BAMOS
Jun 2019
Contents
4
3
President’s report
6 News—Conference Special
8 Vale Matthias Tomczak—Tribute to a
Giant
10
Abrupt wind speed changes on
northern Port Phillip
16
Citizen science and weather history—
the start of a productive relationship
18 Communicating climate science and
impacts
19
Unprecedented high temperatures
over the coming the coming century
20 Charts of the Past with Blair Trewin
22 Seasonal Snaps
24 Calendar and JSHESS contents
ISSN 1035-6576
Editor: Belinda Campbell
Editors-in-Chief: Damien Irving, Linden Ashcroft
Assistant Editors: Diana Greenslade, Melissa Lyne and Blair Trewin
Design: Jeanette Dargaville
Publisher: AMOS, GPO Box 1289, Melbourne VIC 3001, Australia
Submission deadline for next issue: 4 September 2019
Contact and submit pieces: [email protected]. Submission
guidelines are available online and at the end of this issue.
Image: Clear skies in sunny Darwin. Source: Johanna Speirs
Cover image: Perfect timing—a rainbow and sunset meet over
Melbourne in May 2019. Source: Linden Ashcroft
Other images in this publication: Photographs without a specified
source are obtained via the ‘pexels’ website and hyperlinked to the
original image online.
Belinda Campbell
Editor
As winter sets in for the southern parts of the country and the dry
gets going in the north, it’s a time to celebrate all things AMOS
with another successful conference done and dusted. In the June
issue it is a great pleasure to bring you some highlights of the very
recent conference, which for those unable to attend, will provide
a good indication of what our community was up to in mid-June.
We look forward to compiling a more extensive Event Summary
for the September issue of BAMOS. We would also really like to
hear your thoughts of the Darwin event, so if you attended the
conference and would like to contribute some reflections please
do send them through.
This issue we focussed the news section on the conference
highlights so we didn’t do an “In case you missed it” section. As
such, I would like to call out a couple of items that that captured
my attention over recent months and may be of interest.
Firstly, The Conversation published an article in April about
the mass fish deaths that occurred in the lower Darling region.
The report talks about the climatological, meteorological and
hydrological conditions that contributed to this environmental
impact last summer. To me, this article highlighted again the
importance of the AMOS sciences and a multidisciplinary approach
in helping to perform these kinds of analyses. The report presents
a very powerful example about the devastation that can occur
with variations in environmental conditions.
The second item is a festival that brings out the more artistic side
of climate through the ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2019 Program.
This interesting initiative features over thirty curated exhibitions
at leading museums and galleries across Victoria, plus artist talks
and keynote lectures. Several AMOS members have been actively
involved in curating exhibitions and it is great to see such a creative
partnership in action.
In this issue we discuss some other fruitful partnerships including a
project which created an extensive flood record for South Australia
and another initiative which produced a guide for communicating
effectively about climate change.
We hope you enjoy this issue and, as always, we welcome your
feedback, suggestions and of course contributions.