BAMOS
Dec 2019
Priestley Medal
The Priestley Medal recognises personal excellence in
meteorological, oceanographic or climate research carried
out substantially within Australia by a mid‑career scientist
no older than 45 years. It commemorates the life‑long
contributions of Dr C H B Priestley, the first Chief of the CSIRO
Division of Meteorological Physics, to meteorological and
oceanographic research. The 2019 Priestley Medal has been
awarded to Professor Nerilie Abram. Prof Abram from ANU
is Australia’s foremost mid‑career palaeoclimate scientist with
an international standing of the highest repute. She has made
outstanding contributions to answering big questions about
how Earth’s climate system has behaved over the last millennium,
at global and regional scales, and the lessons we can heed from
the past in relation to current human‑induced climate change.
Her portfolio of scientific achievements and discoveries is truly
exceptional, and her seminal contributions have appeared in the
most prestigious journals of the field; including six first‑author
publications across Science, Nature, Nature Geoscience and Nature
Climate Change. Her multidisciplinary approach to paleoclimate
research includes expertise in reconstructing oceanographic
processes from corals and atmospheric processes from ice
cores, and in reconstructing large‑scale climate processes from
networks of paleoclimate data carefully combined with climate
model simulations alongside a process‑based understanding.
Christopher Taylor Award
The Christopher Taylor Award recognises professional
meteorologists for their initiative in contributing to operational
forecasting and supporting activities in Australia. Christopher
Taylor was a Bureau of Meteorology analyst and forecaster from
the mid‑1970s until his untimely death at age 35 in 1988. He
had a natural curiosity in, and an enthusiasm and energy for,
investigating observed weather phenomena and operational
forecasting problems, which was largely carried out in his own
time. The 2019 Christopher Taylor award has been awarded
to Dr Rob Taggart from the Sydney Office of the Bureau of
Meteorology. Rob developed new climatological guidance for
forecasting fog frequency, duration, onset and clearance times,
including displays which are used by operational meteorologists
on a daily basis to make forecast decisions for fog, a major
aviation safety hazard. This work has led to improvements in fog
observations and forecasts. Rob also recognised that the key to
improving forecasters’ skill was rapid and unequivocal feedback
about their performance. He took the initiative to build an
interactive, rapidly updated, and user friendly Daily Verification
Dashboard. This display provides a quick overview of weather
conditions as well as detailed site‑based observations, forecasts
and associated errors of temperature, rainfall and wind speed
for forecasts issued from a week to a day in advance of the
observations. Bureau forecasters now have instant feedback
about the performance of the forecasts generally but also about
the specific outcomes of forecaster edits to the guidance. As
well as assisting forecasters, the dashboard has been valuable to
anyone faced with a question about the Bureau's performance
leading into a weather event.
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