Changes to the drivers of fire weather with a warming climate – a case study of southeast Tasmania

Projected changes to the global climate system have great implications for the incidence of large infrequent fires in many regions. Here we examine the synoptic-scale and local-scale influences on the incidence of extreme fire weather days and consider projections of the large-scale mean climate to explore future fire weather projections. We focus on a case study region with periodic extreme fire dangers; southeast Tasmania, Australia. We compare the performance of a dynamically downscaled regional climate model with Global Climate Model outputs as a tool for examining the local-scale influences while accounting for high regional variability. Many of the worst fires in Tasmania and the southeast Australian region are associated with deep cold fronts and strong prefrontal winds. The downscaled simulations reproduce this synoptic type with greater fidelity than a typical global climate model. The incidence of systems in this category is projected to increase through the century under a high emission scenario, driven mainly by an increase in the temperature of air masses, with little change in the strength of the systems. The regional climate model projected increase in frequency is smaller than for the global climate models used as input, with a large model range and natural variability. We also demonstrate how a blocking Foehn effect and topographic channelling contributed to the extreme conditions during an extreme fire weather day in Tasmania in January 2013. Effects such as these are likely to contribute to high fire danger throughout the century. Regional climate models are useful tools that enable various meteorological drivers of fire danger to be considered in projections of future fire danger.     

Comparison of geostrophic and nonlinear balanced winds from LIMS data and implications for derived dynamical quantities

Nimbus 7 LIMS geopotential height data are utilized to infer the rotational wind distribution in the Northern Hemisphere stratosphere and lower mesosphere during a period of substantial wave-mean flow interaction in January, 1979. Rotational winds are derived from the application of a successive relaxation numerical procedure which incorporates the spherical polar coordinate iterative algorithm ofPaegle andTomlinson (1975) for the nondivergent nonlinear balance equation. Optimum convergence of the numerical solutions is found to occur when under-relaxation is utilized. The LIMS height analyses were also latitudinally smoothed and constrained to obey the ellipticity criterion for spherical coordinates. The balanced winds are compared with geostrophically derived values and within situ radiosonde reports for 100 mb to 10 mb over Berlin.From a localized perspective, the Berlin-LIMS comparison indicates that radiosonde and balanced wind vectors exhibit somewhat closer agreement in direction than is associated with the geostrophic estimates. However, substantial quantitative differences between radiosonde, balanced, and geostrophic wind speeds are also evident, suggesting that caution should be exercised in the local application of derived winds, as for example in the quantitative interpretation of trajectories derived from satellite height analyses during periods of enhanced stratospheric wave activity.On a longitudinally averaged basis, balanced zonal-mean wind speeds are typically 20% weaker than geostrophic values in polar latitudes, and as much as 50% weaker in tropical and midlatitude regions. Meridional balanced wind velocities, at a given longitude, are generally within ±10% of geostrophic values. Although these alterations in horizontal wind components result in only modest differences between balanced and geostrophic meridional eddy heat fluxes, a more substantial change appears in the meridional eddy momentum flux analysis. The corresponding patterns of Eliassen-Palm flux divergence are found to be somewhat more (less) intense for the balanced wind case in the stratosphere (lower mesosphere) in polar latitudes.     

Realised added value in dynamical downscaling of Australian climate change

Climate Dynamics - Coarse resolution global climate models (GCMs) cannot resolve fine-scale drivers of regional climate, which is the scale where climate adaptation decisions are made. Regional...     

The simulation of cutoff lows in a regional climate model: reliability and future trends

Cutoff lows are an important source of rainfall in the mid-latitudes that climate models need to simulate accurately to give confidence in climate projections for rainfall. Coarse-scale general circulation models used for climate studies show some notable biases and deficiencies in the simulation of cutoff lows in the Australian region and important aspects of the broader circulation such as atmospheric blocking and the split jet structure observed over Australia. The regional climate model conformal cubic atmospheric model or CCAM gives an improvement in some aspects of the simulation of cutoffs in the Australian region, including a reduction in the underestimate of the frequency of cutoff days by more than 15 % compared to a typical GCM. This improvement is due at least in part to substantially higher resolution. However, biases in the simulation of the broader circulation, blocking and the split jet structure are still present. In particular, a northward bias in the central latitude of cutoff lows creates a substantial underestimate of the associated rainfall over Tasmania in April to October. Also, the regional climate model produces a significant north–south distortion of the vertical profile of cutoff lows, with the largest distortion occurring in the cooler months that was not apparent in GCM simulations. The remaining biases and presence of new biases demonstrates that increased horizontal resolution is not the only requirement in the reliable simulation of cutoff lows in climate models. Notwithstanding the biases in their simulation, the regional climate model projections show some responses to climate warming that are noteworthy. The projections indicate a marked closing of the split jet in winter. This change is associated with changes to atmospheric blocking in the Tasman Sea, which decreases in June to November (by up to 7.9 m s^?1), and increases in December to May. The projections also show a reduction in the number of annual cutoff days by 67 % over the century, together with an increase in their intensity, and these changes are strongest in spring and summer.     

