Large-scale ocean-atmospheric processes and seasonal rainfall variability in South Australia: accounting for non-linearity and establishing the hierarchy of influence

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 1180-1198 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. R. Tozer ◽  
A. S. Kiem
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Rainfall Variability ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Seasonal Rainfall ◽  
Atmospheric Processes ◽  
Hierarchy Of Influence

scholarly journals Combined analysis of temperature and rainfall variability as they relate to climate indices in Northern Algeria over the 1972–2013 period

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 584-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayoub Zeroual ◽  
Ali A. Assani ◽  
Mohamed Meddi
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Rainfall Variability ◽  
Coastal Region ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Seasonal Rainfall ◽  
Climate Index ◽  
Climate Indices ◽  
Mean Values ◽  
Northern Algeria

Many studies have highlighted breaks in mean values of temperature and precipitation time series since the 1970s. Given that temperatures have continued to increase following that decade, the first question addressed in this study is whether other breaks in mean values have occurred since that time. The second question is to determine which climate indices influence temperature and rainfall in the coastal region of Northern Algeria. To address these two questions, we analyzed the temporal variability of temperature and annual and seasonal rainfall as they relate to four climate indices at seven coastal stations in Algeria during the 1972–2013 period using the Mann–Kendall, Lombard, and canonical correlation (CC) analysis methods.The annual and seasonal maximum, minimum and mean temperatures increased significantly over that time period. Most of these increases are gradual, implying a slow warming trend. In contrast, total annual and seasonal rainfall did not show any significant change. CC analysis revealed that annual and seasonal temperatures are negatively correlated with the Western Mediterranean Oscillation (WeMOI) climate index that characterizes atmospheric circulation over the Mediterranean basin. On the other hand, rainfall is positively correlated with a large-scale atmospheric index such as the Southern Oscillation Index.

scholarly journals Multi-century cool- and warm-season rainfall reconstructions for Australia's major climatic regions

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 1751-1770 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mandy Freund ◽  
Benjamin J. Henley ◽  
David J. Karoly ◽  
Kathryn J. Allen ◽  
Patrick J. Baker
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Rainfall Variability ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Seasonal Rainfall ◽  
Spatial Extent ◽  
The Past ◽  
Millennium Drought ◽  
Australian Continent ◽  
Regional Rainfall

Abstract. Australian seasonal rainfall is strongly affected by large-scale ocean–atmosphere climate influences. In this study, we exploit the links between these precipitation influences, regional rainfall variations, and palaeoclimate proxies in the region to reconstruct Australian regional rainfall between four and eight centuries into the past. We use an extensive network of palaeoclimate records from the Southern Hemisphere to reconstruct cool (April–September) and warm (October–March) season rainfall in eight natural resource management (NRM) regions spanning the Australian continent. Our bi-seasonal rainfall reconstruction aligns well with independent early documentary sources and existing reconstructions. Critically, this reconstruction allows us, for the first time, to place recent observations at a bi-seasonal temporal resolution into a pre-instrumental context, across the entire continent of Australia. We find that recent 30- and 50-year trends towards wetter conditions in tropical northern Australia are highly unusual in the multi-century context of our reconstruction. Recent cool-season drying trends in parts of southern Australia are very unusual, although not unprecedented, across the multi-century context. We also use our reconstruction to investigate the spatial and temporal extent of historical drought events. Our reconstruction reveals that the spatial extent and duration of the Millennium Drought (1997–2009) appears either very much below average or unprecedented in southern Australia over at least the last 400 years. Our reconstruction identifies a number of severe droughts over the past several centuries that vary widely in their spatial footprint, highlighting the high degree of diversity in historical droughts across the Australian continent. We document distinct characteristics of major droughts in terms of their spatial extent, duration, intensity, and seasonality. Compared to the three largest droughts in the instrumental period (Federation Drought, 1895–1903; World War II Drought, 1939–1945; and the Millennium Drought, 1997–2005), we find that the historically documented Settlement Drought (1790–1793), Sturt's Drought (1809–1830) and the Goyder Line Drought (1861–1866) actually had more regionalised patterns and reduced spatial extents. This seasonal rainfall reconstruction provides a new opportunity to understand Australian rainfall variability by contextualising severe droughts and recent trends in Australia.

scholarly journals Multi-century cool and warm season rainfall reconstructions for Australia's major climatic regions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mandy Freund ◽  
Benjamin J. Henley ◽  
David J. Karoly ◽  
Kathryn J. Allen ◽  
Patrick J. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Rainfall Variability ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Seasonal Rainfall ◽  
Spatial Extent ◽  
Annual Rainfall ◽  
The Past ◽  
Millennium Drought ◽  
Australian Continent ◽  
Regional Rainfall

