News
International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS) Tom Beer, IAMAS National Correspondent
IAMAS officers are presently busy preparing for the IUGG General Assembly to be held in Prague 21 June–2 July 2015 at the Prague Congress Centre. The IAMAS Executive Committee will hold two General Assembly meetings for IAMAS Officers and National Correspondents on Tuesday 23 June, 12:30–15:30 and Friday 26 June, 15:00–18:00 Scientists interested in IAMAS activities are welcome to attend as observers but should notify the IAMAS Secretary-General beforehand of their intention to attend.
Vice-President (2 to be elected to 4-year term) Prof. Joyce Penner, USA, nominated by the U.S. (Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution) Dr. Laura Gallardo Klenner, Chile, nominated by the IAMAS Bureau (Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution) Secretary General (one to be elected to 8-year term) Prof. Teruyuki Nakajima, Japan, nominated by IRC (Radiation and Modelling)
National Representatives have been invited, if appropriate, to give a five minute presentation on the state of meteorological and atmospheric sciences research in their country. If anyone has material that they would like included in a report from Australia then please notify Tom Beer (tom.beer@safesystemsolutions.com.au) before 1 June.
Member-at-Large (three to be elected to 8–year term)
The nominations committee has presented a slate of candidates for election for the 2015-2019 period as follows:
Dr. Iracema Cavalcanti, Brazil, nominated by the nominating committee (Monsoon and Extremes research)
Nominees for 2015-2019
Dr. Florinela Georgescu, Romania, nominated by Romania (Operational Meteorology)
President (one to be elected to 4-year term) Prof. John Turner, UK, nominated by ICPM (Polar Meteorology)
News from the Centres
Dr. Lisa Alexander, Australia, nominated by Australia (Radiation, Middle Atmosphere) Dr. Keith Alverson, USA/Kenya, nominated by US in that he is US citizen based at UNESCO in Kenya (Climate/ Ocean Observations)
Dr. Wojciech W. Grabowski, USA/Poland, nominated by ICCP (Cloud Precipitation) Past President will be Athena Coustenis (France).
Melbourne Centre News Nick Earl
Melbourne Centre The Weather Tipping launch took place at the BoM Victoria Regional Office in Docklands on 25 March. Attendees included students and post-docs from Melbourne and Monash University, Bureau forecasters and CSIRO scientists. Proceedings began with Frank Drost giving an short introduction to AMOS, highlighting the advantages of joining the society, the events that AMOS are involved in and how to utilise the website. This was followed by a weather chart discussion by the 2014 Weather Tipping winner himself, Harvey Stern. Harvey took us through the forecast performances of the ACCESS, ECMWF and GFS models for the previous week and discussed the potential reasons for any disagreement between them. The El Niño situation was then covered, reviewing the current sea surface temperatures and the Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 28 page 31
phase of various indices, before Harvey took us through the ACCESS prognoses for the coming week. The talk ended with a lively discussion on the Autumn predictability barrier for long-range forecasts before Harvey gave some advice on the winning of the 2014 competition, “don’t forget to submit your prediction!”. The Weather Tipping developers Rachel Badlan and Luke Garde explained the rules of the 2015 competition along with the explanation of how to join up and how to play. The 2015 prizes were also announced. Proceedings were brought to a close with a platter of cheese, snacks and wine, along with some excited chatter about the upcoming competition and who will be crowned 2015 Weather Tipping champion. My money’s on Harvey to reclaim the title!