BAMOS 2021 / 2022 Summer
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News
AMOS Awards 2021
Jaiwei Bao , Uwe Radok Award
The Uwe Radok award for best PhD thesis is awarded to Jaiwei Bao from UNSW Sydney for his thesis titled “ Understanding extreme precipitation and its links with convective organisation ”. Jaiwei ’ s thesis used observations and regional model simulations to explore how extreme precipitation changes in response to warming . His research found flawed assumptions in a commonly used method to explore correlations between temperature and rainfall characteristics . This work has been published in Nature Climate Change and has currently received more than 100 citations . Jaiwei also showed that changes in extreme rainfall are related to the degree of organisation of convection in work published in JAMES that was given an editor ’ s highlight . Jaiwei was supervised by Steven Sherwood and Lisa Alexander .
The Uwe Radok Award is for the best PhD thesis in the AMOS fields of oceanography , glaciology or climatology , awarded in Australia . It honours the contributions of Dr Uwe Radok who was one of Australia ’ s pioneers in meteorological and glaciological research . He was Head of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Melbourne from 1960 to 1977 and played a leading role in the development of Australian Antarctic meteorology and glaciology .
Scott Power , Zillman Medal
The 2021 Zillman Medal is awarded to Professor Scott Power , Director of the Centre for Applied Climate Sciences at the University of Southern Queensland , Adjunct Professor in the School of Earth , Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University , and an Associate Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes . Before joining USQ Scott was a Senior Principal Research Scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology , where he also served as International Development Officer and head of climate monitoring and prediction services . He was also the climate science advisor to the Australian Government ’ s Climate Change Authority 2018 – 2021 and CLA on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report . Scott is widely regarded both nationally and internationally as a leading authority on global warming , ENSO , Australian climate , and climate variability and projections .
He pioneered a number of major discoveries in climate science concerning ENSO and its changing impact on Australia and the Pacific . He described and named the “ Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation ” ( IPO ) and discovered that ENSO can drive climatic regime shifts in the subsurface ocean on decadal time scales . He has published over 120 papers in peer-reviewed journals including the Science and Nature series . He served on many national and international committees and coordinated the Australian Climate Change Science Program and the Pacific Climate Change Science Program . Scott has dedicated passion and effort over many years in capacity building in the Pacific , and to mentoring and supervising many students and post-docs .
The Zillman Medal acknowledges scientists in their mature years who have carried out most of their research in Australia and have made a significant contribution with a record of innovative and transformative research . The award is named in honour of the distinguished contributions of Dr John Zillman to Australian and international meteorology and science . Dr Zillman was the Director of Meteorology from 1978 to 2003 and President of the World Meteorological Organization ( WMO ) from 1995 to 2003 and is now an honorary senior adviser at The Bureau of Meteorology .