets that are 1 AU (Earth-Sun distance) from their star. Most of the values of ∆W(B) are small compared with the average solar constant for Earth. It is expected that these flares would be too weak to have any significant radiative impact on the Earth’s atmosphere.

The exception to this is the S Fornacis (S For) flare which is several orders of magnitude greater than other observed flares. Due to uncertainty in the observed duration of the S For flare, the longest possible duration is six hours giving Month

Simulation

3. Model For this study we are using the CSIRO Mk3L climate model (Phipps et al., 2011) to simulate a planet identical to Earth. It is a fully coupled atmosphere, land, sea ice and ocean general circulation model (GCM). The atmosphere has a coarse spectral resolution of R21 corresponding to 5.625° longitude by ~3.18° latitude grid spacing with 18 hybrid vertical levels. It features a prognostic stratiform cloud scheme (Rotstayn, 1997) as well as the U.K. Meteorological Office convective cloud scheme (Gregory and Rowntree, 1990).

At the start of each simulation, the energy and duration of the flare is specified and an appropriate insolation profile is calculated. A superflare is represented within the model by modifying the solar constant at each time step. Of the superflares from Table 1, three were selected to represent a range of flares that might have a noticeable impact on Earth or an Earth-like planet: the S For flare with a duration of six hours, the 5 Serpentis (5 Ser) flare with a duration of three days and the o Aquilae (o Aql) flare with a duration of five days. For each flare, a simulation was

January

June

Control

Control

S Fornacis (S For)

S Fornacis (S For)

o Aquilae (o Aql)

o Aquilae (o Aql)

5 Serpentis (5 Ser)

5 Serpentis (5 Ser)

Table 2: A list of simulations for the January and July experiment. Control simulations involve no flare event.

Region

Australia

South America

Pacific Ocean

Asia

Simulation

Control

Control

Control

Control

S Fornacis

S Fornacis

S Fornacis

S Fornacis

Table 3: A list of simulations for the positioned flares experiment.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 28

Figure 2: Averaging regions for positioned S For superflares. Australia (10°N–50°S, 90°E–170°E), Pacific (10°N–50°S, 180°E–260°E), South America (10°N–50°S, 255°E–355°E) and Asia (55°N–5°S, 60°E–140°E). run in January and June (listed in Table 2) to determine if there would be any differences in the effects of the flare between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

estimate by the model. However, there are several other instances of surface temperatures of up to 140°C in this simulation which may be a more realistic response.

The region exposed to the longer duration flares spans almost the entire globe, but the S For flare would only affect particular regions because it lasts six hours. Therefore, to examine the effect of a superflare on continental and oceanic regions, the S For simulations were repeated with the flare positioned over the regions listed in Table 3 with maximum insolation occurring at the centre of the boxes in Figure 2. Flares were positioned over Australia, South America, the Pacific Ocean (all occurring in January) and Asia (occurring in June) (see Figure 2).

In contrast, maximum SSTs remained unchanged for the long duration flares. Only the S For flare causes any noticeable difference in SST from the control. For this flare, the thermal response in June is slightly larger than that in January.

4. Results 4.1 January and June flares For the flares in January and June, the grid point maximum surface temperatures reached during each superflare are presented in Table 4 as well as the grid point maximum sea surface temperatures (SSTs) over the duration of the flare. The longer duration flares o Aql and 5 Ser give temperatures only 2.7°C and 5.7°C (respectively) higher than the control simulations. The S For flare, on the other hand, resulted in surface temperature maxima of 201°C in June and 188°C in January. The 201°C from the June simulation is an unusually high value compared to its surrounding grid points, suggesting a possible over Max. surface temp. (°C) January June Control 55.75 59.45 o Aql 58.35 58.45 5 Ser 59.45 65.15 S For 188.49 201.05

Max. SST(°C) January June 29.4554 30.4985 29.5149 30.503 29.5385 30.568 30.491 30.974

Table 4: Gridpoint maximum surface temperature and maximum sea surface temperature for each flare in January and June.

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4.2 Positioned flares Flares positioned over continents produced the most extreme temperatures. Table 5 shows the maximum grid point surface temperatures reached for each region.

Surface temperatures for the flares positioned over continents reach 202°C but there was little difference between them due to surface energy balance conditions.

