BAMOS
Dec 2018
AMOS-Q Activities Summary 2018
Dr Michael Hewson
Chair, AMOS-Q
The Queensland branch of AMOS (known as AMOS-Q) has met
a few times this year as noted below.
My thanks to the AMOS-Q committee who made the meetings
happen—and thanks to the hospitality of the QLD Regional
Office of the Bureau of Meteorology. The Committee bought
a high-quality webcam to ‘zoom’ the sessions, thus making
them available to AMOS members in regional QLD. The facility
works well (I know, I’m in regional QLD)—but we still haven’t
got the engagement with other regional AMOS members in
Queensland right—yet…
A seminar took place on 8 March with Joshua Hartigan
describing his research at the University of Newcastle on storm
intensification associated with sea-breezes; a topic of interest
to SEQ AMOS-Q members and guests working in the insurance,
media, emergency response and other government sectors.
Working with the University of Melbourne Press and The
University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute (GCI),
AMOS-Q helped launch Dr Joëlle Gergis’ book “Sunburnt
Country—The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia”
on 19 April 2018. Joëlle had exposure on the ABC Brisbane Local
in the afternoon, and around 50 people engaged with the talk
and hospitality afterwards.
National Committee approved an AMOS-Q ‘Terms of Reference’
document mid-year.
AMOS-Q held another members and guests seminar on 26
September 2018. Some 20 people attended the seminar by Tony
Wedd on ‘A southeast change severe thunderstorm climatology
for Brisbane, with forecasting applications’. Guests continue to
enjoy the seminars—but we haven’t convinced them to join
AMOS yet!
As I write, AMOS-Q is examining an idea to apply for QLD
Government funding via the ‘Advance Queensland—Engaging
Science’ program to arrange a public ‘weather fest’ event in
2019.
With many thanks to committee members: Tamika Tihema, Katie
Rosemond, Nyssa Lonsdale, Andrew Schwartz and Katherine
Turner.
Thunderstorm Asthma
Panel Discussion—18 October 2018
Murray Hamilton
SA Regional Chair
Some thirty people attended a panel discussion in Adelaide
hosted by Flinders University that the SA regional branch of
AMOS, together with the Australian Meteorological Association
(AMetA), organised on 18 October. The speakers were John
Nairn (the state manager of the Bureau), Dr William Smith of
AllergySA and the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Professor Paddy
Philips (the chief medical officer of SA) and Assoc. Prof. Janet
Davies from Queensland University of Technology. The context
for the event was the outbreak of Thunderstorm Asthma that
occurred in Melbourne in November 2016, with the question
addressed by the panel being whether such an outbreak could
occur in Adelaide.
The allergen usually implicated in such events is ryegrass pollen
which is common in the temperate regions (the SE) of Australia
and flowers around October/November. We heard from John
Nairn that the Nov. 2016 event was preceded by a particularly
wet spring which would have encouraged the growth of grass.
The history of the airmass involved in the event was such that it
would have been carried over central NSW and western Victoria,
where grasses would have been flourishing at the time, before
reaching Melbourne. Janet Davies showed that the ryegrass
extends westwards well into SA toward Adelaide. However it
was pointed out that thunderstorms around Adelaide typically
involve airmasses that move from the west where there is
relatively little temperate grass growing, and large areas of
water (Spencer Gulf ). Paddy Philips said that a study on the
risk of Thunderstorm Asthma in Adelaide had concluded that
the likelihood of an outbreak was considerably less than that
for Melbourne, presumably because of the very different earth
surface types to the west of each city. William Smith presented
a clinician’s viewpoint on Thunderstorm Asthma, and gave
further context with statistics on susceptibility to asthma as a
function of age and ethnicity, among other factors.
However the lack of detailed understanding as to what causes
Thunderstorm Asthma moderates such a conclusion; e.g. it is
unclear what leads to pollen grains bursting and releasing the
allergenic components of pollen in small enough particles that
they can be taken into the lungs.
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