Abstract. Australian seasonal rainfall is strongly influenced by large-scale ocean-atmosphere climate influences. In this study, we exploit the links between these large-scale precipitation influences, regional rainfall variations, and palaeoclimate proxies in the region to reconstruct Australian regional rainfall between four and eight centuries into the past. We use an extensive network of palaeoclimate records from the Southern Hemisphere to reconstruct cool (Apr–Sep) and warm (Oct–Mar) season rainfall in eight natural resource management (NRM) regions spanning the Australian continent. Our sub-annual rainfall reconstruction aligns well with independent early documentary sources and existing reconstructions. Critically, this reconstruction allows us, for the first time, to place recent observations at a sub-annual temporal resolution into a pre-instrumental context, across the entire continent of Australia. We find that recent 30-year and 50-year trends towards wetter conditions in tropical northern Australia are highly unusual in the multi-century context of our reconstruction. Recent cool season drying trends in parts of southern Australia are also very unusual, although not unprecedented, across the multi-century context. We also use our reconstruction to investigate the spatial and temporal extent of historical drought events. Our reconstruction reveals that the spatial extent and duration of the Millennium drought (1997–2009) appears either very much below average or unprecedented in southern Australia over at least the last 400 years. Our reconstruction identifies a number of severe droughts over the past several centuries that vary widely in their spatial footprint, highlighting the high degree of diversity in historical droughts across the Australian continent. We document distinct characteristics of major droughts in terms of their spatial extent, duration, intensity, and seasonality. Compared to the three largest droughts in the instrumental period (Federation drought [1895–1903], World War II drought [1939–1945], and the Millennium drought [1997–2005]), we find that the historically documented Settlement drought [1790–1793], Sturt drought [1809–1830] and the Goyder Line drought [1861–1866] actually had more regionalised patterns and reduced spatial extents. This seasonal rainfall reconstruction provides a new opportunity to understand Australian rainfall variability, by contextualising severe droughts and recent trends in Australia.

scholarly journals Coupling between Large-Scale Atmospheric Processes and Mesoscale Land–Atmosphere Interactions in the U.S. Southern Great Plains during Summer. Part II: Mean Impacts of the Mesoscale

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 1247-1258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Time Scales ◽  
Great Plains ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Surface Heterogeneity ◽  
Atmospheric Modeling ◽  
Mesoscale Circulations ◽  
Southern Great Plains ◽  
Atmospheric Processes

Abstract This is Part II of a two-part study of mesoscale land–atmosphere interactions in the summertime U.S. Southern Great Plains. Part I focused on case studies drawn from monthlong (July 1995–97), high-resolution Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) simulations carried out to investigate these interactions. These case studies were chosen to highlight key features of the lower-tropospheric mesoscale circulations that frequently arise in this region and season due to mesoscale heterogeneity in the surface fluxes. In this paper, Part II, the RAMS-simulated mesoscale dynamical processes described in the Part I case studies are examined from a domain-averaged perspective to assess their importance in the overall regional hydrometeorology. The spatial statistics of key simulated mesoscale variables—for example, vertical velocity and the vertical flux of water vapor—are quantified here. Composite averages of the mesoscale and large-scale-mean variables over different meteorological or dynamical regimes are also calculated. The main finding is that, during dry periods, or similarly, during periods characterized by large-scale-mean subsidence, the characteristic signature of surface-heterogeneity-forced mesoscale circulations, including enhanced vertical motion variability and enhanced mesoscale fluxes in the lowest few kilometers of the atmosphere, consistently emerges. Furthermore, the impact of these mesoscale circulations is nonnegligible compared to the large-scale dynamics at domain-averaged (200 km × 200 km) spatial scales and weekly to monthly time scales. These findings support the hypothesis that the land– atmosphere interactions associated with mesoscale surface heterogeneity can provide pathways whereby diurnal, mesoscale atmospheric processes can scale up to have more general impacts at larger spatial scales and over longer time scales.

scholarly journals Climate SPHINX: evaluating the impact of resolution and stochastic physics parameterisations in the EC-Earth global climate model

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1383-1402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Davini ◽  
Jost von Hardenberg ◽  
Susanna Corti ◽  
Hannah M. Christensen ◽  
Stephan Juricke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Rainfall Variability ◽  
Global Climate Model ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Low Resolution ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Stochastic Physics

