Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal 

About: Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Southern Hemisphere & Numerical weather prediction. It has an ISSN identifier of 1836-716X. Over the lifetime, 213 publications have been published receiving 4227 citations.

High-quality spatial climate data-sets for Australia

Abstract: Recent years have seen much of Australia suffer from severe meteorological drought and a series of climatic extremes (e.g. Bureau of Meteorology 2008a, 2008b). As a result, water resources have widely fallen to record lows, and agricultural production in southern and eastern parts of Australia has been poor with a series of crop failures (e.g. Murray-Darling Basin Commission 2007; Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics 2007). High-quality national climate information is clearly needed to place these climatedriven events in a proper historical perspective and to provide a context for understanding the associated impacts on humans and the environment. A key to better management of Australia’s physical resources is ensuring that expectation and demand match the long-term supply. Matching a demand to the available resource is clearly required in the case of water, where the idea of sustainable yields is fairly well developed (e.g. Chiew et al. 2008). However, it is also clear that other climate variables such as temperature can be considered as a resource, with agricultural productivity (for example) being closely tied to temperature in much the same way as it is to rainfall (Cline 2007). A better characterisation of Australia’s climate and associated variability should lead to better risk management and improved decision-making processes. High-quality spatial climate data-sets for Australia

The ACCESS coupled model: description, control climate and evaluation

Abstract: 4OASIS3.2–5 coupling framework. The primary goal of the ACCESS-CM development is to provide the Australian climate community with a new generation fully coupled climate model for climate research, and to participate in phase five of the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP5). This paper describes the ACCESS-CM framework and components, and presents the control climates from two versions of the ACCESS-CM, ACCESS1.0 and ACCESS1.3, together with some fields from the 20 th century historical experiments, as part of model evaluation. While sharing the same ocean sea-ice model (except different setups for a few parameters), ACCESS1.0 and ACCESS1.3 differ from each other in their atmospheric and land surface components: the former is configured with the UK Met Office HadGEM2 (r1.1) atmospheric physics and the Met Office Surface Exchange Scheme land surface model version 2, and the latter with atmospheric physics similar to the UK Met Office Global Atmosphere 1.0 includ ing modifications performed at CAWCR and the CSIRO Community Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange land surface model version 1.8. The global average annual mean surface air temperature across the 500-year preindustrial control integrations show a warming drift of 0.35 °C in ACCESS1.0 and 0.04 °C in ACCESS1.3. The overall skills of ACCESS-CM in simulating a set of key climatic fields both globally and over Australia significantly surpass those from the preceding CSIRO Mk3.5 model delivered to the previous coupled model inter-comparison. However, ACCESS-CM, like other CMIP5 models, has deficiencies in various as pects, and these are also discussed.

Paradigms for Tropical Cyclone Intensification

Abstract: : We review the four main paradigms of tropical cyclone intensification that have emerged over the past five decades, discussing the relationship between them and highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. A major focus is on a new paradigm articulated in a series of recent papers using observations and high- resolution, three-dimensional, numerical model simulations. Unlike the three previous paradigms, all of which assumed axial symmetry, the new one recognises the presence of localised, buoyant, rotating deep convection that grows in the rotation-rich environment of the incipient storm, thereby greatly amplifying the local vorticity. It exhibits also a degree of randomness that has implications for the predictability of local asymmetric features of the developing vortex. While surface moisture fluxes are required for intensification, the postulated evaporation-wind feedback process that forms the basis of an earlier paradigm is not. Differences between spin up in three-dimensional and axisymmetric numerical models are discussed also. In all paradigms, the tangential winds above the boundary layer are amplified by the convectively-induced inflow in the lower troposphere in conjunction with the approximate material conservation of absolute angular momentum. This process acts also to broaden the outer circulation. Azimuthally-averaged fields from high-resolution model simulations have highlighted a second mechanism for amplifying the mean tangential winds. This mechanism, which is coupled to the first via boundary-layer dynamics, involves the convergence of absolute angular momentum within the boundary layer, where this quantity is not materially conserved, but where air parcels are displaced much further radially in - wards than air parcels above the boundary layer. It explains why the maximum tangential winds occur in the boundary layer and accounts for the generation of supergradient wind speeds there.

Australia's CMIP5 submission using the CSIRO-Mk3.6 model

Abstract: A comprehensive set of climate modelling experiments has been performed to provide input into the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project - phase 5 (CMIP5). The CSIRO-Mk3.6 climate model was used to prepare a joint CMIP5 submission under a partnership between the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence (QCCCE). The submission includes data for 163 variables from 22 experiments. The raw model output has been post-processed into CMIP5 format using the Climate Model Output Rewriter and publicly released on the Earth System Grid. The Mk3.6 submission includes data for most of the Core, Tier 1 and Tier 2 CMIP5 longer-term experiments which don't require modelling of the carbon cycle. Data have been provided for nine historical experiments driven by a range of forcings to support detection and attribution studies. Most experiments have been performed as an ensemble of runs, with ensemble sizes exceeding CMIP5 recommendations.

The land surface model component of ACCESS: description and impact on the simulated surface climatology

Abstract: The land surface component of the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS) is one difference between the two versions of ACCESS used to run simulations for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). The Met Office Surface Exchange Scheme (MOSES) and the Community Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange (CABLE) model are described and compared. The impact on the simulated present day land surface climatology is assessed, in both atmosphere only and coupled model cases. Analysis is focused on seasonal mean precipitation and screen-level temperature, both globally and for Australia. Many of the biases from observations are common across both ACCESS versions and both atmosphere only and coupled cases. Where the simulations from the two versions differ, the choice of land surface model is often only a small contributor with changes to the cloud simulation also important. Differences that can be traced to the land surface model include warm biases with CABLE due to underestimation of surface albedo, better timing of northern hemisphere snowmelt and smaller seasonal and diurnal temperature ranges with CABLE than MOSES.