BAMOS
Dec 2018
Meyers Medal
The Meyers Medal acknowledges high-quality and innovative
contributions by young researchers in the early stages of their
academic career to the sciences covered by AMOS. The Medal
honours the memory of Dr Gary Meyers who was a highly
respected leader of scientists and a gracious and generous
mentor as well as being an innovative researcher in his own
right. The 2018 Meyers Medal has been awarded to Dr Adele
Morrison. Dr Morrison is a highly productive research scientist
who has made significant contributions to the field of Southern
Ocean dynamics and its impact on the climate and ecosystem.
Her papers on eddy saturation, ocean heat uptake and Southern
Ocean upwelling each represent highly original contributions
to the field. She already has 17 published journal papers,
including four influential Nature group publications, and has
been invited to speak at numerous international meetings. She
published three excellent journal papers from her PhD thesis,
including the first demonstration (and physical explanation)
of why eddy saturation and eddy compensation are physically
distinct phenomena. This result solved one of the most topical
problems in Southern Ocean dynamics. Since her return to
Australia in 2017, Dr Morrison has used the experience she
gained in the US to make key contributions to ocean model
development. She has configured a global ocean model with
excellent representation of the circulation close to Antarctica,
and used this model to show new controls on the flux of warm
water onto the Antarctic shelves.
Gibbs Medal
The Gibbs Medal recognises long and distinguished service to
operational forecasting. The Medal honours the contributions
of ex-Director of Meteorology WJ (Bill) Gibbs in shaping
and transforming operational meteorology in the Bureau of
Meteorology in the 1960s and 1970s. The 2018 Gibbs Medal
has been awarded to Dr Michael Pook. Mike was a senior
forecaster in the Hobart office of the Bureau of Meteorology, a
long-time weather presenter on ABC television in Tasmania, and
a senior research scientist in CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric
Research. He has also presented lectures at the University of
Tasmania and elsewhere, and held many AMOS positions over
his long career. Mike has made an outstanding contribution
to our understanding of the connection between weather
and climate in the Australian region. He developed a 50-year
synoptic classification of rainfall events in southeast Australia
which has led to seminal understanding of the climate system,
the influence of climate drivers, rainfall trends and the diagnosis
of climate model performance. This work has changed the way
he and others communicate seasonal climate forecasts and
the associated weather events to the agricultural community.
Mike has helped forecasters, researchers and communicators
to bridge the timescales between familiar weather events such
as fronts and cutoff lows, through medium timescale events
such as atmospheric blocking and the Southern Annular Mode
(SAM), to the seasonal timescales of ENSO and the Indian Ocean
Dipole (IOD).
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