BAMOS Vol 27 No.4 August 2014

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society Vol 27, No. 4, AUGUST 2014 ISSN 1035-6576

Contents Editorial...........................................................................................................................................................................57 President’s Column.........................................................................................................................................................58 News...............................................................................................................................................................................58 News from the Centres...................................................................................................................................................62 Conference report...........................................................................................................................................................64 Science Article: An investigation into a 53-year sub-alpine snow record................................................................................65 Snapshot.........................................................................................................................................................................71 Charts from the Past with Blair Trewin: 28 June 1990............................................................................................................72 The Research Corner with Damien Irving: Backing up your work..........................................................................................73

ISSN 1035-6576 Cover picture: Winter super moon setting over Mt Wellington, Hobart, Tasmania Image:Theresa Ockenden, aka. @lifecatchme on Instagram This photo was taken on 12 August at 7am from Howrah Beach, on the eastern shore of the Derwent River. The preceding days had very low temperatures, gale force winds and rain over Hobart. The night of the August super moon had been particularly cold as snow fell on the high peaks. Earlier in the month, it had fallen down to the 200 m level. The local photographer says she was awoken before taking this shot by an ‘unusual’ pounding. “I looked at Howrah Beach and there was a very low tide. One of the lowest I’ve seen. The pounding was the surf breaking at the usual deeper water drop off. Then I saw the moon, moving quickly, to set behind Mt Wellington.”

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

Changes in place for BAMOS As our society has expanded in recent years, so too has the scope of communicating our work and achievements— both to members and to the wider public. In response to a submission to the AMOS National Council by outgoing BAMOS editor Duncan Ackerley, former BAMOS editor Linden Ashcroft, myself and the Council agreed that the demands of BAMOS’s production had grown to the point that they were no longer manageable for an editor working in an honorary role. As Duncan explained in the April 2014 issue of BAMOS, a new AMOS Communications and Publications Officer will now manage publication of the Bulletin, with two additional supporting staff to manage peer reviews and typesetting.

The adoption of this new structure is a strategic move, not only for BAMOS but also for AMOS in general. The AMOS Communications and Publications Officer is not only tasked with managing BAMOS, but also with the broader responsibility of communicating the Society’s (and members’) goals and achievements, through all AMOS publications, the society website, press releases and social media.

It has taken some time for us to get to this point. Duncan, Linden and I first met to form a submission to the AMOS National Council in November 2013. Then, with the Council’s support and some more work (primarily by Duncan) towards generating a firm and clear proposal, the National Council formally endorsed the new structure and we were ready to start the recruitment process.

The interview panel was faced with a very strong shortlist of worthy candidates, spanning a range of diverse backgrounds including journalism, publications and scientific presenting. However, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Melissa Lyne to the Communications and Publications Officer position.

Melissa comes to AMOS with a strong background in scientific communication, with experience in publishing and media relations. She is also a skilled photographer—a great asset, for conferences and for capturing an interesting looking sky! Melissa has now taken the reins of BAMOS and I have no doubt she will be keen to introduce herself to the Society through BAMOS. I would also like to welcome Willow Hallgren and Tom Naughtin who will be overseeing the scientific content and the production of BAMOS, respectively.

As Melissa takes over the role of Editor from Duncan, he will, in turn, take over the Editor-in-chief role from me.

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I have been involved with BAMOS for more than 6 years and so I will indulge myself a little by closing this editorial with some brief words of thanks.

Firstly, I would like to thank Jeanette Dargaville for her dedicated assistance over several years. It has been a pleasure to work closely with her. Prior to that, Susan Karoly worked tirelessly in the same way. When I was Editor, my Editor-in-chief, Andrew Watkins, served as a valued mentor.

First Linden, and then Duncan, were both exceptional Editors during my tenure as Editor-in-chief and they always strove to improve BAMOS for the benefit of its readers. Apart from the new Communications and Publications Officer position, I suggest the most significant changes have been: •

the move to digital publication during Linden’s stewardship,

•

the development of a formal peer-review policy during Duncan’s stewardship.

Both of these have greatly facilitated the transformation of BAMOS into a publication that is both modern and on par with its contemporaries from the societies of our international peers. I sincerely thank Linden and Duncan for their efforts. There were several others—too many to list individually—that helped or made regular contributions to BAMOS and I thank them too.

Lastly, I wish to thank the National Council not just for their support of BAMOS, but also for supporting our vision of making it manageable, stronger and more valuable to our members. Because of this support and the efforts of everyone I have mentioned, I feel I am leaving BAMOS in an even stronger state than when I started.

Stewart Allen Editor-in-chief

President’s Column

New awards This issue of BAMOS marks a change in AMOS Editorial roles. Welcome to Melissa Lyne (our new Editor), Willow Hallgren (Science Editor), Tom Naughtin (Typesetter), Duncan Ackerley (our new Editor-in-chief) and thanks to Stewart Allen (our outgoing Editor-in-chief). Hiring Melissa as our Publications and Communications Officer is a major milestone for AMOS and is testament to the efforts of many people who’ve helped our Society grow in recent years.

As you know, one of AMOS’s goals is “to recognise excellence in the sciences covered by AMOS” and we achieve this through presenting a number of prestigious awards. I’m pleased to announce two new awards that will be conferred this year: the Gibbs Medal and the AMOS Early Career Research Award. This year will also mark the inaugural presentation of the Morton Medal, which replaces the AMOS Medal. Details of these awards and a call for nominations are found in this issue of BAMOS. Naming an award after someone is arguably one of AMOS’s highest honours. It is a decision made carefully by the Awards Committee and National Council, and restricted to individuals who have made substantial contributions to AMOS and its disciplines in Australia. Please take the time to read the brief summaries of Bruce Morton and Bill Gibbs’ contributions in this issue of BAMOS—I’m sure you’ll agree that our decision to name awards after them is

a fitting tribute. I’d like to convey special thanks to Neville Nicholls for compiling these descriptions.

Introducing these new awards requires a few changes to the existing awards. First, the Christopher Taylor Award will now be awarded every second year, with the next selection occurring in 2015. We will make some minor changes to the selection criteria for the Priestley Medal to clearly distinguish it from the new Early Career Research Award.

We are also in the process of finalising the description for a new award for long-term distinguished contributions to research, which should be introduced for the first time next year. The result of these changes is a set of awards that encompasses a broad range of criteria and eligibility across AMOS and its disciplines.

