School of Earth Sciences - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 41
-
ItemThe Role of Health Co-Benefits in the Development of Australian Climate Change Mitigation Policies(MDPI, 2016-09)Reducing domestic carbon dioxide and other associated emissions can lead to short-term, localized health benefits. Quantifying and incorporating these health co-benefits into the development of national climate change mitigation policies may facilitate the adoption of stronger policies. There is, however, a dearth of research exploring the role of health co-benefits on the development of such policies. To address this knowledge gap, research was conducted in Australia involving the analysis of several data sources, including interviews carried out with Australian federal government employees directly involved in the development of mitigation policies. The resulting case study determined that, in Australia, health co-benefits play a minimal role in the development of climate change mitigation policies. Several factors influence the extent to which health co-benefits inform the development of mitigation policies. Understanding these factors may help to increase the political utility of future health co-benefits studies.
-
ItemLong-term stationarity of El Nino-Southern Oscillation teleconnections in southeastern Australia(Springer (part of Springer Nature), 2016-05-01)The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon plays a large role in the modulation of Aaustralian rainfall, particularly in the highly populated southeast. However, this influence is not stationary over time: weak ENSO teleconnections in Australia have been identified during 1920–1950, and palaeoclimate reconstructions indicate that a breakdown in global ENSO teleconnections may have also occurred in the early to mid-1800s. A lack of long-term instrumental data has prevented detailed examination of this intriguing earlier period. This study uses newly recovered instrumental rainfall observations to determine whether the weakening of ENSO teleconnections in the nineteenth century is apparent in eastern and southern southeastern Australia (SEA). Quantitative rainfall and rainday data from 1788 to 2012 are compared with three ENSO indices derived from palaeoclimate data. Statistical analysis suggests a weakening of the relationship between ENSO and SEA rainfall in the early nineteenth century data (~1835–1850), supporting results reported in previous global and regional studies based on palaeoclimate and documentary rainfall reconstructions. Possible causes of this weakening in teleconnection strength are then explored by examining a range of Southern Hemisphere circulation indices. The 1835–1850 period of low ENSO–SEA rainfall correlations appears to be characterised by a combination of reduced La Niña events and ENSO variance associated with a positive phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, with the possible influence of a predominately negative phase of the Southern Annular Mode. However, current temporal and geographical data limitations prevent definitive conclusions from being drawn. Despite these caveats, this study illustrates the considerable value of historical instrumental climate data in assessing long-term variations in climate mode teleconnections, particularly in the data-poor Southern Hemisphere.
-
ItemUncertainty in temperature projections reduced using carbon cycle and climate observations(Nature Research, 2013-08-01)The future behaviour of the carbon cycle is a major contributor to uncertainty in temperature projections for the twenty-first century1,2. Using a simplified climate model3, we show that, for a given emission scenario, it is the second most important contributor to this uncertainty after climate sensitivity, followed by aerosol impacts. Historical measurements of carbon dioxide concentrations4 have been used along with global temperature observations5 to help reduce this uncertainty. This results in an increased probability of exceeding a 2 °C global–mean temperature increase by 2100 while reducing the probability of surpassing a 6 °C threshold for non-mitigation scenarios such as the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A1B and A1FI scenarios6, as compared with projections from the Fourth Assessment Report7 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate sensitivity, the response of the carbon cycle and aerosol effects remain highly uncertain but historical observations of temperature and carbon dioxide imply a trade–off between them so that temperature projections are more certain than they would be considering each factor in isolation. As well as pointing out the promise from the formal use of observational constraints in climate projection, this also highlights the need for an holistic view of uncertainty.
-
Item
-
ItemThe attribution question (Commentary)(NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP, 2016-09-01)Understanding how the overall risks of extreme events are changing in a warming world requires both a thermodynamic perspective and an understanding of changes in the atmospheric circulation.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableSouthern Australia's warmest October on record: The role of ENSO and climate change(American Meteorological Society, 2016-12-01)Anthropogenic climate change was found to have a substantial influence on southern Australia’s extreme heat in October 2015. The relative influence of El Niño conditions was less clear.
-
ItemHuman-induced rainfall changes(Nature Research, 2014-08-01)Southwest Australia has become increasingly dry over the past century. Simulations with a high-resolution global climate model show that this trend is linked to greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion — and that it is likely to continue.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableThe weather@home regional climate modelling project for Australia and New Zealand(COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH, 2016-09-15)Abstract. A new climate modelling project has been developed for regional climate simulation and the attribution of weather and climate extremes over Australia and New Zealand. The project, known as weather@home Australia–New Zealand, uses public volunteers' home computers to run a moderate-resolution global atmospheric model with a nested regional model over the Australasian region. By harnessing the aggregated computing power of home computers, weather@home is able to generate an unprecedented number of simulations of possible weather under various climate scenarios. This combination of large ensemble sizes with high spatial resolution allows extreme events to be examined with well-constrained estimates of sampling uncertainty. This paper provides an overview of the weather@home Australia–New Zealand project, including initial evaluation of the regional model performance. The model is seen to be capable of resolving many climate features that are important for the Australian and New Zealand regions, including the influence of El Niño–Southern Oscillation on driving natural climate variability. To date, 75 model simulations of the historical climate have been successfully integrated over the period 1985–2014 in a time-slice manner. In addition, multi-thousand member ensembles have also been generated for the years 2013, 2014 and 2015 under climate scenarios with and without the effect of human influences. All data generated by the project are freely available to the broader research community.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableTHE ROLES OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND EL NINO IN THE RECORD LOW RAINFALL IN OCTOBER 2015 IN TASMANIA, AUSTRALIA(AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC, 2016-12)
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableTHE ROLE OF ANTHROPOGENIC FORCING IN THE RECORD 2013 AUSTRALIA-WIDE ANNUAL AND SPRING TEMPERATURES(AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC, 2014-09)
- 1 (current)
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5