Bulletin vol 26 no 1 feb 2013

AMOS

AustralianMeteorological & OceanographicSociety

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society Vol 26, No.1, February 2013 ISSN 1035-6576

Contents Editorial ............................................................................................................................................................................1 President’s Column ..........................................................................................................................................................1 News ................................................................................................................................................................................2 News from the Centres ....................................................................................................................................................3 Conference report ............................................................................................................................................................4 Articles .............................................................................................................................................................................6 Annual Australian Climate Statement 2012 ............................................................................................................................. 6

Meet a Member .............................................................................................................................................................11 Snapshot ........................................................................................................................................................................12 Charts from the Past with Blair Trewin: 21 December 1972.........................................................................................13 The Research Corner with Damien Irving......................................................................................................................14

ISSN 1035-6576 Cover picture: ‘Glaciation Rainbow’: The last thing you expect to see on a sunny day with no rain falling is a rainbow, but the angle of light and a precipitating orphan anvil yield this spectular display of colour. Image taken at Nurmurkah, Victoria, 27 November 2012 at 1:30 p.m..

Images: AMOS member John Allen.

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

A successful AMOS conference This issue of BAMOS comes after an extremely successful and interesting AMOS annual conference, which was held at the Melbourne Convention Centre. May I personally pass on my thanks to the local organising committee (Vaughan Barras (chair), Julie Arblaster, Mitchell Black, Jennifer Catto, Jeanette Dargaville, Frank Drost, Jason Evans, Muhummad Hassim, Damien Irving, Irina Rudeva and Nicholas Tyrell) for producing such a wonderful event.

The whole conference appeared to pass very smoothly and seemed to be over before it started, which is a credit to the interesting oral and poster presentations that were given (for which I would like to thank the scientific program organisers). Congratulations must also go to those who won awards at the conference. A full write up of the conference will follow in a later edition of BAMOS, which will list the winners of each of the awards.

The conference was a great opportunity for me in a BAMOS-related sense. I managed to speak to several people who have agreed to submit articles on their

interesting science. I also had discussions with forecasters / operational meteorologists and I hope to receive a few articles from them on some weather-related case studies.

Further to that, I had a discussion with a couple of people about the possibility of introducing a system where I can speak to operational meteorologists about any recent, notable weather phenomena and then publish their accounts in BAMOS. This is in a very early stage but it is something I intend to pursue. Finally, I discussed the possibility of including more oceanographic articles in BAMOS at the AMOS conference dinner and I will be following that up shortly. So my message is… watch this space for more interesting articles!

This issue of BAMOS will be my sixth as editor, which means I’ve now covered BAMOS for all editions in one year. I hope you have found the news, science and generalinterest articles enjoyable and I shall endeavor to bring you more of the same over the next six issues.

Duncan Ackerley

President’s Column

The summer and the AMOS conference In a previous column, I mentioned that summer was often the time when severe weather manifested itself most dramatically, and when those in the operational parts of our community were often severely stretched.

As I write, this is being demonstrated in spades: floods in Queensland, recent tropical cyclones on both sides of the country, bushfires in the southeast and a heatwave over much of the country. Whatever else can be said of Australian summers these days, no-one can accuse them of being boring.

One regular feature of Australian summers (most of the time) is the AMOS National Conference. It has been confirmed that this was our largest standalone conference ever with more than 380 registrations. Wanting to be in two places at once at various stages during the programme was the greatest challenge.

Planning for future conferences is also continuing. We now have Hobart more or less confirmed as the host for 2014. This will be the first time we have had a conference there since the early 2000s. A strong organising committee has been formed and we hope that, as well as hosting a successful conference, this will be a catalyst for revitalising AMOS as an organisation in Tasmania. We are also developing plans for 2015—watch this space!

Further afield, I took advantage of a recent visit to New Zealand to meet with most of the executive of the New Zealand Meteorological Society in Wellington. They are Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol.26 page 1

keen to have another joint conference with us at some stage (which would be AMOS’s turn to host), most likely in 2016 to avoid possible clashes with the AMS Southern Hemisphere conference.

Thanks to everyone who completed the AMOS survey, whose results are reported in detail elsewhere in this issue.

The response to this was pleasing, and the results will help us a lot in setting future priorities, as well as in areas such as planning future conferences.

In addition to the usual heavy load on AMOS at this time of year resulting from the run-up to the National Conference, we had an added task this year, preparing a submission to a Senate inquiry, which has been called on various aspects of extreme weather and climate events in Australia. We took the approach that science results would be covered (which they have been) in submissions by the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO and the ARC Centre of Excellence, and instead focussed on where the key knowledge gaps were and which ones had a reasonable prospect of being addressed. We gave evidence to the inquiry on 20 February. A copy of all the submissions (including ours) can be found at the Senate website.

Blair Trewin

News

Results from the AMOS survey Blair Trewin

President, AMOS As most of you will know, AMOS conducted an online survey of its membership a few weeks ago. This received 130 responses, close to a quarter of our membership.

Survey respondents identified “being an independent source of authority” for the profession as being the highest priority for AMOS, with 82% rating it as a very high or high priority. Other high priorities were “conferences and publications,” “science communication,” and “public advocacy for the sciences and profession”. Provision of professional development opportunities was regarded as less important.

The AMOS Bulletin, website and e-bulletin were all used by a large majority of members. However, only a small proportion of survey respondents (13%) said they read updates from the AMOS Facebook page, and only 3% followed AMOS on Twitter.

The Conference was popular, with 38% stating that they attended it most years or every year, and another 24% some years. The opportunity to network with other conference attendees was considered as important as presenting a paper or poster. Most respondents were not greatly concerned one way or the other about the Conference being at a different time of year, although a few (especially those in operational areas) felt that winter, away from the peak severe weather season, would suit them better.