All of these changes have been the result of a long process and lengthy discussions by the Awards Committee, led

by Mark Williams. I congratulate Mark for his efforts and gratefully acknowledge his ongoing commitment to AMOS. So I’ll finish by reminding you that for someone to be considered for one of these prestigious AMOS awards, somebody has to actually nominate them. So please be proactive and consider nominating your deserving colleagues.

Todd Lane

News

AMOS Awards—Call for Nominations Mark Williams

Chair, AMOS Awards Committee AMOS invites nominations for the Morton Medal, the Gibbs Medal, and the AMOS Early Career Research Award. Descriptions of these awards are listed below and detailed selection criteria and the nomination procedures can be found at: www.amos.org.au/awards Nominations should be submitted to admin@amos. org.au and must be received by 1 October 2014. The Awards Committee has limited ability to seek additional information and therefore nomination documents must be complete, include the nominee’s CV and reference letters, and provide a full and fair account of each candidate.

The Morton Medal (formerly the AMOS Medal) Description and history Bruce Rutherfurd Morton was a professor of applied mathematics at Monash University from 1967 until

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his retirement in 1991, after academic appointments at University College London and Manchester University.

Previously he had completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at St John’s College Cambridge, supervised by George Batchelor and Geoffrey Taylor. Bruce’s Ph.D. resulted in one of the most referenced papers in fluid dynamics, “Turbulent gravitational convection from maintained and instantaneous sources”. He founded a very strong group in geophysical fluid dynamics at Monash, and established an active fluid dynamics laboratory. His research covered various fluid mechanics topics, including flow from smoke stacks, the flow around bridges and aircraft, and the flow around fires. Much of his work focussed on the importance of vorticity in flows and its relevance to smoke rings, dust devils, water spouts, tornadoes and tropical cyclones, and he delighted students and colleagues with

his practical demonstrations of the importance of vorticity for these phenomena in lectures and seminars.

Bruce regarded oceanography and meteorology as important applications of fluid dynamics, and he profoundly influenced both subjects in Australia and overseas, especially through his students and his mentoring of young colleagues in these fields. Bruce was a true mentor to his students and young colleagues, taking them into his family for meals and outings, and his group would frequently take the many visitors to his group on trips to Healesville, whatever the weather.

Bruce was very active in AMOS, strongly promoting the establishment of AMOS centres in each State, to ensure that our Society was a truly national organisation. In recognition of Bruce’s contribution to geophysical fluid dynamics, his mentoring of a generation of atmospheric scientists and oceanographers, and his strong support and influence on the development of AMOS into a vibrant and national scientific society, AMOS has renamed the AMOS Medal as the Morton Medal. The Morton Medal, like the AMOS Medal which has been awarded since 2000, recognises leadership in meteorology, oceanography, climate and related fields, particularly through education and the development of young scientists, and through the building of research environments in Australia. In particular, the Morton Medal is directed to senior scientists who have made a substantial contribution over many years, advancing the science of meteorology, oceanography and climatology through leadership, mentoring and research management rather than personal research. The Award will comprise a medal.

The Gibbs Medal – Award for long-term contribution to operational forecasting services Description and history W.J. (Bill) Gibbs OBE, was Commonwealth Director of Meteorology from 1962 to 1978 and First Vice-president of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) from 1967 to 1975. His initiatives while Director transformed Australian operational meteorology. As John Zillman pointed out, “More than any other, he shaped the Bureau of Meteorology of the twentieth century”. He convinced governments of the day of the value of increasing resourcing of meteorology and during his time the staff of the Bureau doubled to nearly 2000. He played a key role in the Bureau, acquiring powerful computers in the late 1960s, to introducing operational numerical weather prediction into forecasting. Bill fought for the bilateral arrangement with Japan that provided Australian access to the invaluable Japanese geostationary satellite data. With Dr C.H.B. Priestley, Gibbs championed the establishment of the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station. He developed the use of deciles as drought indicators—an approach still used in climate monitoring operations here and overseas.

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Internationally, Bill played a key role in establishing the World Weather Watch, and of modernising the WMO, including the early entry of China into the Organization. He chaired the WMO Executive Committee Panel of Experts on Climate Change in the mid-1970s and guided the early WMO debate that led to the establishment of the World Climate Programme. He was instrumental in establishing Melbourne as one of the three World Meteorological Centres. Bill’s early experiences in meteorology were as an officer in the RAAF Meteorological Service, from 1940, where he provided daily weather briefings to Allied Headquarters for the tropics from southeast Asia to the dateline. During this period he founded and edited the Tropical Weather Research Bulletin, to encourage and publish research into tropical meteorology (and he was a frequent scientific contributor to the Bulletin). His interest in tropical weather meant that later, as Director, he worked continuously to upgrade the Australian tropical cyclone warning system. The Bulletin subsequently evolved into the Australian Meteorological Magazine and, now, into the Australian Meteorological & Oceanographic Journal.

Bill was a strong supporter of AMOS and of its predecessor, the Australian Branch of the Royal Meteorological Society.

His many achievements were honoured by the award of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1968, and the prestigious IMO (International Meteorological Organization) Prize in 1982. But even more so by the “respect and affection felt by those of the generation of Bureau officers whose own lives and careers benefited so greatly from the influence and legacy of his.”

In recognition of the way W.J. (Bill) Gibbs shaped and transformed operational meteorology through the Bureau of Meteorology in the 1960s and 1970s, this new award from AMOS recognises long and distinguished service to operational forecasting over many years. The award is aimed at those who have worked as operational forecasters in weather forecasting, oceanography or in any of the sciences represented by AMOS, and who have worked a significant part of their working life in operations in Australia. This award, which will be given every two years, will not focus on research achievements, or the development of operational aids through investigative work, which is recognised in the Christopher Taylor Award, but instead on outstanding and consistent service to operational forecasting over many years. This covers service provision, communication, improvements to services through engagement with working groups, and/ or excellent provision of forecasts with a demonstrable beneficial community impact during a number of major weather events. The award recognises a very high standard of work in operational forecasting over many years along with promotion and engagement with new methods and tools as they are introduced into operational meteorology, oceanography or any of the sciences represented by AMOS.

