BAMOS Vol 31 Special Issue October 2018 Bulletin Vol 31 Special Issue 01 2018 | Page 12

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BAMOS
Special Issue
The development of modern climate science
Climate Science has a long history in Australia, beginning
perhaps with Taylor and Quayle’s 1913 textbook, Climate and
Weather of Australia. Yet thirty years ago, members of our
society would refer to themselves as meteorologists, physical
oceanographers and atmospheric scientists. Now in this context
“climate scientist” is a common term.
Internationally the World Climate Research Programme was
established in 1980 and the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) was established at around the same time
as AMOS, in 1988. The figure below (Figure 4), from the 2013
Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the IPCC shows an example
of the climate change tools we are all used to dealing with. The
figure shows projections for changes in surface temperature
and in precipitation under two different emission scenarios
(representative concentration pathways; RCP). This now familiar
science, once again, developed within the past 30 years.
Milestones in Australian climate change science include the
following:
• Greenhouse 1987—a scientific conference organised by
CSIRO and held at Monash University in 1987
• Australian Climate Change Science Program ACCSP:
1989–2016
• Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Southern
Hemisphere Meteorology: 1993–2000
• Indian Ocean Climate Initiative: 1997–2011
• Pacific Climate Change Science Program, and Pacific-
Australia Climate Change Science and Adaptation
Planning Program: 2009–2015
• Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for
Climate System Science: 2011–2018 (now the Centre of
Excellence for Climate Extremes).
The climate models, which form the basis of projection science,
also were all developed in the AMOS era:
• CSIRO MK1 AGCM + slab ocean 1993
• CSIRO Mk2 coupled model 1997
• CSIRO Mk 3 coupled (no flux adjustment) 2002
• ACCESS (Australian Community Climate and Earth-
System Simulator ) 2012.
Figure 4. Maps of CMIP5 multi-model mean results for the scenarios RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 in 2081–2100 of (a) annual mean
surface temperature change, (b) average percent change in annual mean precipitation. Source: IPCC, 2013: Summary
for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.
K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United
Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.