Finally, the survey gave an interesting insight into the make-up of our membership; nearly half of the respondents said they were involved in climate in some form or another and 27% identified themselves as being in the oceanographic or marine sector.

CSIRO Media release Craig Macaulay

CSIRO, Science Journalist, Marine and Atmospheric Research.

Email: Craig.Macaulay@csiro.au

Greenland ice core records provide a vision of the future (24 January 2013) In a paper published in the journal Nature, scientists have used a 2540 metre long Greenland ice core to reach back to the Eemian period 115–130 thousand years ago and reconstruct the Greenland temperature and ice sheet extent back through the last interglacial. This period is likely to be comparable in several ways to climatic conditions in the future, especially the mean global surface temperature, but without anthropogenic or human influence on the atmospheric composition.

The Eemian period is referred to as the last interglacial, when warm temperatures continued for several thousand years due mainly to the earth’s orbit allowing more energy to be received from the sun. The world today is considered to be in an interglacial period that has lasted 11000 years (known as the Holocene).

“The ice is an archive of past climate and analysis of the core is giving us pointers to the future when the world is likely to be warmer”, says CSIRO’s Dr Mauro Rubino, the Australian scientist working with the North Greenland Eemian ice core research project.

Dr Rubino says the Greenland ice sheet is presently losing mass more quickly than the Antarctic ice sheet.

Of particular interest is the extent of the Greenland continental ice sheet at the time of the last interglacial and its contribution to global sea level.

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Deciphering the ice core archive proved especially difficult for ice layers formed during the last interglacial because, being close to bedrock, the pressure and friction due to ice movement impacted and re-arranged the ice layering. These deep layers were “re-assembled” in their original sequence using careful analysis, particularly of concentrations of trace gases that tie the dating to the more reliable Antarctic ice core records.

Using dating techniques and analysing the water stable isotopes (d18O-H2O), the scientists estimated the warmest Greenland surface temperatures during the interglacial period about 130000 years ago were 8±4 K warmer than the average of the last 1000 years.

At the same time, the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet decreased by 400±250 metres.

“The findings show a modest response of the Greenland ice sheet to the significant warming in the early Eemian and led to the deduction that Antarctica must have contributed significantly to the 6 metre higher Eemian sea levels”.

Additionally, ice core data at the drilling site reveal frequent melt of the ice sheet surface during the Eemian period. “During the exceptional heat over Greenland in July 2012 melt layers formed at the site. With additional warming, surface melt might become more common in the future,” the authors said.

The paper is the culmination of several years work by organisations across more than 14 nations.

Dr Rubino said the research results provide new benchmarks for climate and ice sheet scenarios used by scientists in projecting future climate influences.

For further information visit: http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/Greenland-ice-corerecords-provide-a-vision-of-the-future.aspx

Lisa Alexander receives Australian Academy of Science award Alvin Stone

Communications Officer, Centre of Excellence, Climate System Science, UNSW AMOS member, Dr Lisa Alexander has been honoured by the Australian Academy of Science with the 2013 Dorothy Hill Award for female researchers in the earth sciences aged 40 years or younger.

Dr Alexander is internationally recognised for her work on extreme climate events in Australia and around the world.

In particular, she has created high quality, global datasets of rainfall and temperature records, helping many countries to improve the collection of this vital information. She then analyses these records and uses the latest climate models to understand variations in the observations.

Her research shows that the number of heatwaves is likely to increase in Australia and around the world as the globe warms. However she emphasised that it was not possible to link a single event, such as the January heatwave in Australia, to climate change.

“But it is likely a sign of things to come. What we have thought of as normal in the past is going to be different in the future,” Dr Alexander said.

in warm nights in Australia (and globally) are related to increases in greenhouse gas emissions.

“In fact, we can’t explain the increase in hot nights if we only include the natural variations that we understand in the climate system,” Dr Alexander said.

Dr Alexander is a member of the World Meteorological Organisation’s Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices. In this capacity she has assisted scientists in developing countries to collate and analyse their own high quality rainfall and temperature records.

Her work contributed significantly to the conclusions of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group 1 on the physical basis of climate change, and she is a lead author on the next report, due in September 2013.

Last year, she received the Priestley Medal from AMOS, which recognises excellence in research by younger scientists.

In a recent world-first study, carried out with Dr Markus Donat of UNSW, she found that extremely hot temperatures around the world are 40 per cent more common now than 60 years ago.

“The observations showed a clear warming shift in temperatures and a marked increase in extreme hot weather events,” she said.

Her research shows that while natural climate variations play a significant role in modulating temperature and rainfall extremes, strong evidence exists that increases

Dr Lisa Alexander. Image: Kieron Low

News from the Centres

Brisbane Centre News Michael Hewson

Secretary, Brisbane Centre AMOS members were kindly invited by Senior Forecaster Peter Otto, to a seminar in the Brisbane office of the Bureau of Meteorology on 7 January 2013. Roger Smith PhD, Professor of Meteorology in the Meteorological Institute, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich,

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Germany lectured on an emerging theory concerning the genesis and intensification of tropical cyclones.

Discussing work completed in conjunction with Professor Michael Montgomery of the Department of Meteorology at the US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, Professor Smith outlined the concept that horizontal

wind shear from meso-scale gravity waves formed protected zones of vorticity in localised convection cells which, given sufficient atmospheric moisture, may be the foundation mechanism for tropical cyclones. Professor Smith outlined how these mechanisms form an arguably more unified theory of cyclogenesis than that accepted in the atmospheric science community currently.

The research that underpinned the seminar can be followed up in a number of journal articles by the researchers, among them, Smith and Montgomery (2012).

AMOS Brisbane Regional Centre thanks Peter for his initiative—a topical seminar in these parts.

Smith, R.K., and M.T., Montgomery, 2012, Observations of the convective environment in developing and nondeveloping tropical disturbances, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 38 (668), 1721–1739.