Evidence of work undertaken while not on operational duty will be taken into consideration. This Award will sit alongside the Christopher Taylor Award, and these two awards will be given in alternate years, with the first Gibbs medal being given in 2014, and the next Christopher Taylor Award being given in 2015. The Award will comprise a medal.

The AMOS Early Career Research Award Description This Award is to acknowledge Australian high-quality and innovative contributions by young researchers in the early stages of their academic career to the sciences covered by AMOS. The Awardee should have demonstrated success as part of a research higher degree (Ph.D. or Masters by research), as well as a record of high-quality research in the period after completing formal university training.

This Award would normally be given to scientists less than 30 years old, taking into account career interruptions. This age criterion is intended to preclude someone from being eligible who completed a Ph.D. later in life and who had a “flying start” through a long period of successful research in the atmospheric sciences and oceanography prior to completing the Ph.D. Such individuals are eligible for other AMOS awards. The age restriction is not intended however to preclude someone who has had a career change and completed a Ph.D. later in life without any prior experience in the atmospheric and oceanographic sciences. The Award will comprise a certificate and a cash component that will be adjusted in value from time to time.

Further information on the nomination process can be found online at

http://www.amos.org.au/awards

Undergraduate Summer Scholarships in Climate Science Scholarships are available to provide outstanding undergraduate students an introduction to cutting-edge climate science research at one of our five universities, or our national partners- CSIRO and the Department of the Environment.

Students should be in their second, third, or post-honours year and interested in pursuing a postgraduate degree in climate science.

Students will conduct supervised research for a six-week period during the summer break.

The scholarships are valued at $3,800 for the six-week research project.

For details of projects available during the 2014/15 summer, and instructions on how to apply, visit… https://www.climatescience.org.au/content/331undergraduate-summer-research-scholarships

For further information, contact Graduate Directormelissa.hart@unsw.edu.au

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News

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

National IAMAS Correspondent

Nominations for the IAMAS Early Career Scientist Medal The International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS) will award its second Early Career Scientist Medal at the 2015 International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics in Prague.

The IAMAS Early Career Scientist medal is for any suitable scientist working in any area of the atmospheric sciences. ‘Early career’ means a scientist who has earned their highest degree within the last 10 years or who was under 40 years of age when nominated. The medal is presented biennially at the IAMAS Assemblies with the recipient being invited to give a lecture at an appropriate session. Scientists will be nominated for the Medal by the IAMAS commissions, who will seek potential nominees from within their field. Each commission may nominate only one scientist ahead of an Assembly.

Nominations should be received by the IAMAS Bureau at least six months ahead of the Assembly where the Medal will be awarded (22 December 2014 for the Prague Assembly). The nomination should include a brief—less than two page—account of the achievements of the nominated scientist, details of their involvement with IAMAS, a list of their major publications and an assessment of their potential.

An Awards Committee established by the IAMAS Bureau and usually chaired by an IAMAS Vice President will decide the recipient. Membership of the committee will be drawn from the Bureau and Members at Large. The committee will work via email and tele-conference.

The recipient will receive an inscribed medal and a certificate signed by the President and Secretary-General of IAMAS. If no suitable candidates are nominated ahead of an Assembly the medal will not be awarded.

Nominations are open until 22 December 2014 to John Turner via email: jtu@bas.ac.uk. Please see: www.iamas. org/NewsLetters/ for the presentation at the 2013 Davos Atmospheric and Cryospheric Assembly.

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IAMAS workshop “The Dynamics of Atmosphere-Ice-Ocean-Interactions in High Latitudes” workshop will be held on 23–27 March 2015 in Rosendal Fjordhotel, Rosendal, Norway.

The rapid decline in Arctic summer sea ice has spurred a rash of experiments to better explain the potential effects of climate change in the Arctic.

Foremost among the effects of interest has been the polar amplification of climate change and its associated implications for high-latitude weather and climate.

Air-ice-sea energy exchanges are most intense near the ice edge and within the marginal ice zone where cold and very dry Arctic air masses reside and periodically spill out over the warm ocean. On weather forecast timescales, improving our understanding of the processes at work between the atmosphere, ocean and sea ice in the polar environment are key in furthering our abilities to predict and correctly represent these links in current and future forecast systems.

It is also this understanding that is crucial in helping us to improve our climate models. Predictability and dynamical processes represent the cornerstones of the World Weather Research Programme’s (WWRP) The Observing System Research and Predictability Experiment (THORPEX), together with the newly established WWRP Polar Prediction Project (PPP).

Members of the IAMAS commissions will lead the scientific organisation of the workshop on dynamical meteorology (ICDM), polar meteorology (ICPM) and the PPP. The workshop will feature a series of keynote lectures from leading research scientists working on many aspects of atmospheric dynamics and its interplay with the ocean and sea ice. Sessions will address principal dynamical understanding, observations and predictability from short-range weather prediction to climate modelling.

News from the Centres

Melbourne Centre News Shannon Mason

Regional Sub-Editor, Melbourne Centre

Pearman Lecture The 10th Pearman Lecture was held on Friday 13 June at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Aspendale.

WIN News meteorologist and weather presenter Jane Bunn gave a lively account of her career so far at the interface of forecasting and broadcast media.

Jane studied meteorology at Monash University and Pennsylvania State University before training as a forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology Training Centre in Melbourne. After several years as a forecaster in Sydney she transitioned into broadcast media, first with the Weather Channel and more recently as the WIN News weather presenter for rural Victoria. Jane demonstrated the key charts and data products she uses to form her nightly forecast and talked us through the production process, before ending with a chart discussion and the weekly weather report for Victoria: a wet start to the weekend with snow likely in the highest parts of the Victorian Alps.

Victoria, and—of course—her opinions on the upcoming ski season.

AMOS Melbourne Centre would like to thank Jane and all others involved for making the 10th Pearman Lecture a great success; special thanks to Kelly Merrin who supplied delicious home-cooked cakes and sweets for a very generous morning tea.

The annual Pearman Lecture is named in honour of Dr Graeme Pearman, Chief of Atmospheric Research at CSIRO from 1992 to 2002.

Being a weather presenter requires exceptional communication skills, and for an audience of scientists more accustomed to seminars and conferences, Jane’s engaging style and use of charts was very refreshing. The lecture served as a fine example of communicating not only weather forecasts but atmospheric science in general. We could learn a lot from passionate science communicators such as Jane.