The flare positioned over the Pacific caused surface temperatures to reach 109°C and occurred at the nearest land point which was the west coast of South America.

There were large changes to clouds and rainfall during the flares. Firstly, the total cloud coverage decreased over oceans. Figure 3a shows the difference in cloud cover fraction between the control simulation and the S For flare simulation positioned over Australia. The flare simulation was dominated by a decrease in cloudiness over the ocean while the only cloud development occurred over land.

Secondly, rain was also suppressed over the ocean but the Simulation January control June control Pacific Australia South America Asia

Max. surface temp.!(°C) 55.65 59.25 110.65 203.75 203.45 203.25

Table 5: Grid point maximum surface temperature for flares positioned over each region during the S Fornacis simulations and control simulations.

Figure 3: (a) Cloud cover fraction difference between the S For flare and control simulations positioned over Australia and (b) the same for rainfall intensity averaged over the duration of the flare. Negative values indicate a decrease in cloud or rain in response to the flare.

Figure 4: Time series of daily rain for up to one month after the S Fornacis superflare positioned over (a) Asia, (b) Australia, (c) Pacific Ocean, and (d) South America. The red lines are the flare simulations and the black lines are the control simulations. The horizontal dashed lines are the averages for the corresponding series.

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Figure 5: Rain intensity in the control simulation at 05:00 UTC (corresponding with the time the S For flare is positioned over Australia). major rainfall increases occurred over land in Queensland and Indonesia (Figure 3b). Other flare simulations showed a similar behaviour for their respective regions (not shown).

is only slightly greater than its control simulation.

This suggests that the presence of land is important for triggering convection and enhancing rainfall due to a superflare.

In order to observe the longer-term effects of the S For flare on a particular region, average daily rainfall was calculated over the boxes in Figure 2. Figure 4 shows time series of total daily rainfall for each box for the control and flare simulations as well as the corresponding means. The means of daily rain for superflare simulations are greater than the control simulations, therefore a greater amount of rain fell in the weeks following a superflare. Unlike the continental simulations, rainfall in the Pacific simulation

5. Discussion and Conclusion The S For flare is much more powerful than the others due to its higher energy and shorter duration. Its short duration also means that the affected area is much smaller.

The difference between June and January SST is due to the maximum insolation being located in the North West Pacific Ocean in June and Australia in January. The o Aql and 5 Ser flares are five and three days in duration

Figure 6: Vertical temperature profiles of the storm located at 140째E, 30째S for (a) the control simulation and (b) the S For superflare positioned over Australia.

Both profiles are taken at the time of maximum insolation in the S For simulation. Black indicates the temperature profile and red indicates the 1000 hPa parcel trajectory. Land surface temperature has not been plotted here.

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respectively and their effect is therefore distributed over most of the surface area of the globe.

Since there was little difference in maximum surface temperature between continents, the size of a landmass seems unimportant for extremes in temperature. Whether or not the superflare was positioned over a landmass, and not the size of the landmass, determined the maximum temperatures.

The decrease in cloud and rain during the flare could be due to accelerated evaporation of clouds in the model due to increased radiation. Intensification of storm systems only occurred where there was some pre-existing storm that had a large amount of available moisture. For example, a storm located over Australia in the control simulation (Figure 5) increased in intensity in response to the flare in the Australian S For simulation. Increases in rain intensity during the flare were seen in all S For simulations but only over land, whereby high temperatures created a large amount of CAPE-driven convection. Figure 6 shows the vertical temperature profiles of the storm from Figure 5 for the control and superflare simulations at the time of maximum insolation in the flare simulation. The surface based CAPE for this storm was 1575 J kg-1 for the control simulation and 2242 J kg-1 in the superflare simulation. In contrast to the land, it is hypothesised that temperatures over the ocean could not generate enough latent heat flux from the surface to overcome flare-induced evaporation of the clouds.