Prof. Smith (L) and Peter Otto (R) post seminar. Image: Michael Hewson.

ACT Centre News Clem Davis

President, ACT Centre The ACT branch held its AGM/student presentation night on 6 December where three honours / PhD students gave their presentations. Rebecca Kaye (ANU’s Research School of Earth Sciences) gave the winning presentation ($150 prize). The AMOS ACT student prize was also announced with Patrick Collins from ADFA winning $250.

The ACT 2013 committee was also elected as the following: Clem Davis (President) Dr Jason Sharples (Secretary / Treasurer) Nick Engerer (Website Manager) Dr Robin Robertson Dr Margi Bohm Bob Cechet

Prof. Patrick DeDeckker The plans for ACT Centre in 2013 are: 1.

Setting up a committee to investigate the selection process for student prizes, focusing on how we account for differing assessment processes.

2.

Meetings: The dates for our normal meetings for the year will be 28 March, 9 May, 18 July and 26 September. The venue will be the CSIRO Discovery Centre. We will also hold two half-day seminars on 18 August during National Science Week at the CSIRO Discovery Centre. The topics for the 2013 seminars are likely to be: “The Canberra Fires 10 years after: What have we learnt?” and “Corals: Past, present and future”.

Conference report

2012 AGU Fall Meeting 3–7 December 2012, San Francisco, USA Karsten Peters

ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria This year’s (at the point of writing) AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco took place from 3–7 December in the city’s massive Moscone Center and is regarded one of the most anticipated scientific meetings of the year. The sheer size of the meeting (more than 20,000 scientists from all over the globe and all disciplines related to Earth Science), combined with the rare opportunity of catching up with numerous colleagues from other institutions, offer great networking opportunities.

Speaking of meeting up with peers, the conference’s organising committee did a good job in keeping all Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol.26 page 4

sessions related to a specific field in a designated area of the conference centre throughout the week. The excellent organisation made orientation straightforward and easy for the delegates. However, due to the range of sessions available—let alone the atmospheric sciences having 108 allotted oral blocks—a clash of time slots occurred regularly, which made the conference experience either selective or stressful.

From a science point of view, there was, of course, far too much information on offer to put into this short report. However, as grand conferences such as this one

offer lectures given by distinguished scientists of the field, short summaries of those given in the atmospheric science division are presented here, namely the Bjerknes and Charney Lectures.

The Bjerknes Lecture, titled “Tropical Convection: A Half Century Quest for Understanding”, was given by Robert Houze (University of Washington, Seattle, USA).

He built his presentation around the three grand field campaigns aimed at understanding tropical convection over the ocean, namely GATE (1974, Atlantic Ocean), TOGA-COARE (1992–1993, western Pacific Ocean) and DYNAMO (2012–2013, central Indian Ocean). He highlighted the unprecedented degree of international collaboration necessary for the successful completion of such large field campaigns, especially for GATE in the middle of the Cold War. Also, the ever-increasing technical capabilities of meteorological instruments, especially radars, used for probing convective features and their environment, contributed to the success of the two later campaigns. Nevertheless, although these field campaigns have contributed important knowledge to the understanding of tropical convection, such as revealing the importance of mesoscale convective systems and the “trimodality” of tropical convection, important questions still remain unsolved and warrant intense scientific efforts in the future.

Drew T. Shindell (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and University of Columbia, New York, USA) presented the Charney Lecture, titled “Mitigating Near-Term Climate Change While Advancing Human Development”. He presented results from a recent large collaborative effort which delved into the feasibility of globally reducing the emissions of short-lived climate warming agents, such as methane or black carbon (BC), by using large-scale deployment of readily available and tested technical measures. These measures could include re-usage of waste gases, reducing cattle emissions, particle filters for diesel engines or the introduction of more efficient coal stoves in developing nations. The main messages here were that i) it does not matter when measures are taken because the resulting achievable global short-term cooling is mostly independent of starting time and ii), the resulting positive effects on human health, especially those from mitigating BC emissions, can substantially outweigh the initial investment costs.

Overall, the 2012 AGU Fall Meeting again proved to be an attractive occasion for catching up with the scientific community, especially when one’s workplace is located in the Southern Hemisphere. However, I would not recommend allowing your own personal itinerary to become too full as San Francisco also has some splendid sightseeing to offer.

!"#$%&'()*#'+*'(,#+&'-()*.//" June 17-21, 2013. The University of NSW, Sydney

Modelling the Climate System

ARC CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR CLIMATE SYSTEM SCIENCE

2 nd ANNUAL WINTER SCHOOL A high-level education program for honours and graduate students interested in climate science.

Students should have a background in a suitable quantitative discipline such maths, physics, or computational science.

Topics covered include: x! Fundamentals of atmosphere, ocean and terrestrial modelling. x! Model evaluation, including modes of variability and extremes. x! Land/atmosphere/ocean coupling. x! Experimental design, detection and attribution and model performance. x! Application examples from current Centre of Excellence research.

Participants will also receive advice and instruction on a range of research and career skills including: x! The peer review process. x! Research integrity. x! Applying for research funding. x! Career prospects post PhD and postdoc. x! Communicating your science through the media.

The school is open to anyone and funding is available to support attendance. Priority will be given to honours and graduate students working on climate science problems. The number of places is strictly limited.

Application:

1-page CV and a half page statement on why you wish to attend.

Forward to: coecss@unsw.edu.au by March 15th 2013.

Information: Email Graduate Director, Dr Melissa Hart: melissa.hart@unsw.edu.au Phone: 02 9385 9393.

Supported by:

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol.26 page 5

Articles

Annual Australian Climate Statement 2012 National Climate Centre, Bureau of Meteorology 1. Overview The first half of 2012 was cooler and wetter than average, and the second half was warmer and drier than average.

The change from wet to dry conditions was consistent with changing sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans, which are primary drivers of rainfall variability across much of Australia.

