Conference summary
BAMOS
Jun 2020
9
Report on AMOS 2020 Fremantle, WA
AMOS Annual Conference and the International Conference on Indian Ocean Meteorology and
Oceanography 2020
Jatin Kala and Andrew King
Conference Co‐convenors
After 17 years, the AMOS Annual Conference returned to Western
Australia with AMOS 2020 in the iconic city of Fremantle. The
conference was a great success, with around 380 delegates
attending. And all only seven months after AMOS 2019, which
was held in Darwin last June (2019). A major highlight of the
conference was the dinner at the Kings Park Botanical gardens,
with stunning views of Perth City (pictured below).
Interactive Welcome to Country by Ms. Ingrid
Cumming
The conference started with a bang, with an interactive
Welcome to Country by Ms. Ingrid Cumming. Ingrid is a Whadjuk
Noongar woman from Fremantle, Western Australia. A graduate
of Murdoch University and Melbourne Business School, Ingrid
has presented and published articles internationally, presented
at TedXPerth 2014 and is internationally recognised for her work
in leadership, Indigenous knowledge, research and cultural
development. She is the founder of the multiple award‐winning
Kart Koort Wiern (Head Heart and Spirit), founded in 2010, which
is a Perth‐based consultancy that offers consultancy, training
and workshops across Australia promoting reconciliation and
increasing awareness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
strengths and strategy. Ingrid got the crowd involved by
clapping to the beat of a traditional local song to welcome us.
Unravelling of the Indian Ocean Dipole
If you wanted to get a good handle on the Indian Ocean Dipole
(IOD)—what it is, how it was discovered, its relationship (or lack
of) with the El Niño Southern Oscillation, and how it’s expected
to change under climate change—AMOS 2020 was the place
to be. Our first plenary speaker was Dr. Caroline Ummenhofer,
who delivered the RH Clarke lecture: “The Indian Ocean—From
Obscurity to Centre Stage”. Some of the most fascinating slides
from Caroline’s talk were the results for the number of published
papers on the Indian Ocean’s role in climate from in the past
five decades. She showed how research into the Indian Ocean
has exploded in the last decade, illustrating the increased
recognition within the international scientific community that
the Indian Ocean is really important in understanding climate
in Australia. This provided the ideal background for our plenary
by Prof. Toshio Yamagata, the grandfather of the IOD himself.
Yamagata’s talk walked us through the history of the IOD, from
the times when there was scepticism about the very existence
of the IOD, to the now firmly established evidence of its key
influence on drought and heatwave conditions in Australia.
Following on from this, Dr. Wenju Cai from CSIRO provided an
extensive overview of positive IOD events and ENSO under
future climate change. The message that we should expect
more extremes of ENSO and positive IOD events was truly
confronting. To wrap it all up, the Priestley medal talk by Prof.
Views of Perth city from the conference
dinner in the Kings Park Botanical gardens.
Source: Louise Wilson