A lively discussion followed, with Jane answering questions about the mix of numerical weather prediction models she uses to tailor her forecasts, her role as a trusted communicator of weather and climate science to rural

WIN News meteorologist and weather presenter Jane Bunn Image: Frank Drost

NSW Centre News Fiona Johnson Chair, NSW Centre

The NSW regional centre held our first ever members’ dinner on Thursday 24th July. It was a chance for members to catch up with each other in a relaxed environment, meet new people and enjoy a delicious Lebanese banquet.

We had attendees from the University of Newcastle, University of Wollongong, University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, Bureau of Meteorology and private industry—so we definitely sampled the geographic spread of the NSW centre and organisations. We hope to repeat this in future years.

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We are now finalising the schedule of presentations for the remainder of the year. Next up on Tuesday 23 September is a talk on QSurge: Product Development for Real-time Storm Tide Risk Assessment in Emergency Management, Queensland, Australia. Presented by Dr Joanna Burston, of Griffith University, the event is on from 5pm til 6.30pm at the Climate Change Research Centre, Level 4, Mathews Building, Kensington Campus, University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Tasmania Centre News

Andrew Marshall, Craig Macaulay, Andrew Klekociuk Hobart Centre

AMOS-AMSA Public Lecture: El Niño: history, impacts and prediction On the evening of 5 August 2014, the Hobart Centres of AMOS and the Australian Marine Sciences Association (AMSA) hosted a public event at the University of Tasmania’s Stanley Burbury Theatre examining the economic, agricultural, health and oceanic impacts of El Niño.

Titled El Niño: history, impacts and prediction, the event featured speaker Professor Neville Nicholls, followed by a panel Q&A discussion with the audience with climate scientist Dr Jaci Brown as Master of Ceremonies. For 35 years a climate scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology, a past National President of AMOS and more recently a researcher and lecturer at Monash University, El Niño has been at the centre of Professor Nicholls’ lifetime of work.

The presentation included an assessment of the history of El Niño discovery, its local and global impacts on weather and climate, prediction in global climate models, whether Australia will see an El Niño in 2014–15, and current understanding of how climate change may be affecting El Niño.

Professor Nicholls opened with the history of El Niño, a phenomenon that scientists have been studying for more than 130 years and most comprehensively since the strong event of 1982–83. Australian scientists were involved from the earliest days of its discovery, and are now very closely involved in its monitoring and prediction. El Niño’s warming and drying impact is mostly felt economically in the primary industries through drought. The consequences also flow to households through issues such as limiting town water supplies and increased risk of bushfire. Since the big dry of 1967 there has been substantial investment in on-farm and regional water storages, the latest being

Tasmania’s Midlands and South-East irrigation schemes.

The severity of its impact is difficult to predict; we’ve seen particularly strong El Niño events have very little impact, and other smaller events devastate parts of Australia. A large climate research focus now is how much variation in El Niño’s impacts will occur as the Earth’s temperature continues to rise.

The panel discussion that followed the presentation featured Professor Nicholls, retired oceanographer Dr Gary Meyers, marine ecologist Dr Alistair Hobday, Entura/ Hydro Tasmania Principal Consultant Dr Fiona Ling, and the head of the Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research Professor Holger Meinke. The Q&A session included discussion of impacts from El Niño, particularly with regards to local agriculture and aquaculture, and known and projected influences of climate change on El Niño.

In looking towards what the immediate future holds for the next El Niño event, it appears increasingly unlikely that a strong event will develop in 2014–15. There was robust engagement with the audience of around 140 people including researchers, teachers, academics, and those outside academia with broad interest in weather, climate and oceanography.

Generous support for the event was provided by the University of Tasmania, National Science Week, and the Australian Institute of Physics. Partner organisations also included Inspiring Australia, the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

The event was recorded live and is available for playback viewing at: new.livestream.com/UniversityofTasmania/

events/3216165

Congratulations to Professor Neville Nicholls, on being elected as a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Professor Nicholls will be recognised as a Fellow during a ceremony on Wednesday, 17 December, at the 2014 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco. Since the establishment of the AGU Fellows program in 1962, no more than 0.1 percent of the total membership is recognised annually—Ed.

Panel discussion in the Stanley Burbury Theatre (L-R): Prof Neville Nicholls, Dr Gary Meyers, Dr Fiona Ling, Prof Holger Meinke, Dr Alistair Hobday, and MC Dr Jaci Brown.

Image: Dr Andrew Klekociuk

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Conference report

ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science 3rd annual winter school—geophysical fluid dynamics 16-20 June 2014, Australian National University Melissa Hart

Graduate Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, The University of New South Wales As part of its graduate program, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (ARCCSS) runs annual climate science winter schools. This year’s third winter school was held in the Research School of Earth Sciences at ANU over the week of June 16–20. The theme was geophysical fluid dynamics (GFD), allowing us to take advantage of ANU’s world class GFD lab.

Our winter schools are a high-level education program for honors and graduate students working in the climate sciences. One of the advantages of the ARCCSS graduate program is that it reaches beyond a single university and aims to develop the intellectual capacity of Australian graduate students working in the climate science nationwide. Applications for the ARCCSS winter school were open to all climate science honours and graduate students regardless of ARCCSS affiliation. This year we welcomed 48 participants from our ARCCSS node universities (ANU, UNSW, Monash, UMelb, UTAS), Victoria University Wellington, RMIT, UQ, and our ARCCSS partner organisations the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology. We were also happy to welcome two students from the University of the South Pacific funded through the Pacific-Australia Climate Change Science and Adaptation Planning (PACCSAP) program.

The scientific program, developed by ARCCSS Chief Investigator Andy Hogg (ANU), consisted of GFD lectures delivered by ARCCSS researchers in the mornings and lab sessions in the ANU GFD lab in the afternoons.

Winter school lectures covered the fundamental fluid processes important in the atmosphere and ocean. In the

lab students were split into groups and performed one of five GFD experiments: turbulent plumes in a stratified fluid, gravity currents, heating/cooling of a salinity current from the side, rotating flows, or lee waves and turbulence.

Most of our students are modellers and spend their days working in front of a computer so these lab sessions provided a unique opportunity to actually observe fluid processes in a lab environment. Experiments were analysed and each group presented their results during a long, yet spirited, presentation session later in the week.

