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Research program: The effects of tropical convection on Australia's climate
Convection is the atmospheric phenomenon that leads to upward and downward air motions, producing most clouds and rain. It can be shallow and produce little rain, or reach all the way to the lower stratosphere and produce heavy rains, as well as thunder and lightning. Deep convection in the Tropics can be triggered by very subtle influences, and drives atmospheric wind systems that can affect the weather or climate thousands of kilometres away. Convective processes are also often critical in extreme weather events, such as tropical cyclones and hail storms.
While the processes of convection are broadly understood there remain significant gaps in our knowledge. These gaps have made it impossible for weather and climate models to provide reliable predictions of precipitation, particularly where convection is a dominant process.
The Centre will conduct a fundamental re-examination of convection processes that when completed should substantially improve the physical foundation of climate models. This has the potential to lead to significant improvements in the ability of climate models to reliably simulate rainfall over key regions in Australia over a variety of time scales.
This will help us predict changes to precipitation in important regions and put in place infrastructure to adapt to changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events.
Chief Investigators
Partner Investigators
- Dr Harry Hendon (CAWCR-BoM)
- Dr Peter May (CAWCR-BoM)
- Dr Wojciech Grabowski (National Centre for Atmospheric Research, USA)
- Dr Sandrine Bony (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France)
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Jackson Tan's Maldives research: entry 10
09 November 2011
And so here I am in the Male International Airport, waiting to board my plane back home. It was a wild ride on the 50-seater from Gan to Male, though I should've expected that from radar and satellite images revealing intense convective activity there over the past few days. |
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Jackson Tan's Maldives research: entry 9
03 November 2011
The radars deployed here on Gan Island run 24/7 until the end of the DYNAMO field campaign in March next year. Consequently, every day is a working day. This is the nature of fieldwork. |
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