The Australian mean rainfall total for 2012 was 476 mm (11 mm above the long-term average of 465 mm); with the year ranked near the median of historical observations (Figure 1). This contrasts with 2011’s high annual total of 699 mm.

The Australian area-averaged mean temperature for 2012 was 0.11°C above the 1961–1990 average of 21.81°C. Australia has experienced just one below-average year in the last decade (2011). Cooler-than-average conditions were recorded in northern Australia and parts of the east while Tasmania, the mainland’s southern coast, and the southwestern half of Western Australia experienced above-average temperatures (Figure 2).

In 2012, maximum temperatures were 0.51°C above average, and minimum temperatures 0.28°C below average. While both 2011 and 2012 were cooler than recent years, the last decade (2003–2012) has been one of Australia’s warmest on record; with an anomaly of +0.44°C, the fifth-warmest 10-year period on record.

2. From La Niña to near El Niño Conditions at the start of 2012 were consistent with the presence of a moderately strong La Niña event in the tropical Pacific, which typically brings wetter and cooler conditions to eastern Australia. The tropical Pacific returned to neutral conditions by mid-autumn 2012, followed by the emergence of El Niño-like conditions during winter and spring. El Niño events are typically associated with drier-than-average conditions across the mainland.

Figure 1: 2012 annual rainfall compared to historical rainfall records.

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The first three months of the year saw above-average rainfall for most of the country, especially across the eastern mainland (Figure 3). March was the third-wettest on record for Australia, a result dominated by rainfall in the eastern States (Figure 4). New South Wales recorded its second-highest March total (the highest occurred in 1956), Victoria the third-highest (highest since 1950), and Queensland the fifth-highest.

From April onwards, rainfall was generally below average for most of the southern mainland while parts of the north continued to record above-average rainfall (Figure 5).

El Niño and La Niña events are determined by, amongst other indicators, the strength of sea surface temperature anomalies in the tropical Pacific Ocean, with La Niña events associated with cooler-than-average temperatures and El Niño warmer-than-average temperatures. The transition from cool, La Niña conditions to warmer ocean temperatures occurred during winter and persisted until September of 2012. Although Pacific climate indicators remained near, or just in excess of the values generally associated with an El Niño event, these values were not maintained for a sufficiently long period for 2012 to be considered an El Niño year. The Pacific returned to neutral (neither El Niño nor La Niña) by mid-spring, and remained so to year’s end.

Australian rainfall is also strongly influenced by sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean. A positive Indian Ocean Dipole event, associated with cooler waters off the northwest coast of Australia and typically drier conditions across parts of the continent, emerged in early August and continued into October. This likely contributed to drierthan-average conditions across the southern mainland.

The year also saw unusually persistent high atmospheric pressure near southern Australia. This was associated with greatly suppressed westerly frontal and storm activity in southwest Australia, and indeed southern Australia as

Figure 2: 2012 annual mean temperatures compared to historical temperature records

Figure 3: Australian monthly rainfall totals (blue bars), compared to the historical average (black line). a whole, and was reflected in very poor winter–spring April–December total nationally was 25% below average, rainfall in many southern areas. the twentieth-lowest on record.

3. Near-average annual rainfall follows two very wet years Australia’s rainfall for 2012 ranks near the middle of historical observations with an annual total 11 mm above average, making 2012 the fortieth-wettest year in 113 years of record (Figure 6). All States and Territories, except South Australia, recorded near-average annual rainfall within 10% of the long-term average; South Australia recorded the largest departure at 23% below average. This follows on from exceptional rainfall in 2010 and very-much-above-average rainfall across most of Australia in 2011. The two calendar years 2010 and 2011 were the wettest two-year period on record for Australia, while the 24 months from April 2010 to March 2012 were the wettest 24-month period on record.

The La Niña event at the start of the year continued to bring very heavy rainfall over much of mainland Australia. January–March rainfall was well above average in most regions, with only the eastern Top End and some seasonally dry parts of the far south of Western Australia recording significantly below-average falls. Nationally, it was the seventh-wettest January–March quarter on record (32% above average).

From April onwards, rainfall was generally below to very much below average across the southern half of the mainland. Nationally, totals were below average in eight of the nine months (June being the only exception). The

Figure 4: 2012 January to March rainfall compared to historical rainfall records.

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Western Australia (which had its third-driest April to October growing season on record) and northern South Australia were especially dry, with rainfall mostly in the lowest 10% of historical records, and record-low totals over wide (although mostly sparsely populated) areas for April–October. Oodnadatta, in northern South Australia, recorded only 8.8 mm of rainfall for the 9 months April– December. No rain fell at Alice Springs Airport in the 157 days from 25 April to 28 September, the longest rainless period in the site’s 71-year history. The only substantial area where rainfall was significantly above average was northern inland Queensland.

For southwest Western Australia, July rainfall was the lowest on record. Other notable monthly rainfall totals include lowest-on-record October rainfall for southern Australia (the region south of 26°S) and the eleventhwettest November, and eighth-wettest December, on record for southwest Western Australia (the region southwest of a line from Jurien Bay to Bremer Bay). The year reinforced the recent pattern of below-average cool season (April to October) rainfall across much of southern Australia.

4. Warm days, cool nights, warm overall The annual mean temperature for 2012 returned to above average values, after being cooler than average for 2011 (Figure 7). Mean temperatures were 0.11°C above average for the year as a whole. Cooler-than-average conditions predominated in northern and eastern Australia while

Figure 5: 2012 April to December rainfall compared to historical rainfall records.

Figure 6: Annual and decadal mean rainfall (mm) for Australia since 1900. The average for the past 10 years is shown in darker grey.

Tasmania, the mainland’s southern coast, and the southwestern half of Western Australia experienced above-average temperatures.