Tess Parker (Monash), Alice Barthel (UNSW), Rebecca Dunn (UTAS) and Alexander Van-Brunt (Victoria University of Wellington) were awarded the prize for best presentation for their rotating flows experiment; and Ryan Batehup (UNSW), Gang Wang (Monash), Isa Rosso (ANU), Mathew Lipson (UNSW) and Semi Qamese (University of South Pacific) won the prize for best photo/ video for their gravity current experiment.

Our Computational Modelling Support team rounded out the week by running advanced Python tutorials, and we paid a visit to Australia’s new super computer Raijin at our partner organisation National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), particularly exciting considering many of our students are Raijin users.

Given that the winter school ran during World Cup season, we also held our own “Winter School Cup” soccer match during a break in student presentations. Following the pattern of many of the recent world cup matches, ours was a high scoring game (9–2) with Bishakh Gayen (ANU) winning the Golden Boot for scoring three goals.

ARC Centre for Climate System Science 3rd annual winter school—geophysical fluid dynamics participants at ANU. Image: Swa Rath Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 64

Science Article

An investigation into a 53-year sub-alpine snow record Ben Hague1 and Blair Trewin2 1

School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne

2

Bureau of Meteorology Address for correspondence: b.hague@student.unimelb.edu.au

1. Background Snow is a relatively rare event at sub-alpine locations in mainland Australia, and there have hitherto been no longterm data sets of the occurrence or depth of snow cover outside the alpine regions. It recently became known to the Bureau of Meteorology that volunteer observers at Bukalong (790 m above sea level), approximately 10 km north of Bombala, NSW, 170 km south of Canberra, ACT, and 120 km north-east of Orbost, VIC, (Figure 1) kept a record of snow depth and the number of snow days per year spanning from 1949 to 2001 inclusive. Bukalong also has one of Australia’s longest rainfall data sets, with almost unbroken monthly data from 1858 to the present; however the snow observations ceased in 2001 when the old observer moved off the property, with the new observer only continuing rainfall measurements.

Figure 1: Map from openstreetmap.org showing Bukalong (green) and Spencers Creek (red).

The best available long-term (alpine) snow depth records in Australia have been taken by the Snowy Mountains HydroElectric Authority (now Snowy Hydro), commencing in 1954. The Spencers Creek (at 1830 m elevation, near Charlotte Pass, NSW, in the Snowy Mountains) data have been used in a number of studies, including those of Nicholls (2005) and Whetton et al. (1996), while Duus (1992) and Davis (2013) have both used observations of other meteorological elements to extend a derived record equivalent to the Spencers Creek snow record back to the early 20th or late 19th century. Fiddes et al. (2014) defined a snow data set for alpine regions of Victoria from the 1980s Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 65

onwards, noting the lack of snowfall data that exists in southern Australia.

Whilst the Bukalong and Spencers Creek data sets are measuring slightly different aspects of snow cover/snow depth and are not strictly comparable, they provide a useful point of comparison for alpine and non-alpine snow cover and how they changed in absolute and relative terms.

Notes on Bukalong and Spencers Creek data sets The maximum snow depth in each month at Bukalong over the period 1949 to 2001 was recorded by the observer (Figure 2), as well as the total number of times that it snowed in Bukalong each year (Figure 3). Unfortunately the total number of snow events in Bukalong was only provided by the observer on a yearly basis, as it would have been of interest to compare the changes in snow days between the different months of the year and the peak and shoulders of the snow season. The yearly snow totals have been derived by adding up all the monthly maxima. This should be a good approximation to the actual amount of snow that fell at Bukalong given that in most years, when it snowed, snow only fell once or twice a month and therefore it would be rare for snow to fall on top of an already existing cover from a previous event. This is typical of Bukalong’s sub-alpine climate but not of higheraltitude climate—something that becomes important when comparing this data to the data from Spencers Creek.

Overall, a decrease in both the amount of snow recorded on the ground at Bukalong and in the number of snow days has been observed over the period 1949–2001 (Figures 2 and 3). A decrease in snowfall occurred in the months termed here as “Unseasonal”: April to June and November to December. This decrease is especially apparent in June (Figure 4). However, an increasing trend was seen in the “Seasonal” months: July to October, mainly due to a large, positive outlier from an unusually large, record-breaking snow event in July 1987 (Trewin, 2013) which was welldocumented in local and Sydney-based press at the time.

The previous record snowfalls in June and July 1949 had been described as “the biggest in living memory, which would have traced back to about 1880’’ by the volunteer observer at the time in a letter to his insurance company after the 1987 event. These were falls of 38 cm and 50 cm

Figure 2: Seasonal snow depth index (sum of maximum snow depths recorded in each month of the year) for Bukalong, for “Seasonal” (July–October) months (green) and “Unseasonal” (April–June, November–December) months (brown), with linear trend lines.

Figure 3: Number of snow days per year at Bukalong, with 10-year running mean and trend line overlaid.

Figure 4: June maximum snow depths at Bukalong (blue, scale left) and Spencers Creek (red, scale right) for 1950–2001 (excluding 1949 outlier), expressed as a percentage of the June mean maximum depth at each site and trend line.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 66

respectively. For comparison, in the July 1987 event, the observer recorded 103.6 cm of snow. The 1987 event was due to a strong East Coast Low (Figure 5) that contributed to monthly precipitation which was in the highest decile in parts of far south-east New South Wales and east Gippsland (Bureau of Meteorology, 1987). A ranking system was employed whereby the lowest monthly total over the 53-year period was assigned a value of ‘1’ and the second-lowest a value of ‘2’ up to the highest monthly total, which was assigned a value of ‘53’. This ranking system was used to remove the strong effect that the outlier had on the averaging process; however, the main decreasing trend is still only really evident post-1988 (Figure 6).

As Spencers Creek snow depth has not been observed daily, as Bukalong was, the data was derived instead from oncea-week (or sometimes even less regular) measurements of snow depth, meaning it is not strictly comparable to the Bukalong data set. The number of falls between each observation was not noted; however, being an alpine site (about 1800 m above sea level) it can be expected that snow fell and partially melted before having fresh snow deposited on it, hence it would be difficult to ascertain the number of falls at Spencers Creek over a certain time period from this data set.