For Sun-like stars, the frequency of superflare events has been shown to obey a power law with higher energy flares being the rarest (Maehara et al., 2012). Therefore, it is expected that the S For flare is an extremely unusual event that is not likely to occur on the Sun. However, due to the small number of observations of superflares on Sun-like stars, there is large uncertainty in the frequency in high energy flares. The exact mechanism that causes superflares and whether or not they occur on the Sun is also still a topic of debate. If the Sun can create superflares, we have found that most flares would have little effect on the weather of a planet identical to Earth, except the highest energy short duration flares, such as S For. The surface temperature of 200°C produced by this flare is more than enough to cause widespread extinction of land based life but its short duration means that only about half of the planet’s surface is exposed to it. Therefore, a large superflare event such as this may cause an extinction event similar to those experienced throughout Earth’s history (e.g. Bambach et al., 2004) in which not all life would be affected. For planets that rotate as fast as Earth, only the global land surface exposed to the S For flare would experience such high temperatures. The o Aql and 5 Ser flares are very high energy flares in their own right but due to their long duration, similar flares would be unlikely to have any serious thermal effects on Earth’s weather or climate.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 32

Acknowledgments I would like to thank the following: Sonya Fiddes and Michael Horn for their comments on this paper, Alan Duffy of the School of Physics, University of Melbourne for his conceptual support and Steven Phipps and David Hutchinson of the CCRC, UNSW for their technical support.

References Bambach, R.K., Knoll, A.H. and Wang, S.C., 2004, Origination, extinction, and mass depletions of marine diversity, Paleobiology, 30, 522–542.

Gregory, D. and Rowntree, P.R., 1990, A mass flux convection scheme with representation of cloud ensemble characteristics and stability-dependent closure, Monthly Weather Review, 118, 1483–1506.

Maehara, H., Shibayama, T., Notsu, S., Notsu, S., Nagao, T., Kusaba, S., Honda, S., Nogami, D. and Shibata, K., 2012, Superflares on solar-type stars, Nature, 485, 478–481.

Melott, A.L. and Thomas, B.C., 2012, Causes of an AD 774– 775 14C increase, Nature, 491, doi:10.1038/nature11695.

Miyake, F., Nagaya, K., Masuda, K., and Nakamura, T., 2012, A signature of cosmic-ray increase in AD 774–775 from tree rings in Japan, Nature, 486, 240–242.

Phipps, S.J., Rotstayn, L.D., Gordon, H.B., Roberts, J.L., Hirst, A.C. and Budd, W.F., 2011, The CSIRO Mk3L climate system model version 1.0 – Part 1: Description and evaluation, Geoscientific Model Development, 4, 483–509.

Rotstayn, L.D., 1997, A physically based scheme for the treatment of stratiform clouds and precipitation in large-scale models: 1. Description and evaluation of the microphysical processes, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 123, 1227–1282.

Schaefer, B.E., 1989, Flashes from normal stars, Astrophysical Journal, 337, 927–933.

Schaefer, B.E., King, J.R. and Deliyannis, C.P., 2000, Superflares on ordinary solar-type stars, Astrophysical Journal, 529, 1026–1030.

Schrijver, C.J., Beer, J., Baltensperger, U., Cliver, E.W., Guedel, M., Hudson, H.S., McCracken, K.G., Osten, R.A., Peter, T.H., Soderblom, D.R., Usoskin, I.G. and Wolff, E.W., 2012, Estimating the frequency of extremely energetic solar events based on solar, stellar, lunar, and terrestrial records, Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 117, doi:10.1029/2012JA017706.

Tsurutani, B.T., Gonzalez, W,D., Lakhina, G.S. and Alex, S., 2003, The extreme magnetic storm of 1–2 September 1859, Journal of Geophysical Research, 108, doi:10.1029/2002JA009504.

Meteorological Society of New Zealand Annual Conference Wednesday 19 – Friday 21 November 2014 Victoria University of Wellington

First Circular and Call for Papers The Meteorological Society of New Zealand is holding its 2014 conference at Victoria University of Wellington, in Kelburn, Wellington. The overall theme of the conference is Forecasts: From minutes to decades covering now-­‐casting, short-­‐term weather prediction, and seasonal forecasts through to climate change projections. We welcome presentations on all aspects of meteorological and climate forecasting, and the research and observations that underpin prediction on all time scales.