For the year as a whole, maximum temperatures were 0.51°C above average. All States and Territories recorded a positive anomaly for their area-averaged value. Some areas of coastal Western Australia observed highest-onrecord annual maxima. Below-average maxima were recorded in Queensland between the Gulf coast and Rockhampton and a pocket of inland Western Australia and the Northern Territory (Figure 8).

Widespread cloud cover and rainfall typically brought by a La Niña event, is associated with cooler daytime temperatures for Australia, and this was observed with a cool start to 2012. Maximum temperatures were below average in the north and east of the country between January and March, and over northern Australia until July. However, even during these months, maxima along the western coast of Western Australia were significantly above average; an effect associated with the unusual warmth of the ocean waters surrounding this region (see the “Sea surface temperatures in the Australian region” section below).

Daytime maximum temperatures became warmer from August onwards. In the August–December period they were 1.58°C above average nationally (the second-highest on record), whilst for Western Australia they were 1.62°C above average, just 0.16°C below the record high set

in 2006. Individual months saw record-high maxima recorded in the Kimberley and Pilbara for August, in northeastern South Australia for November, and parts of the far northern coast for December.

For the year as a whole, minimum temperatures were 0.28°C below average. Minima were below average across much of northern and central Australia as well as New South Wales west of the Great Divide (Figure 9). A large part of this area recorded minima in the lowest decile.

Minimum temperatures were the eleventh-coolest on record for the Northern Territory (0.80°C below average).

A combination of abnormal southerly flow across eastern Australia, surface soil moisture from the very heavy rainfall between 2010 and summer 2011–12, and belowaverage cloudiness during winter and spring contributed to the cooler-than-average minimum temperatures. In contrast, Tasmania’s minimum temperatures (0.43°C above average) were the tenth-warmest on record. Aboveaverage minimum temperatures were restricted to the coastal fringes of western and southern Western Australia, Victoria and southeastern South Australia, the tip of the Cape York Peninsula, and Tasmania.

The dry season in northern Australia was notably cooler than average, with minimum temperatures in the Northern Territory 2.03°C below average for the May–August period, ranking second behind 1976. This was mostly the result of persistently cool nights rather than individual extreme events. One significant record

Figure 7: Annual and decadal mean temperature anomalies for Australia (compared with 1961–1990 average). The average for the past 10 years is shown in darker grey.

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Figure 8: 2012 annual mean maximum temperatures compared to historical temperature records. occurred at Darwin, which had its coldest August night with 13.1°C on 13 August. Winter ranked as the thirdcoolest on record nationally for minimum temperatures (0.91°C below average), and coolest for the Northern Territory, while autumn (0.93°C below average) was the fourth-coolest nationally. Western Australia generally experienced above- to very-much-above average minima from August onwards, while November and December minima were particularly warm for nearly all of Australia.

The large contrast between warm maxima and cool minima resulted in the mean diurnal temperature range being the third-highest on record. The more extreme years of 1994 and 2002 also saw severe drought over most of Australia.

5. Significant events Flooding affected many parts of eastern Australia as the 2011–12 La Niña event continued into early 2012.

Persistent heavy rain in late January across the north coast of New South Wales and southeast Queensland was followed in early February by rain in inland northern New South Wales and southern inland Queensland. Locations in the Condamine–Balonne system reached record flood peaks, while at Moree, the Mehi River reached its highest level since 1976, and at Charleville, the Warrego River reached its highest level since 1990, although major urban inundation was averted in both centres. Flooding continued on the Darling River system over several months as floodwaters travelled downstream.

One of the most extreme multi-day rainfall events in southeast Australia’s history occurred between 27 February and 4 March, as widespread unstable conditions brought successive daily rainfall totals between 50 and 100 mm over a broad area of northern Victoria, southern New South Wales, and eastern South Australia. For the Murray–Darling basin as a whole, this event was the wettest 7-day period on record for any month since at least 1900, with catchment averages for the Upper Murray (294.4 mm), Murrumbidgee (202.6 mm) and Lachlan (180.1 mm) all nearly double their previous record-high for any 7-day period. There were extensive evacuations in towns including Wagga Wagga, Hay, and Forbes and extensive overland flooding in the Riverina and central and northern Victoria. Flooding also affected rivers in central and southern coastal New South Wales, the Australian Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol.26 page 9

Figure 9: 2012 annual mean minimum temperatures compared to historical temperature records.

Capital Territory, northeast Victoria, and central Australia while flash flooding affected far western New South Wales and eastern South Australia.

In the second half of March, a tropical low struck Darwin, the eastern Top End, and western Kimberley before bringing heavy rain to northern Queensland and flooding on the central and north Queensland coast. Another low brought heavy rain and flash flooding to southeast Queensland on 23 March.

An East Coast Low caused major flooding in eastern Victoria from 3–5 June. The Yallourn open-cut coal mine at Morwell was flooded, and many roads were closed.

Flooding also affected the Otway Ranges west of Geelong, where many locations received more than twice their average monthly rainfall in a day, while high winds were felt across southern Victoria and on the New South Wales coast. Less severe floods also affected eastern Victoria in late May and late June.

A deep low pressure system crossed southwest Western Australia during 7–13 June bringing heavy rain and significant storm and tornado damage to the region.

Damage to the electricity network over the week was the worst in Western Australia’s history, with power lost to more than 170000 homes. Significant storm surges were recorded during the event, with the largest on the 10th, reaching approximately 0.8 m around Perth and 1.0 m in Fremantle setting a new record for high sea level.

There were eight tropical cyclones in the Australian region during the 2011–12 season, below the long-term average of eleven. Five occurred between January and March. The strongest, Lua, reached category 4 intensity and made landfall at that intensity on 17 March near Pardoo, east of Port Hedland. Lua produced heavy rain across the Kimberley and Pilbara, penetrating far inland across the interior of Western Australia as it decayed. Lua was the only cyclone to reach this intensity over the Australian region, although Jasmine, in early February, reached category 4 and brought flooding to a number of Pacific islands after moving eastwards out of the Australian region. The other significant landfall of the season was Heidi, a category 2 system which made landfall near Port Hedland on 12 January, causing relatively minor damage and power outages.