In one case, August 1956, there were no snow depths taken at all for the month. However, a conservative estimate of the maximum for August could be deduced to be 300 cm, using the 27 July depth (225.3 cm) and 5 September depth (315.2 cm) and rainfall records. This estimate has been included in the data so analyses can be done for the entire Spencers Creek data set available. The monthly peaks were added together to provide a consolidated seasonal index, as was done for the Bukalong data.

Snow depth decreased at Spencers Creek from 1954 to 2001, but more so in the marginal (Unseasonal) times of the year (April to June and November to December), than in the peak snow season (July to October), using the snow depth index derived from adding monthly maximum snow depths (Figure 7).

Comparison between Bukalong and Spencers Creek Snow depth has decreased overall at both sites (Figure 8) but more so at the fringes of the snow season, which for this study was defined as the “Unseasonal” months of April to June and November to December, with the largest decreases occurring in June (see Figure 4). This is consistent with findings of other studies by Hennessy et al. (2003) and Nicholls (2005). The decreases in these marginal months were greater (as a percentage of the long-term average) at Bukalong than at Spencers Creek.

In terms of yearly aggregate maximum snow depth, both in absolute (Figure 8) and with respect to the average at the site (Figure 9), the snow decreased less over the 1954– 2001 period at the lower altitude site, Bukalong. However, when expressed in percentage terms, the difference is modest (6.9% per decade at Bukalong, 7.7% at Spencers Creek). The exceptional event of July 1987 at Bukalong has a strong influence on the observed trend there. It seems the sub-alpine location of Bukalong has a large effect on snow depth (and snow falls) in the marginal parts of the snow season, but almost no effect on the peaks of the season, which have decreased in line with the trends observed at Spencers Creek, the higher altitude site.

The number of times that snow has been recorded each year has decreased at Bukalong, particularly since the mid-1980s (Figure 9). The Spencers Creek data set was not suitable to allow this statistic to be calculated as a comparison.

There is much greater variability in snowfall at Bukalong than at Spencers Creek, indicative of its sub-alpine location, including the large falls in both 1949 and 1987, with no snow recorded in 1976. However in the last fourteen years of the study period, from 1988 to 2001, both the average maximum snow depth and the variability of maximum snow depth has decreased markedly, particularly at Bukalong, where snow decreased by an average 8.28% per annum, or 82.8% per decade (Figure 9).

Figure 5: The synoptic situation on 20th July 1987, when the East Coast Low off the NSW far south coast produced over 100 cm of snow at Bukalong.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 67

Figure 6: Rank of seasonal snow totals (green; 1 lowest, 53 highest) at Bukalong, calculated as described in text, with moving averages for 5 years (orange) and 10 years (olive).

Figure 7: Seasonal snow depth index (sum of maximum snow depths recorded in each month of the year) for Spencers Creek, for ‘Seasonal’ (July–October) months (green) and ‘Unseasonal’ (April–June, November–December) months (brown), with linear trend lines.

Figure 8: Sum of all of the monthly maximum snow depths for both Bukalong (blue) and Spencers Creek (red).

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 68

A Mann-Whitney U-test was used to test the significance of the difference in the means between the pre-1988 period and the 1988–2001 period. Using the alternative hypothesis that the mean in the pre-1988 period is greater than in the 1988–2001 period, a p-value of 0.08641 was returned for the difference in aggregate maximum snow depth and a p-value of 0.007355 was returned for the difference in the number of snowfall events. This justifies using 1988 as a break period after the initial inspection of Figure 2.

The effect of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on snowfall at both sites was investigated. The results are summarised in Table 1. An El Niño event was defined using average Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) over the four month period June, July, August, September (JJAS), using the monthly average SOI for each of the months as provided by Bureau of Meteorology (2014a). A La Niña event was defined, as per Bureau of Meteorology (2014b), as a JJAS average SOI greater than 8, an El Niño event as a JJAS average SOI less than –8 and a Neutral event as a JJAS average SOI between –8 and 8. At Spencers Creek, there was a positive correlation between snow depth and SOI, (whereby more snow occurs in La Niña conditions and less in El Niño), which concurs with the results of

Fiddes et al. (2014), for extreme precipitation events in alpine Victoria.

By contrast, Bukalong experienced a negative correlation between SOI and maximum snow depth (whereby more snow occurs in El Niño events than in La Niña events), when the large snowfall events of 1987 and 1949 were included, but only a slight negative correlation when these years were excluded (see Table 1). A possible reason for this is the difference in altitude between the two sites and the conditions required for snow at the two sites being different. Determining the reason for this negative correlation between SOI and snow depth is beyond the scope of this paper. However, investigating whether there is a correlation between precipitation (which doesn’t necessarily fall as snow, but would be more likely to at higher altitudes) and SOI at Bukalong and other subalpine sites could be an interesting source of future research. The average number of snowfall events per year was uncorrelated with ENSO; more snowfall events occurred in Neutral years than in El Niño or La Niña years (see Table 1).

Figure 9: As for Figure 7, but only including data from 1988–2001 and expressing in terms of the 1988–2001 average.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 69

Table 1: Table of average snow depth and number of snow events per year under different phases of ENSO, as well as the number of different phases of ENSO within the 1949–2001 period that the Bukalong data covers (SOI data supplied by Bureau of Meteorology) (Bureau of Meteorology 2014a).

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Conclusion The 53-year snowfall dataset from Bukalong, NSW gives a new insight into sub-alpine snowfall and allows investigation into its relationship to alpine snowfalls from the nearby Snowy Mountains. Overall, snowfall has decreased at Bukalong since 1988 (the year following the record-breaking snow event of 20 July 1987), with no major discernible downward trends before that time, especially so in June. Even when accounting for the large snowfall event of 1987, by using a ranking system to remove the weighting effect of the record-breaking snowfall, the trend is only substantial after 1988. There is a statistically significant difference between the mean of the pre-1988 data and the 1988-2001 data. Whilst this 53year snow record is useful in extending knowledge of subalpine snow patterns, its use for climate change analysis is limited by it extending only until 2001; however, modelling the effect of global warming based on this data (and other data sets) could be an opportunity for future research. Whilst the comparisons between Bukalong and Spencers Creek are limited by the two data sets not being strictly comparable, similarities between the two sets enable the Bukalong data to be put in the context of wider snowfall patterns in New South Wales. The sub-alpine location has a different relationship to ENSO than that of the alpine location. Trends in marginal parts of the year were found to be larger at the sub-alpine site, indicating that snow depth (and probably number of events) at Bukalong are decreasing at a greater rate than in the Alpine regions, especially in the period between 1988 and when observations ceased in 2001.

