Postgraduate and Honours projects in the Centre of Excellence
A wide range of PhD opportunities exist within the Centre. For outstanding students, the Centre will offer top-ups above the rates funded via APAs. We will offer some international student fee scholarships. Generous travel support for PhD students to visit our international partners exist. There are also opportunities for Masters and Honours students. Many projects will be supervised across Universities, and also there is an expectation that most projects will be co-supervised by experts in CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, or one of our international partners.
Climate System Science is a highly quantitative discipline. Most students who will be taken on through the centre will have: A quantitative honours degree, which might include Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Hydrology, Oceanography, Meteorology, Engineering etc. It might include Biology if you also have Mathematics or computing skills and it might include a range of degrees like Physical Geography, Environmental Science etc again with a reasonable quantitative background. There are always exceptions and you are always welcome to contact us. Almost all Climate System Science requires strong computer science skills. Programming, scripting, management of data sets that may be measured in Petabytes or using Peta-scale computers for analysis and simulation are common in our science and literacy has to be developed in these areas.
The Centre does not usually take new measurements but you are welcome to approach us to discuss exceptions.
Example projects are listed below. However, we emphasize that you are welcome to approach anyone in the Centre with an idea for a project and – in many cases – the best PhD students should have a sense of what they want to study and we welcome such students.
Examples of Projects
At the Australian National University in Land Surface Biophysics and Modelling:
- Using high resolution ocean models to understand the dynamics of the large scale ocean circulation and its role in altering climate change and variability. There is a particular emphasis on the Southern Ocean and it's connection with other oceans. Talk to Andy Hogg.
- Projects around terrestrial processes, terrestrial feedbacks are available. Talk to Mike Roderick.
- Land surface biophysics: Process-based studies that examine land-atmopshere coupling. We are especially interested in the coupling between water, energy and carbon and the linkages back to local and regional climates. Talk to Mike Roderick.
At Monash in large-scale climate dynamics:
- Natural climate variability has a land-sea contrast with ocean variability being amplified over land. The student will focus on how this work in climate models and observations. Talk to Christian Jakob.
- Global decadal climate modes: Climate variability on time scales longer than a decade have global teleconnections, leading to global Hyper Climate Modes. The student will analyze in models and observations how these teleconnections work. Talk to Dietmar Dommenget.
- Climate Sensitivity uncertainty: IPCC climate change predictions remain uncertain. The student will do climate model sensitivity studies to investigate the causes of these uncertainties and will try to correct model biases to improve the predictions. Talk to Christian Jakob.
At UNSW land, atmosphere and ocean sciences:
- The role of mesoscale eddies and large-scale modes in Southern Ocean circulation, heat transport and climate. This project will combine models, observations and theory to develop a greater understanding of the Southern ocean and its role in climate. Talk to Matt England.
- The role of fine-scale ocean circulation in representing ENSO and other tropical modes in climate models. This project will investigate the role of mesoscale flow patterns in the development, onset and decay of ENSO events using high resolution models. Applications to other tropical modes may also be pursued. Talk to Matt England.
- The dynamics of convective thermals and cells. Talk to Steve Sherwood.
- The parameterization of new processes in land surface model [there are a wide range of processes that need to be included and Talk to Andy Pitman about how to prioritize these.
- Interpreting results from ensembles of climate model results, especially quantifying model dependence and its relationship to model performance in ensembles. Talk to Gab Abramowitz.
- The large-scale circulation of the atmosphere is critical to many aspects of climate projection. Projects such as “The controls on the latitude of Earth's jet streams and storm tracks", "The controls on large-scale precipitation patterns in GCMs" and "The relationship between regional climate variability and the time scale of annular modes" are projects Joe Kidston is interested in hearing from students about.
- Projects also exist in using recent developments in spatial extremes in an interesting climate area. Talk to Andy Pitman in the first instance.
At the University of Tasmania:
- How do eddies impact oceanic carbon cycling? The student will analyze optical data from autonomous profiling floats, surface satellite observations and ship-based CO2 data. Talk to Peter Strutton.
At the University of Melbourne:
- Dynamics of deep convection: This project will use a variety of theoretical and modelling approaches to examine precipitating convective clouds, their organization, and the processes that govern their interaction with the surrounding atmosphere. Talk to Todd Lane.
- Extreme weather and climate events: How much were the chances of the extreme rain events in eastern Australia in 2011 or the extreme heat waves in 2009 affected by climate change and by natural climate variations? Observational data and climate model simulations will be used to assess the different factors affecting the risk of extreme events in Australia. Talk to David Karoly.
- Causes of trends in temperature extremes: In Australia, there have been larges increases in hot extremes and decreases in cold extremes over the last 50 years. Different approaches will be used to assess the likely causes from climate model experiments and observational data. Talk to David Karoly.
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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
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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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