While forecasting is the theme of the conference, the Society invites contributions (in all forms listed below) on any topic associated with meteorology and climate, including (but not limited to) the large-­‐scale circulation of the atmosphere and oceans, ocean-­‐atmosphere interactions and physical oceanography, remote sensing, atmospheric chemistry, urban meteorology and air pollution, hydrological applications, agricultural and bio-­‐meteorology, weather and climate hazards and impacts, including global change, and the history of New Zealand meteorology and atmospheric research.

This year, we plan three kinds of presentations – 1. Poster presentations, with an associated one-­‐minute introduction.

2. Standard oral presentations, of 20 minute duration, including time for questions.

3. Rapid-­‐fire Pecha Kucha-­‐style 5 minute oral presentations, with questions for all speakers at the end of the session.

There will also be a series of longer keynote presentations.

Please email all expressions of interest, including your preferred style of presentation, to James Renwick (james.renwick@vuw.ac.nz) by 31 July 2014. An outline of the meeting timetable, including the conference dinner and the Society AGM, will be released by mid-­‐year.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 33

Meet a Member

Luke Osburn Where does this find you?

At my desk on an overcast Wednesday in Melbourne.

What do you do?

I’m studying the development and persistence of supercooled liquid water (SLW) over the Snowy Mountains and compared to other mountain ranges in the world we really do get quite a lot of it here. I’ve been using data from satellites and comparing it to ground observations to try and develop a coherent picture of SLW over the past 3 years. I am also using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) to model some case studies in order to understand the mechanisms involved in SLW genesis and persistence.

Why did you get into it?

I graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Cape Town and my first job was working for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria, South Africa. I was tasked with researching sustainable building construction and operation, particularly from an energy efficiency perspective. At that time, my knowledge of climate change was very basic but because of the nature of the work I was doing I was becoming increasingly interested in it and particularly the science behind it. I was also becoming increasingly frustrated with the business as usual attitude within the construction industry.

After I emigrated to Australia, the opportunity to do a PhD in atmospheric science was just too good to turn down.

What is the best thing about what you do?

The idea of working on a problem or rather developing the skills to work on a problem that is really relevant I find very inspiring. I also still get excited about using data that’s coming from satellites orbiting our planet!

What did you want to be when you were 10?

A Fireman. Actually, in many ways its still very appealing!

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 34

Luke Osburn. Image: Anna Haley.:

Snapshot

Crystal Sunset, Riksgränsen, Sweden 20 February 2014 Etienne Rebuffet

This beautiful image of the sunset over the Bjørnfjell mountain near Riksgränsen in northern Sweden shows two distinct optical phenomena. The picture contains a combination of crepuscular rays and a halo around the sun. Crepuscular rays are caused by rays of sunlight passing between gaps in relatively opaque objects such as clouds or hills. The objects cast shadows next to the lighter rays causing the parallel “pillars of light” effect in the image radiating away from the sun. The halo is caused

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 35

by the refraction of light through hexagonal ice prisms suspended in the atmosphere. The halo was seen over the mountain for most of the day (in fact the sun never rose above the hill), and the ground-level temperature was a chilly -10°C. If you have an image of the weather near you to share, send it to duncan.ackerley@monash.edu, or post it on the AMOS Facebook page. — Ed

Charts from the Past with Blair Trewin

6 February 1925 Summer and early autumn are normally the driest times of the year in South Australia. On occasions, though, tropical moisture finds its way into the state, and most of the heaviest rainfalls on record have occurred in the warmer months.

One such occasion was in early February 1925. High pressure became established south of the continent, with a ridge over southeastern Australia directing east to northeast winds into a trough over South Australia. These winds brought tropical moisture over much of southeast Australia.

Scattered storms occurred in the South Australian outback on the 3rd and 4th, becoming more extensive and extending to eastern agricultural areas on the 5th. The most significant activity was north of Burra, with a storm developing around 4 p.m., causing flash flooding which washed out the railway bridge at Ulooloo and cut the railway to Broken Hill. Ulooloo received 127 mm and a site near Terowie (which itself had 37 mm in 20 minutes) 103 mm, while further west, Condowie, near Snowtown, received 108 mm.

The most significant storms, however, took place on the 6th.