Abstract. The Climate SPHINX (Stochastic Physics HIgh resolutioN eXperiments) project is a comprehensive set of ensemble simulations aimed at evaluating the sensitivity of present and future climate to model resolution and stochastic parameterisation. The EC-Earth Earth system model is used to explore the impact of stochastic physics in a large ensemble of 30-year climate integrations at five different atmospheric horizontal resolutions (from 125 up to 16 km). The project includes more than 120 simulations in both a historical scenario (1979–2008) and a climate change projection (2039–2068), together with coupled transient runs (1850–2100). A total of 20.4 million core hours have been used, made available from a single year grant from PRACE (the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and close to 1.5 PB of output data have been produced on SuperMUC IBM Petascale System at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Garching, Germany. About 140 TB of post-processed data are stored on the CINECA supercomputing centre archives and are freely accessible to the community thanks to an EUDAT data pilot project. This paper presents the technical and scientific set-up of the experiments, including the details on the forcing used for the simulations performed, defining the SPHINX v1.0 protocol. In addition, an overview of preliminary results is given. An improvement in the simulation of Euro-Atlantic atmospheric blocking following resolution increase is observed. It is also shown that including stochastic parameterisation in the low-resolution runs helps to improve some aspects of the tropical climate – specifically the Madden–Julian Oscillation and the tropical rainfall variability. These findings show the importance of representing the impact of small-scale processes on the large-scale climate variability either explicitly (with high-resolution simulations) or stochastically (in low-resolution simulations).

scholarly journals Using Empirical Orthogonal Teleconnections to evaluate interannual rainfall variability over China in the Met Office Unified Model Global Atmosphere 6.0 and Global Coupled 2.0 configurations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Christine Stephan ◽  
Nicholas P. Klingaman ◽  
Pier Luigi Vidale ◽  
Andrew G. Turner ◽  
Marie-Estelle Demory ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Rainfall Variability ◽  
Reanalysis Data ◽  
Horizontal Resolution ◽  
Unified Model ◽  
Seasonal Precipitation ◽  
Climate Simulations ◽  
Interannual Rainfall Variability ◽  
The Mean

Abstract. Six climate simulations of the Met Office Unified Model Global Atmosphere 6.0 and Global Coupled 2.0 configurations are evaluated against observations and reanalysis data for their ability to simulate the mean state and year-to-year variability of precipitation over China. To analyze the sensitivity to air-sea coupling and horizontal resolution, atmosphere-only and coupled integrations at atmospheric horizontal resolutions of N96, N216 and N512 (corresponding to ~ 200, 90, and 40 km in the zonal direction at the equator, respectively) are analyzed. The mean and interannual variance of seasonal precipitation are too high in all simulations over China, but improve with finer resolution and coupling. Empirical Orthogonal Teleconnection (EOT) analysis is applied to simulated and observed precipitation to identify spatial patterns of temporally coherent interannual variability in seasonal precipitation. To connect these patterns to large-scale atmospheric and coupled air-sea processes, atmospheric and oceanic fields are regressed onto the corresponding seasonal-mean timeseries. All simulations reproduce the observed leading pattern of interannual rainfall variability in winter, spring and autumn; the leading pattern in summer is present in all but one simulation. However, only in two simulations are the four leading patterns associated with the observed physical mechanisms. Coupled simulations capture more observed patterns of variability and associate more of them with the correct physical mechanism, compared to atmosphere-only simulations at the same resolution. However, finer resolution does not improve the fidelity of these patterns or their associated mechanisms. This shows that evaluating climate models by only geographical distribution of mean precipitation and its interannual variance is insufficient. The EOT analysis adds knowledge about coherent variability and associated mechanisms.

scholarly journals Towards a hydrogen economy – a sustainable pathway for global energy transition

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-107
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Kwok
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Thermal Engineering ◽  
Hydrogen Economy ◽  
Carbon Abatement ◽  
Electric System ◽  
Industrial Sectors ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Scale Integration

Hydrogen is receiving increasing attention for achieving carbon abatement in various sectors, including transport, logistics, thermal engineering and industrial feedstock, etc. Hydrogen can also support distributed power supply that raises national energy security. Both commercial and industrial sectors share a common vision that increasing the cost-effectiveness of renewable hydrogen represents their strategic achievement towards substantial sustainability. This paper explains how hydrogen can play seven roles in the energy transition which include large-scale integration of renewable energy into the power grid, medium for storing and distributing energy across sectors and/or regions, a buffer to increase the electric system resilience and clean fuel for fuel cell vehicles to decarbonise transport. Besides, hydrogen can decarbonise building energy consumption and serve as feedstock using captured carbon. Power Assets Holdings Limited (PAH), a global investor in energy and utility-related business, has identified a hydrogen economy as a strategic vision in its business plan for zero carbon readiness in 2035 and a carbon-free business model in 2050. In this paper, the features and attributes of different hydrogen projects, such as H21 and InTEGRel in the UK and Hydrogen Park in South Australia, are discussed to demonstrate the commercial deployment of hydrogen power.

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