References Bureau of Meteorology, 1987. Monthly Weather Review – New South Wales – July 1987.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 70

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Bureau of Meteorology, 2014a. Monthly Southern Oscillation Index, available at ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/ home/ncc/www/sco/soi/soiplaintext.html Bureau of Meteorology, 2014b. Climate Glossary, Southern Oscillation Index, available at http://www.bom.gov.au/

climate/glossary/soi.shtml

Davis, C.J. 2013. Towards the development of long-term winter records for the Snowy Mountains. Aust. Met. Oceanogr. J., 63, 303–313.

Duus, A.L. 1992. Estimation and analysis of snow cover in the Snowy Mountains between 1910 and 1991. Aust. Met. Mag., 40, 195–204.

Fiddes, S.L., Pezza, A.B. and Barras, V. 2014. Synoptic Climatology of extreme precipitation in Alpine Australia.

Int. J. of Clim., DOI: 10.1002/joc.3970, in press.

Hennessy, K., Whetton, P., Smith, I., Bathols, J., Hutchinson, M. and Sharples, J. 2003. The impacts of climate change on snow conditions in mainland Australia, CSIRO Atmospheric Research, Melbourne. Available at

http://www.cmar.csiro.au/e-print/open/hennessy_2003a. pdf.

Nicholls, N. 2005. Climate variability, climate change and the Australian snow season. Aust. Met. Mag., 54, 177–185.

Trewin, B. 2013. Charts from the Past – 20 July 1987. Bull.

Aust. Met. Oceanogr. Soc., 26, 53.

Whetton, P.H., Haylock, M.R. and Galloway, R. 1996.

Climate change and snow-cover duration in the Australian Alps. Climatic Change, 32, 447–479.

Snapshot

Blazing altocumulus 22 April 2014 Juliane Schwendike

This stunningly beautiful image was taken at 7:30 p.m. near the South Alligator River, Kakadu National Park, Arnhem Highway, Northern Territory. It shows the scattering of red light by the atmosphere and the underside of some altocumulus cloud in the middle of the image.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 71

Also notice the brighter cirrus cloud above the red altocumulus, which is still brightly lit by the setting sun due to its higher altitude.

If you have an image of the weather near you to share, please send it to melissa@amos.org.au, or post it on the AMOS Facebook page. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Ed

Charts from the Past with Blair Trewin

28 June 1990 One of the most persistent episodes of south-west flow over south-east Australia in the last 50 years occurred in late June and early July 1990. Blocking highs to the west of Western Australia and east of New Zealand, with a persistent trough near Tasmania, directed a deep, cold southwesterly airstream over eastern parts of Australia, without a break for almost two weeks. As an indicator of the persistence of the pressure pattern, mean sea level pressure anomalies reached +18 hPa southwest of Western Australia, and −18 hPa near southern Tasmania, for the fortnight of June 24th to July 7th.

Maximum temperatures were below average for most of this period over much of southeast Australia (although sites on the east coast benefitted from föhn effects), but there were three notable outbreaks of cold weather, on June 27th–28th, July 1st and 2nd, and July 5th–6th. Each of these periods produced snow to relatively low levels—the July 6th event caused light snow to settle in Canberra— but the event in June brought the most abnormally cold conditions and widespread snow.

The cold air first reached South Australia on the afternoon of June 26th. Snow was first reported on Mount Remarkable in the Flinders Ranges (960 m), then spread to lower levels the next morning, to about 500 m at locations including Yongala and Eudunda, as well as on Mount Lofty (730 m).

Clare had its record coldest June day on record on the 27th (6.7°C). There was also heavy rain in exposed areas, with 74.4 mm at Meadows on the 27th and more than 50 mm at several Adelaide Hills sites.

The 27th was also the coldest day for the event in Victoria and Tasmania, with snow falling to about 400 m in Victoria (including Ballarat and Macedon) and below 300 m in Tasmania. Northern and western Tasmania were especially cold. Burnie had its coldest day on record

(6.2°C), with Launceston Airport ranking third (4.5°C) and Strahan fourth (5.6°C), and in area-averaged terms it was Tasmania’s coldest June day on record. The cold conditions extended north to cover most of New South Wales on June 28th, as south-west flow intensified behind a front which was by now well offshore over the Tasman Sea. There were extensive snowfalls on New South Wales ranges, with falls down to 900 m as far north as Glen Innes, and 500 m further south, which disrupted traffic on numerous highways. Low maximum temperatures were a feature of this day too, with June records at Guyra (2.2°C) and Taralga (2.7°C), and Oberon failing to rise above 0°C. Canberra peaked at 6.1°C, which would go on to equal a 1943 record with 12 consecutive days below 10°C from June 22nd to July 3rd, while Orange set a record with 16 consecutive days below 8°C. Despite the cold spell, a warm finish to July meant that monthly temperatures were mostly close to normal.

Although daily precipitation totals were not huge by Alpine standards, the prolonged nature of the cold event meant that large snow accumulations occurred over the mountains. The snow depth at Spencers Creek (1830 m) increased from 27 cm on June 21st to 190 cm on July 5th, while lower down at Three Mile Dam (1450 m), the depth peaked at 99 cm, a value only reached in one year since.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, persistent high pressure resulted in a prolonged period of dry, frosty weather in western parts of Western Australia.

Murchison’s minimum of −6.5°C on July 1st was the thirdlowest on record for the state, while Merredin equalled its June record on the 27th (−2.9°C), and there was also a rare sub-zero minimum (−0.3°C) at Perth on the 30th.

Synoptic chart for 0000 UTC, 28 June 1990

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 72

The Research Corner with Damien Irving

Backing up your work I was reminded last week of an incident that occurred a couple of years ago, whereby one of the servers at my workplace crashed and subsequently died. As I didn’t personally use that server for any of my work, I first became aware of the crash via a generic organisation-wide email. My initial reaction to the news was fairly low key.

I figured there would be some short term inconvenience for users of the server as they re-downloaded and reprocessed their lost data files, with no harm done in the long run. I mean, everyone backs up their source code, right?