The most extreme rainfalls occurred in the inner suburbs of Adelaide, in two separate thunderstorms, one of which hit the central city between noon and 12.30 p.m., then the second between 1 and 2 p.m. Both produced torrential rain, with a number of periods when rain rates exceeded 100 mm per hour (peaking at 17 mm in 7 minutes). By the time the second storm had passed, the Bureau’s site had received 127 mm in 135 minutes. Further, lighter falls during the evening brought the daily total to 141.5 mm, which remains the wettest day on record for Adelaide, while North Adelaide’s 24-hour total was 163.6 mm.

Falls were much lighter outside the inner city, although

a number of suburban sites had totals in the 50–60 mm range.

Such heavy falls, unsurprisingly, caused major flash flooding throughout central Adelaide and nearby suburbs, with Unley, North Adelaide and Keswick being especially hard-hit. Many central Adelaide streets were inundated and businesses flooded, with losses estimated at several tens of thousands of pounds, while the Adelaide Oval was flooded sufficiently deeply that a groundsman was able to swim 75 yards across it (it was also suggested that a swimming race in the Torrens planned for the next day could have been rescheduled for the city streets). The wall of the grounds of Government House collapsed (general press consensus suggested that this was not viewed as any great loss). A number of people were also struck by lightning, and at least one swept into a drain, but no serious injuries were reported. Further damage was caused by strong winds associated with another storm in the evening, with many shop windows broken at Unley.

There were major interruptions to road and rail transport, and telephone and electricity services.

A region more accustomed to extreme rainfalls, north Queensland, also experienced very heavy rain along and near the coast. Innisfail and Babinda had daily rainfall totals of 433 and 416 mm respectively, and floods in the Burdekin River washed away the Inkerman Bridge.

The system was slow-moving, and thunderstorms with heavy rain continued for several days, although the focus moved to New South Wales and northern Victoria, finally clearing eastern New South Wales on the 12th. The 8th was particularly active in the Riverina and adjacent areas of Victoria, with falls of 112 mm at Chiltern and 107 mm at Coolamon. However, the rain was patchy and, averaged over the states as a whole, NSW, Victoria and South Australia all had near-normal rainfall for the month.

Synoptic chart for 1500 Adelaide time (approx.), 6 February 1925

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 36

The Research Corner with Damien Irving

The future of journal submissions Recent advances in computing and the web have revolutionised the way we do weather/climate science.

For instance, a computer model that took a year to run on a mainframe computer a decade ago can now be run on a personal laptop computer in 30 seconds, meaning we can conduct analyses and produce volumes of data that were previously unimaginable. We can also share these data and analyses faster than ever before, through both traditional (e.g. early online access to journal papers) and non-traditional (e.g. social media, blogs) mediums.

In contrast to these rapid advances in the way we conduct and share science, there has been relatively little change in the way we publish science. Journal articles are obviously now available online, however the criteria against which they are reviewed and the format in which they are presented has remained relatively unchanged for decades.

This situation is to be expected to some extent, because the natural sequence would be for science to change and then publishing to adjust accordingly. Indeed, in recent years topics such as reproducibility and open access have dominated the editorial sections of Nature and Science, so it appears that change is on the way.

With this imminent change in mind, I thought I’d consider what journal submission might look like 10–20 years from now in the weather/climate sciences.

Copyright and access The push for open access has grown rapidly in recent years, with some of the most influential political and academic institutions calling for change. The White House recently announced that taxpayer-funded research should be made free to read after a year’s delay (Van Noorden, 2013), while Princeton University have established a policy that prevents researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal publishers (Creagh, 2011). Everyday scientists are also screaming for change, with thousands boycotting publisher Elsevier due to the exorbitant fees they charge for access to scientific publications (e.g. Lin, 2012).

All this means that in 10–20 years from now, manuscript submission probably won’t involve signing one of those forms that gives copyright to the journal. It’s also likely that your paper will be openly available from the moment it’s accepted, or will at the very least become open access after a short delay (e.g. 12 months). While this is great news for readers, it seems that authors will still be charged a fee to have their work published. The Public Library of Science (PLOS) currently publishes some of the highest profile open access journals going around, and they cover costs by charging authors a fairly hefty fee (ranging from about $1,000 to $3,000 depending on the discipline).

Source code, data and other supplementary material A major consequence of the recent advances in computing is that published research is becoming less reproducible.