Comparison of data and derived quantities for the middle atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere

Before data from satellites can be used with confidence in dynamical studies of the middle atmosphere an assessment of their reliability is necessary. To this end, independently analysed data from different instruments may be compared. In this paper, this is done for the Southern Hemisphere as a prelude to the dynamical studies of the middle atmosphere being fostered by the MASH project of the Middle Atmosphere Program. Data from two infrared radiometers are used: a limb scanner (LIMS) and a nadir sounder (SSU). While there is usually qualitative agreement between basic fields (temperatures, winds), substantial quantitative differences are found, with more pronounced differences in fields of Eliassen-Palm flux divergence and Ertel's potential vorticity.The fidelity of the base-level analysis to which satellite data are tied is important for calculating quantities of relevance to dynamical theory. In the Southern Hemisphere, conventional data are sparse and, through the analysis procedure, this introduces errors into derived fields for the middle atmosphere. The impact of using base-level analyses from different sources is assessed. Large discrepancies are found in fields computed by differentiation.Several techniques are suggested whereby the reliability of fields derived from satellite data may be gauged.     

Grid-enabling Geographically Weighted Regression: A Case Study of Participation in Higher Education in England

Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) is a method of spatial statistical analysis used to explore geographical differences in the effect of one or more predictor variables upon a response variable. However, as a form of local analysis, it does not scale well to (especially) large data sets because of the repeated processes of fitting and then comparing multiple regression surfaces. A solution is to make use of developing grid infrastructures, such as that provided by the National Grid Service (NGS) in the UK, treating GWR as an "embarrassing parallel" problem and building on existing software platforms to provide a bridge between an open source implementation of GWR (in R) and the grid system. To demonstrate the approach, we apply it to a case study of participation in Higher Education, using GWR to detect spatial variation in social, cultural and demographic indicators of participation.     

A regional response in mean westerly circulation and rainfall to projected climate warming over Tasmania, Australia

Coupled ocean–atmosphere general circulation models (GCMs) lack sufficient resolution to model the regional detail of changes to mean circulation and rainfall with projected climate warming. In this paper, changes in mean circulation and rainfall in GCMs are compared to those in a variable resolution regional climate model, the Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM), under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario. The study site is Tasmania, Australia, which is positioned within the mid-latitude westerlies of the southern hemisphere. CCAM projects a different response in mean sea level pressure and mid-latitude westerly circulation to climate warming to the GCMs used as input, and shows greater regional detail of the boundaries between regions of increasing and decreasing rainfall. Changes in mean circulation dominate the mean rainfall response in western Tasmania, whereas changes to rainfall in the East Coast are less related to mean circulation changes. CCAM projects an amplification of the dominant westerly circulation over Tasmania and this amplifies the seasonal cycle of wet winters and dry summers in the west. There is a larger change in the strength than in the incidence of westerly circulation and rainfall events. We propose the regional climate model displays a more sensitive atmospheric response to the different rates of warming of land and sea than the GCMs as input. The regional variation in these results highlight the need for dynamical downscaling of coupled general circulation models to finely resolve the influence of mean circulation and boundaries between regions of projected increases and decreases in rainfall.     

On regional dynamical downscaling for the assessment and projection of temperature and precipitation extremes across Tasmania, Australia

The ability of an ensemble of six GCMs, downscaled to a 0.1° lat/lon grid using the Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model over Tasmania, Australia, to simulate observed extreme temperature and precipitation climatologies and statewide trends is assessed for 1961–2009 using a suite of extreme indices. The downscaled simulations have high skill in reproducing extreme temperatures, with the majority of models reproducing the statewide averaged sign and magnitude of recent observed trends of increasing warm days and warm nights and decreasing frost days. The warm spell duration index is however underestimated, while variance is generally overrepresented in the extreme temperature range across most regions. The simulations show a lower level of skill in modelling the amplitude of the extreme precipitation indices such as very wet days, but simulate the observed spatial patterns and variability. In general, simulations of dry extreme precipitation indices are underestimated in dryer areas and wet extremes indices are underestimated in wetter areas. Using two SRES emissions scenarios, the simulations indicate a significant increase in warm nights compared to a slightly more moderate increase in warm days, and an increase in maximum 1- and 5-day precipitation intensities interspersed with longer consecutive dry spells across Tasmania during the twenty-first century.