Numerous winter and spring heat records were set in various parts of Australia as maximum temperatures tracked well above average from August onwards.

Alice Springs equalled its record high temperatures for both September (38.8°C, 22 September) and October (41.7°C, 24 October). September records were also set at Woomera (38.6°C, 27 September) and Mount Isa (39.8°C, 23 September), while Evans Head reached 41.6°C on 20 October, the highest October temperature on record for any coastal New South Wales site. Birdsville had its earliest spring 40-degree day when it reached 40.6 °C on 20 September, while other notable early-season records included Perth (34.3°C, 1 October) and Ceduna (44.0°C, 4 November).

equal-fourth-warmest 10-year period since 1910 for SSTs in the Australian region, 0.01°C below the record 10-year value held jointly by 2001–2010, 1998–2007, and 1996– 2005.

One of the most significant spring heatwaves on record affected much of eastern Australia at the end of November.

A large, hot air mass in central Australia was drawn southeastwards bringing widespread maxima in the low to mid-40s throughout northern and eastern South Australia, adjacent parts of Queensland, inland New South Wales, and northern Victoria. Temperatures peaked on 29 November, with Ouyen in Victoria’s Mallee reaching 45.8 °C, a new Victorian record high for spring. The old record of 44.5°C, set 17 November 1980 at Mildura, was also broken by Mildura (45.5°C), Hopetoun (45.0°C), Swan Hill (44.8°C), and Walpeup (44.7°C). In New South Wales the highest temperature was 46.2°C at Pooncarie (that State’s fourth-highest November maximum, and highest November temperature outside of November 2009), while in South Australia Oodnadatta broke that State’s record for warmest overnight November temperature with a minimum of 32.3°C (the previous record was 32.2°C, also at Oodnadatta, on 30 November 2006).

Preliminary data released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on 28 November estimated the global mean temperature for 2012 (January–September) to be 0.43 ±0.11°C above the 1961–1990 annual average of 14.0°C. Based on these preliminary figures, 2012 ranks as the ninth-highest on record1. No year since 1985 has recorded a below-average global mean temperature, and the years between 1997 and the present have been the 14 warmest on record. The 10-year global average for 2003–2012 was 0.45 °C above average, making it the thirdwarmest 10-year period since 1880.

6. Sea surface temperatures in the Australian region Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Australian region were not as high as those seen in the record breaking year of 2010, and slightly cooler than 2011, but continued the long run of above-average temperatures (Figure 10). No year since 1995 has recorded below-average SSTs. Based on preliminary data to November, 2012 ranked as the equal-sixth-warmest year since 1910, at 0.36 °C above average. SSTs in the Australian region were in the top 12 observations for 10 out of 11 months. The most recent ten years (2003–2012) had a 10-year anomaly of +0.33°C, which was tied with 2002–2011 and 1997–2006 as the

SSTs were consistently above average in the southern Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia throughout the year, a pattern which has persisted for the past three years.

For the southwest region (the area of ocean west of the coast between Learmonth and Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia) winter seasonal SST anomalies were the highest on record, while summer (2011–12), autumn, and spring were the second highest.

7. Globally, 2012 the ninth-warmest year on record

8. Accessing Australia’s climate change datasets The Bureau of Meteorology is responsible for collecting, managing and safeguarding Australia’s climate archive.

Several homogenised datasets have been developed from this archive to identify, monitor and attribute changes in the Australian climate. Extensive analyses have been undertaken on these data to ensure they have not been unduly affected by changes in site location, urbanisation, exposure or instrumentation over time.

This year’s statement has been prepared using the updated homogenised Australian temperature dataset, ACORN-SAT. ACORN-SAT data can be accessed at: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/.

High-quality rainfall data (from the same dataset as previous years) can be accessed at: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/datasets/datasets. shtml.

1

The final anomaly was +0.45oC, still ranking 9th.

Figure 10: Annual and decadal mean sea surface temperature anomalies in the Australian region (compared with 1961–1990 average). The average for the past 10 years is shown in darker grey.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol.26 page 10

Meet a Member

Kevin Walsh Where does this find you?

Sitting at my desk in my office at The University of Melbourne, drinking some of that famous Carlton coffee.

What do you do?

I am currently an Associate Professor in the School of Earth Sciences here. Sometimes I’m also called a Reader, which is a research title. My job involves a combination of teaching, administration and research. I like to tell people that teaching is the most important thing that we do here but it is not what we spend most of our time doing, as The University of Melbourne is a research university.

The teaching part of the job includes undergraduate and graduate subjects such as synoptic and tropical meteorology, as well as coordination of a University-wide subject on the impacts of climate change. We also have a full graduate program, and part of my job is to help PhD students with their projects, giving them general guidance on research directions and assisting them with their publications. Administration roles include helping to run our Masters program, a two-year course that combines advanced coursework with a major research project (sorry about the plug). My research includes numerical simulation and data analysis of climate, especially tropical climate. Currently, I’m also doing a spell as an editor of Journal of Climate.

Why did you get into it?

Tenured jobs in this field at universities in Australia are advertised infrequently and are difficult to obtain. I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to do some teaching on a casual basis here, and then to be successful in my application for a full-time job. As to why I got into meteorology, like most of our readers I was always interested in the weather, and then I found out later that I could combine it with my interest in physics and mathematics.

What is the best thing about what you do?

I think what I like most about this job is the feeling of independence, of not being directed to work in a particular area. Also, it’s fun to meet former students years later and to hear about their adventures in Australia and overseas, and to see them starting to make a real impact on our field.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol.26 page 11

Kevin Walsh. Image: Eun-Pa Lim. What did you want to be when you were 10?