For instance, Nature recently published a series on the challenges in irreproducible research1, which included an article outlining the case for open computer programs (Ince et al., 2012). This culminated in substantive changes to the checklist reviewers must consider when assessing a Nature article. Particularly relevant to the weather/ climate sciences is that this new checklist encourages “the provision of other source data and supplementary information in unstructured repositories such as Figshare and Dryad.” It also asks whether “computer source code was provided with the paper or deposited in a public repository?”

In a nutshell, Dryad is a website where you can make your data publicly available, while Figshare is a place to share all sorts of things that can’t be included in a traditional journal paper (i.e. not only datasets but also supplementary figures, media, papers, posters, presentations and filesets).

The great thing about these sites is that your data/materials get a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which means they can be uniquely cited by others. PLOS recently announced that authors must make all data underlying their findings fully available without restriction (with rare exception), so if journals in the weather/climate sciences follow suit then in 10–20 years time this sharing might actually be compulsory.

With respect to source code, it’s not difficult to imagine that in 10–20 years time all weather/climate journals will require authors to make their code available upon submission. In fact, the Mozilla Science Lab are currently midway through the second iteration of a project to figure out how peer review of scientific code would actually work (Wilson, 2014). They’re also working on making it possible to push code from GitHub (a commonly used code repository) to Figshare, which would allow scientists to get a DOI for their code as well (Thaney, 2013).

Methodology In the announcement (Editorial, 2013) of the new Nature checklist, it was also noted that the journal will now be demanding more precise descriptions of statistics, and will commission statisticians as consultants on certain papers at the editor’s discretion and at the referees’ suggestion.

In other words, it’s conceivable that in 10–20 years time journals may demand a far more detailed description of the research methodology.

1

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www.nature.com/nature/focus/reproducibility/index.html

Peer review process

References

If the new open science journal F1000 Research is anything to go by, we can also expect that the peer review process might be more open and transparent in 10–20 years time.

Articles submitted to F1000 are published immediately, then reports from reviewers (along with their names) are published alongside the article as they become available, together with comments from registered users. In the case of other more typical journals (i.e. with a slow and closed/ private review process), this desire to publish immediately is leading researchers to post their articles on pre-print servers like arXiv, so that their work is available to the wider scientific community while it’s being reviewed.

Creagh S., 2011, Princeton goes open access to stop staff handing all copyright to journals – unless waiver granted. theconversation.com/princeton-goes-open-access-to-stopstaff-handing-all-copyright-to-journals-unless-waivergranted-3596

Rather than waiting to get caught out by these changes to the journal submission process, why not get ahead of the game? If you’re submitting a paper soon, consider making your code available on GitHub and your data available at Dryad. Alternatively, if you’re reviewing a paper, why not suggest to the author that they do the same?

A version of this article is available on my blog2, which provides hyperlinks to more information on many of the topics covered.

2 drclimate.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/the-future-of-journalsubmissions/

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Editorial, 2013, Announcement: reducing our irreproducibility, Nature, 496, 398, doi:10.1038/496398a Ince D.C., Hatton L., Graham-Cumming J., 2012, The case for open computer programs, Nature, 482, 485–488. doi:10.1038/nature10836 Lin T., 2012, Researchers Organize Boycott of a Publisher, www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/science/researchersboycott-elsevier-journal-publisher.html Thaney K., 2013, Code as a research object: a new project, mozillascience.org/code-as-a-research-object-a-newproject/ Van Noorden R., 2013, White House announces new US open-access policy, blogs.nature.com/news/2013/02/uswhite-house-announces-open-access-policy.html Wilson G., 2014, Launching a second pilot study of code review in science, mozillascience.org/launching-a-secondpilot-study-of-code-review-in-science/

Calendar

2014

7–11 14th Conference on Atmospheric Radiation, Westin Copley Place, Boston, MA, USA.

April

28–1 August 11th Annual Asia Oceania Geosciences Meeting, Sapporo, Japan.

27–2 May European Geosciences Union, General Assembly, Vienna, Austria.

May 12–15 2nd Conference on Atmospheric Biogeosciences, Portland, OR, USA. 12–15 31st Conference on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Portland, OR, USA.

August 16–21 1st World Weather Open Science Conference, Montreal, Canada.

