BAMOS June 2017
6
News
CLEx has landed
Alvin Stone , Media and Communications Manager , ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science
On July 1 , the new ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes ( CLEx ) comes into existence with funding for seven years . The Centre , the first of its kind to focus solely on climate extremes , will be led by Prof Andy Pitman .
The Australian Research Council ( ARC ) is investing $ 30 million in the centre with significant cash and in-kind contributions from university , government and industry partners .
The focus of the new centre will be to gain a far more sophisticated understanding of the behaviour of climate extremes that directly affect Australia ’ s natural and economic systems . The Centre seeks to take this understanding and build it into the modelling systems used to simulate our weather and climate .
While it is a new Centre , CLEx builds on the work of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science ( ARCCSS ) and focuses it on high impact extreme events .
The overall aim of CLEx is to transform our understanding of past and present climate extremes and to revolutionise the capability to protect against them into the future .
To accomplish this the Centre has four primary research programs . These are :
• Extreme rainfall : This has four sub-programs that together aim to improve the prediction of extreme rainfall by making fundamental advances in understanding the processes and translating this into our climate models .
• Heat waves and cold air outbreaks : The aim of this research area is to explain the physical mechanisms that control the frequency , intensity and duration of heat waves and cold air outbreaks in Australia to improve the skill of models in this area .
• Drought : Using the Millennium Drought as a key test case , this research program aims to explore the mechanisms that control the frequency , duration and intensity of droughts in Australia .
• Climate variability and teleconnections : Recognising that regional extremes can be profoundly influenced by teleconnections , climate sensitivity and variability in the ocean-atmosphere , this research program aims to examine how extremes are related to these areas and can be modulated by them .
As with the ARCCSS , the new Centre will be led by the University of New South Wales , partnering with the University of Melbourne , Monash University , Australian National University and the University of Tasmania . It will also work closely with other national and international partners to achieve its aims .
Our national partners include the Bureau of Meteorology , CSIRO , National Computational Infrastructure , Risk Frontiers , the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage , and the Managing Climate Variability Program . We also plan to have strong links with two National Environmental Science Programs — the Earth System and Climate Change Hub and the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub .
Internationally , the new Centre will continue the strong relationships developed through ARCCSS with the UK Met Office , NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory , NASA Goddard Space Flight Center , NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory , ETH Zurich , NCAR , the University of Arizona and the Max Planck Institute .
As the wide breadth of partnerships indicate , Centres of Excellence are the ARC ’ s flagship research investment . Performing cutting edge research is of course a given but it also requires the right support . CLEx builds on the success of ARCCSS by again resourcing a strong computational modelling support ( CMS ) team .
In ARCCSS this team streamlined processes around modelling of the climate and datasets while applying its expertise to issues that affect the entire Australian climate community . It has saved ARCCSS researchers months of preparatory work , accelerated training of PhD students and allowed researchers to devote more time to research by reducing the time to set up