A scientist. My nickname was “the professor”. Blame Gilligan’s Island.

How do you relax?

Relaxation time is a little limited these days, but usually I either read a book or go to the movies. Lately I’ve also become interested in learning other languages.

What is your favourite holiday destination?

At present, Greece, despite all of its troubles, which will one day be just a bad memory, I’m sure. The combination of nice weather, good food, amazing ancient monuments and beautiful scenery is unbeatable.

Snapshot

Storm in the Outback 9 April 2012 Claudia Frauen

This fantastic photograph was taken near to Kings Canyon, Northern Territory and shows a large storm crossing the desert, approximately due west of the photographer.

The storm was producing very heavy rainfall, which was reaching the surface and can be seen to the right of the image. Also notice the outflow anvil from the storm

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol.26 page 12

stretching over the photographer’s head despite the storm being some distance away.

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

21 December 1972 The summer of 1972–1973 was an exceptional one in Australia. Coming at the end of a strong El Niño event and associated severe drought across much of the country, extreme heat was a regular feature of the summer.

December, and the December-January period, were both the warmest on record for Australia by a considerable margin, before the drought broke with heavy rains in early February, preventing it from being the hottest summer of the last 100 years (it was a record at the time but was surpassed by 1997-98).

The peak of the unusual summer heat was a heatwave, which affected large parts of the country from the week before Christmas. Although temperatures had been above average across most of the country since early December, it was on the 19th that intense heat began to make an appearance, initially in Western Australia before spreading east from the 20th onwards. The 20th was the hottest day along the southern coast, which cooled from the 21st as winds turned onshore, but it remained extremely hot inland. The area of hottest air moved gradually northeastwards to cover inland southern Queensland, northeast South Australia and north-west New South Wales on the 24th (by which time a cold front had cooled the southeast dramatically, with snow falling to 700 metres in Tasmania). The high temperatures remained across inland areas until the 26th before a more general cooling, although temperatures remained above average in central Australia until the New Year.

The extent of the extreme heat was exceptional. On the 21st, temperatures above 42°C occurred across nearly half the country, extending from the Pilbara through the interior of Western Australia, across most of South Australia north of Adelaide, and into the western half of

New South Wales and north-west Victoria. Almost the entire mainland reached 30°C, the few exceptions being the south-west corner of WA, Victoria’s south-west coast, the Alpine peaks and a few high-elevation parts of New England and north Queensland. The extensive nature of the extreme heat contributed to a national average maximum temperature for the day of 40.17°C, the highest on record until broken in 2013.

The most extreme heat on the 21st was in northern South Australia, where Marree reached 48.8°C and Moomba 48.6°C. 46°C was also topped in WA at Marble Bar and Goldsworthy, and in NSW at Wilcannia. Each of the next three days saw a state record for December; Marree lifted the SA mark with 49.0°C before Moomba broke it with 49.1°C the next day, then on the 24th Birdsville reached 49.5°C, the highest temperature of the event, a Queensland record for any month and a national record for December.

In general, however, site records were rather few and far between, with the event more notable for its spatial extent and duration. Alice Springs, which peaked at 44.2°C on the 23rd, had eight successive days over 40°C, and 17 over 39°C, a run which was not broken until early January.

Impacts of the event were surprisingly modest, perhaps because it did not break out to the coast in quite the same way as occurred during the 2013 heatwave. None of the state capitals reached 40°C, with Melbourne peaking at 39.9°C on the 20th and Sydney matching that number on the 23rd. Nor did the event have any significant effect on Tasmania. There were long-lived bushfires in areas such as the Australian Alps and the far South Coast of New South Wales, which persisted well into January but did not cause major property damage or any casualties.

Synoptic chart for 0000 UTC (1100 AEDT), 21 December 1972

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol.26 page 13

The Research Corner with Damien Irving

RunMyCode.org—the answer to open computing?

Welcome to the Research Corner! For this new regular segment, I’ll be sharing a recent post from my blog (Dr Climate1), which was introduced in the previous issue of BAMOS (Irving 2012). If you have any comments, please stop by the blog and share your thoughts—Damien.

In theory, a journal paper should include enough detail for the reader to be able to reproduce the paper’s central finding. However, for the weather and climate sciences, which are essentially a branch of computational science these days, reproducibility is severely hampered if the reader doesn’t have access to the author’s data and source code. This dilemma is very nicely (and somewhat bluntly) summarised by Donoho et al. (2009): “In stark contrast to the sciences relying on deduction or empiricism, computational science is far less visibly concerned with the ubiquity of error. At conferences and in publications, it’s now completely acceptable for a researcher to simply say, ‘here is what I did, and here are my results.’ Presenters devote almost no time to explaining why the audience should believe that they found and corrected errors in their computations. The presentation’s core isn’t about the struggle to root out error —as it would be in mature fields—but is instead a sales pitch: an enthusiastic presentation of ideas and a breezy demo of an implementation. Computational science has nothing like the elaborate mechanisms of formal proof in mathematics or meta-analysis in empirical science.

Many users of scientific computing aren’t even trying to follow a systematic, rigorous discipline that would in principle allow others to verify the claims they make.

How dare we imagine that computational science, as routinely practiced, is reliable!”

Most scientific journals state that authors should make their data available on request, however policies on software availability are far less consistent. A number of progressive journals are beginning to demand that authors submit source code along with their manuscript (e.g. Science2), but these journals are in the minority.

Given the highly politicised nature of weather and climate science, one gets the feeling that our profession and its associated journals will be at the forefront of the push towards open computing. As some commentators suggest (e.g. Ince et al., 2012), the full release of source programs should (and may soon) be universally mandatory for 1

www.drclimate.wordpress.com

2 www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/gen_info. xhtml#dataavail

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol.26 page 14

results that depend on computation. For individual researchers, this begs an obvious question: is there an easy and convenient way to make data and source code available upon publication? Enter RunMyCode.org.