The reason I can be so obsessive-compulsive about my backups is that version control systems like git make it ridiculously quick and easy to back up your work. For example, to backup my work at the end of the day, I simply type three commands: “git add” and “git commit” to commit my changes to the repository, then “git push” to sync those changes with my externally hosted Bitbucket repository. If I arrived at work the next day to find that the local server had died, I’d simply type “git pull” to check out a copy of my code repository from Bitbucket. Problem solved.

Wrong. At morning tea, horror stories began to emerge.

Some users hadn’t backed up their code for months, while others didn’t have a single backup copy. As I sat there drinking my coffee, I was suddenly very thankful for the fact that my backup habits border on obsessivecompulsive. Programming is such a tedious and time consuming task that I can’t stand the thought of repeating even a single minute of it. I always backup at the end of the day, often backup prior to going for lunch, and sometimes even do a quick backup before taking a toilet break!

Many people offered the excuse that they had incorrectly assumed that the I.T. staff were conducting some kind of regular backup. Even if this were true (as it is in many workplaces), relying on the I.T. guys to do your backups is kind of like giving your passport to your parents for safekeeping. As a responsible adult (or research scientist) you should really take personal responsibility for looking after critically important documents (or code).

In addition to source code, it’s also good to have an externally backed up revision history of manuscripts that you’re working on (e.g. theses or journal papers).

There’s nothing worse than editing/deleting a paragraph in the editing process, only to realise a week later that you actually liked it better the way it was. Since version control systems like svn and git were originally designed to store code, they are primarily set up to handle text files. This is great news if you use LaTeX for your word processing, but what about if you wanted to track a Microsoft Word/ Excel/PowerPoint or OpenOffice document? It turns out that in some cases this can be done (just Google it to find out how), but it can be a massive pain to set up. At the moment it’s probably fair to say that the efficient handling of common binary file formats (e.g. .docx, .xlsx) is the next frontier for version control software and hosting services.

In the meantime, you’re probably stuck with Dropbox (see Section 2, ‘Other files’).

I suspect that one reason why people don’t regularly backup their work is that they aren’t aware of how easy it is to do these days. While everyone’s backup needs will be slightly different, here’s my take on backing up code, data and other general files.

All your other code-related files were probably either created from the source code that you’ve got under version control, downloaded from an external source, or didn’t take very long to create (excluding original data files, which are discussed in Section 3, ‘Data’). As such, you don’t really need a full revision history of these files.

In fact, strictly speaking it isn’t critical to back them up at all. However, it would be a pain to lose them, so keeping a simple backup of the latest version of these other files is useful.

Code I’ve written previously (BAMOS Vol. 26, No. 3, June 2013) about the fundamental importance of having all your code under version control. I won’t go into the details again here, but version control systems like svn or git basically allow you to keep a complete revision history of your code, so that you can retrieve any previous version at any time. In the context of avoiding disaster if and when your local server crashes, the most important thing is to have a copy of your svn or git code repository stored on an external hosting service. That service could be as simple as a USB drive that you keep on your key chain, or one of the many free online hosting services like Bitbucket and GitHub. Unlike your USB drive, these online services make it really easy to collaborate with others and share code, with additional features like wiki pages and issue/ bug tracking systems.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 73

Other files For backing up the latest version of other important files, you could simply copy them across to that USB drive on your key chain. Alternatively (or additionally), what many people do is use an online cloud storage service. These services are often set up to make tasks like sharing files between multiple people or syncing files across multiple personal devices (e.g. your laptop, desktop and tablet) really easy. There are many of these services out there, so it’s probably best to do an online search to find the one that best suits your needs. Dropbox is probably the most well known, but I personally use one called SpiderOak.

You can normally get a few Gigabytes of free storage upon signing up, and through random extra storage offers posted on Twitter and Facebook I’ve managed to get my free storage up to 9 GB. This is more than enough space for all my images, PDFs and Microsoft Word/Excel/ PowerPoint files, however it certainly isn’t enough to store a complete dataset or two…

Data In the atmospheric sciences, the starting point for any analysis is typically a collection of data files. If you’re running an atmospheric model, then these files might contain the sea surface temperature data required at the lower boundary of the model. If you’re studying the variability of the climate system, they might represent the output of a climate model or observations taken from a weather station. Whatever the case may be, these “starting point files” are ones which you haven’t yet manipulated at all. If these can be easily downloaded (e.g. reanalysis or CMIP5 data), then it’s probably not critical that you have a personal backup, since you can simply download another copy if your computer crashes. All you really need is a record of your previous downloads (i.e. which version of the dataset you downloaded and from where).

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 74

On the other hand, if you created your starting point files from scratch (e.g. you deployed an instrument that recorded hourly weather conditions and stored them in a CSV file), then a backup is absolutely critical. If the files are small, then you can probably use the same backup approach as for other general files (see above in Section 2).

Otherwise, you might need to speak to your I.T. support about getting some extra storage space on a disk that is backed up.

Any non-starting point data files can be re-created from your externally backed up source code, so technically you don’t need to back these up. However, if they took months to create (e.g. a high resolution coupled global climate model simulation), then you might want to treat them in the same way as starting point data.

If anyone has any other tips or tricks they use for backing up their work, feel free to post a comment on my blog!

A version of this article is available on my blog, which provides hyperlinks to more information on many of the topics covered: http://drclimate.wordpress.com/

Calendar

2014 September 22–26 13th Quadrennial ICACGP Symposium, Natal, Brazil.

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

July 15–17 AMOS National Conference, Brisbane.

November

October

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

5–9 11th International Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography, Santiago, Chile

12–14 3rd International Conference on ENSO, Guayaquil, Ecuador.

13–14 6th Leonardo Conference on the Hydrological Cycle: HYPER Droughts, Prague, Czech Republic.

19–21 Meteorological Society of New Zealand Annual Conference, Forecasts: From minutes to decades, Wellington, New Zealand.

November 19–21 Meteorological Society of New Zealand – Annual Conference. Forecasts: From minutes to decades, Wellington, NZ.

2016

December

February

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

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

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

March 23–27 IAMAS workshop, Rosendal, Norway.

May 3–7 Joint Assembly (AGU-GAC-MAC-CGU), Montreal, Canada.

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 75

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):

1. Introduction

2. Method

3. Results

4. Conclusions

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: •

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.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 27 page 76

•

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-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).

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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

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Sub-Committee Convenors Public Relations Awards 2015 Conference Education

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

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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.

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