18–22 16th Conference on Mountain Meteorology, San Diego, CA, USA.

September

25–30 1st International Summit on Tornadoes and Climate Change, Chania, Crete, Greece.

22–26 13th Quadrennial ICACGP Symposium, Natal, Brazil.

June

November

4–6 International Conference on Global Change and Health, Brisbane.

3–7 27th Conference on Severe Local Storms, Madison, WI, USA.

8–11 The 9th Antarctic Meteorological Observations, Modeling, & Forecasting Workshop, Charleston, SC, USA.

December

9–13 21st Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence, Leeds, UK.

15–19 The 47th annual American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, USA.

14–19 15th International Conference on Atmospheric Electricity (ICAE 2014), Norman, OK, USA. 16–20 21st Conference on Applied Climatology, Boulder, CO, USA. 16–20 17 Symposium on Meteorological Observation and Instrumentation, Boulder, CO, USA. th

2015 January 4–8 95th AMS Annual Meeting, Phoenix, USA.

June

17–20 42nd Conference on Broadcast Meteorology, Olympic Valley, CA, USA.

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

July

July

7–11 14th Conference on Cloud Physics, Westin Copley Place, Boston, MA, USA.

15–17 AMOS National Conference, Brisbane.

Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal

Articles — Vol. 63 No. 4, December 2013 Pepler and Coutts-Smith. A new, objective database of East Coast Lows.

Grace. A stochastic model for runs of extremes in a daily meteorological variable.

Mackerras. Lightning flash density 1995–2010, Brisbane, Australia.

Le Marshall et al. The considerable impact of Earth observations from space on numerical weather prediction.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 39

Regular features: Evans. Seasonal climate summary Southern Hemisphere (autumn 2013): significant heat across Australia.

Wu. Quarterly numerical weather prediction model performance summary—July to September 2013.

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 peerreview 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):

t

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. t

t

4.

An abstract is not required; however, should the author(s) wish to produce one it 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:

t

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. t

Books:

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

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 40

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-invictoria/ 7.

We recommend that the author(s) make at least two suggestions for referees to undertake the peer-review.

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.

2. Method 4. Conclusions

Theses:

Trewin, B., 2001, Extreme temperature events in Australia.

PhD Thesis, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia.

1. Introduction 3. Results

Book chapter:

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).

2014 AMOS Council Executive

President Vice-President Secretary Treasurer Past President

Todd Lane Mary Voice Damien Irving Angela Maharaj Blair Trewin

Ordinary Members Ailie Gallant Andrew Klekociuk Adam Morgan Neville Nicholls Andy Pitman Ian Watterson

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AMOS Executive Officer Jeanette Dargaville GPO Box 1289, Melbourne VIC 3001 (attn: AMOS admin officer) Phone 0404 471 143 E-mail: admin_officer@amos.org.au

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Sub-Committee Convenors Public Relations Awards 2015 Conference Education

Centre Chairs ACT Adelaide Brisbane Darwin Hobart Melbourne NSW Perth

Vacant Mark Williams Andrew Weibe Phillip Riley

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Bob Cechet Darren Ray Andrew Wiebe Ian Shepherd Kelvin Michael Louise WIlson Fiona Johnson Merv Lynch

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Representatives AMOJ Science & Technology Australia

David Karoly

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Steven Phipps

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

2014 Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society ISSN 1035-6576

Editor

Duncan Ackerley Monash Weather and Climate School of Mathematical Sciences Monash University VIC 3800 Phone: 03-9902 4900 Fax: 03-9005 4403 Email:duncan.ackerley@monash.edu

Editor-in-chief

Stewart Allen Email: Stewart.Allen@bom.gov.au

Assistant Editors Diana Greenslade Blair Trewin Linden Ashcroft

Regional Sub-editors Michael Hewson (Brisbane) Caecilia Ewenz (Adelaide) Shannon Mason (Melbourne) Fiona Johnson (NSW) Clem Davis (ACT)

Contributors Blair Trewin Damien Irving

Advertising Manager Please contact the Admin. Officer.

Publisher

AMOS, GPO Box 1289, Melbourne VIC 3001, Australia

Contributed articles, news, announcements and correspondence for the Bulletin should be sent to the editor no later than 23 May 2014. 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 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