In January 2012, RunMyCode.org was launched as a website where authors can create a companion page for their journal publications (Stodden et al., 2012). On a RunMyCode.org companion page, readers can not only access the author’s code and data, but can also execute that code directly on the cloud using either the author’s data or their own. Most of the initial companion pages posted on the website were created by people working in finance and economics, however I recently contacted RunMyCode.org and they very promptly installed my requested software packages on their cloud system (Python, in this case).

So rather than get caught out when the open computing era fully arrives, I’ve decided that I’m going to jump in right now. For my next publication, I’m going to endeavor to publish a RunMyCode.org companion page. I’ve even located a useful wiki3 on best practices for researchers publishing computational results, while the Reproducible Research4 and RRPlanet5 websites also have some pretty useful information. The process will no doubt make for interesting blog content, so I’ll be sure to let you know how I go!

References Donoho, D.L., Maleki, A., Rahman, I.U., Shahram, M., Stodden, V., 2009, Reproducible research in computational harmonic analysis, Computing in Science and Engineering, 11, 8–18.

Ince, D.C., Hatton, L., Graham-Cumming, J., 2012, The case for open computer programs, Nature, 482, 485–488.

Irving, D., 2012, Improving how we do science: a boot camp and a blog, Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, 25, 97.

Stodden, V., Hurlin, C., Perignon, C., 2012, RunMyCode. org: a novel dissemination and collaboration platform for executing published computational results, Social Science Research Network, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2147710.

3 http://wiki.stodden.net/Best_Practices_for_Researchers_ Publishing_Computational_Results 4

www.reproducibleresearch.net

5

www.rrplanet.com/

Calendar

2013 May 29–2 May 12th Conference on Polar Meteorology and Oceanography, Seattle, WA, USA.

June 4-5 2nd Australian Wind Waves Symposium, Melbourne, Australia

July 5–6 Measurement Problems in Ice Clouds Workshop, Zurich, Switzerland.

8–12 Davos Atmosphere and Cryosphere Assembly (DACA-13) Air, Ice and Process Interactions. Davos, Switzerland.

September

8–13 Chapman Conference: Communicating Climate Science: A Historic Look to the Future, Snow Mountain Ranch, Grandby, Colorado, USA.

16–20 EUMETSAT Meteorological Satellite Conference & 19th American Meteorological Society AMS Satellite Meteorology, Oceanography, and Climatology Conference, Vienna, Austria.

17–21 AMS, 19th Conference on Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics, Newport, Rhode Island, USA.

16–20 36th Conference Breckenridge, CO, USA.

17–21 AMS, 17th Conference on the Middle Atmosphere, Newport, Rhode Island, USA.

26 expected release of IPCC Working Group I 5th Assessment Report

24–28 Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) 10th annual meeting, Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, Brisbane, Australia.

October

on

Radar

Meteorology,

8–11 Greenhouse 2013, Adelaide Convention Centre, Adelaide, SA.

24–28 Chapman Conference: Crossing the Boundaries in Planetary Atmospheres: From Earth to Exoplanets, Annapolis, Maryland, USA.

15–17 10th Symposium on Fire and Forest Meteorology, Bowling Green, KY, USA.

24–28 19th International Conference on Nucleation and Atmospheric Aerosols, Fort Collins, CO, USA

2–6 94th AMS Annual Meeting, Atlanta, USA

26–28 Second Conference on Weather Warnings and Communication, Nashville, TN, USA

February 2014 12–14 20th AMOS National Conference, Hobart, Australia

Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal

Articles — Vol 62 No. 4, December 2012 Puri. The Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator, ACCESS: Scientific justification and options.

Taylor et al. Modelling low-level boundary layer structure in complex terrain: verification of TAPM meteorological predictions in the Canberra region.

Irving et al. Climate projections for Australia: a first glance at CMIP5.

Chubb et al. Orographic influence on clouds and precipitation in the Brindabella Ranges.

Ashcroft et al. Temperature variations of south-eastern Australia, 1860–2009.

Le Marshall et al. The Application of Radio Occultation Observations for Climate and Weather Monitoring and Numerical Weather Prediction in the Australian Region.

Jovanovic et al. Climate Variations and Change evident in high-quality climate data for Australia’s Antarctic and remote island weather stations.

Durrant and Greenslade. Spatial Evaluations of ACCESS Marine Surface Winds using Scatterometer Data.

Bodman et al. Observational constraints on parameter estimates for a simple climate model.

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol.26 page 15

Regular features: Webb. Seasonal climate summary Southern Hemisphere (Summer 2011–2012).

Wu. Quarterly numerical weather prediction model performance summary - April to September 2012.

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.26 page 16

Web sites:

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

2013 AMOS Council Executive

President Vice-President Secretary Treasurer Past President

Blair Trewin Todd Lane Damien Irving Ian Watterson Neville Nicholls

Ordinary Members John Allen Andrew Klekociuk Robin Roberston Sandra Schuster Richard Wardle Perry Wiles

03-8344 9596 03 6232 3382 02-6268 8289 02-9272 8025 03-9905 4411 03-9669 4664

AMOS Administrative Officer

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

03-9669 4623 03-8344-6516 03-8344 6911 03-9239 4544 03-9902 0111

Sub-Committee Convenors Public Relations Awards 2014 Conference Education Membership

Centre Chairs NSW Hobart Melbourne ACT Perth Darwin Brisbane Adelaide

Vacant Mark Williams Andrew Marshall Phillip Riley Michael Hewson

0419 519 440 03-6232 5184 03-9669 4530 0408 379 373

Fiona Johnson Kelvin Michael Andrew Ballinger Clem Davis Merv Lynch Hakeem Shaik Hamish McGowan Andrew MacKinnon

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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..

2013 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) Nicholas Tyrrell (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 22 March 2013. 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