BAMOS Vol 31 Special Issue October 2018 Bulletin Vol 31 Special Issue 01 2018 | Page 13

BAMOS
Special Issue
Indigenous Weather Knowledge
To me, a major change that occurred during the 30 years is the
recognition of the value of the weather and climate knowledge
accumulated over tens of thousands of years before European
settlement. The original inhabitants of Australia coexisted with
the continent’s extremes of climate. They had a lifestyle that
made use of the seasonal variations and the daily extremes. A
formal recognition of the value of this is the Indigenous Weather
Knowledge website (Figure 5) maintained by the Bureau of
Meteorology.
It is a major statement that to learn about indigenous knowledge
of the seasons, one goes to the official Bureau website, the
same source referred to for daily radar maps, weather forecasts
and seasonal climate outlooks.
Changes in meteorological knowledge
Scientific understanding of both the atmosphere and the ocean
has progressed enormously over the 30 years. Some changes
that strike me as being particularly important are the following:
•
the recognition of the important role of multi-decadal
variability in understanding climate; climate trends
and return periods for extreme events; and in making
projections for human-induced climate change
• the importance of intraseasonal variability, including but
not restricted to the Madden Julian Oscillation
• the role of extreme events in climate change studies and
projections
• the changes in forecasting which now involves Next
Generation forecast work stations, automatically worded
forecasts from numerical weather prediction model
output, convection resolving operational numerical
models, and ensemble prediction systems
• changes in our knowledge of the climate drivers for
interannual variability. In 1987, the only known climate
driver was the El Niño Southern Oscillation phenomenon
(ENSO). Climate drivers have now been expanded to
include the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and the Southern
Annular Mode (SAM).
Changes in the meteorological
oceanographic community
and
Thirty years ago, professional meteorology in particular, was
dominated by the major institutions in Melbourne, including
the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO’s Division of Atmospheric
Physics, and the meteorological sections of departments at
Monash and Melbourne Universities. This has completely
changed, with large university groups across the country, as
well as active Regional Centres for AMOS.
Prior to AMOS there was no national forum for presentation
of research results or to meet with fellow meteorology and
oceanography science professionals. Now, the Annual AMOS
Conference is a highly attended meeting, running four parallel
sessions, and is the major forum for presentation of research to
peers.
Prior to AMOS the physical oceanographers and meteorologists
were separate communities. AMOS changed this overnight. The
two sciences are now very closely linked through operational
coupled models and through seasonal variability studies and
forecasts, particularly involving ENSO. A major beneficiary
of the combined profession in our Society has been climate
change science, which is fundamentally a coupled science.
Lastly, a major achievement of AMOS over thirty years has been
the activities of the AMOS education and outreach committees.
Through these committees AMOS has run summer schools
and conferences for professional development, organised
public talks, presentations to schools, adult education courses,
school weather competitions and the AMOS weather tipping
competition.
Figure 5. The Bureau of Meteorology’s Indigenous
Weather Knowledge website.
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