A few weeks ago I travelled to Melbourne to attend a Winter School and I finally found the time (and mood) to write about it. Melbourne had surprisingly good weather and it was nice to have a week of lectures and labs, reminiscent of my undergraduate days! The Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre for Excellence for Climate Extremes or CLEx, is made up of 5 Australian universities – the University of New South Wales, Monash University, the University of Melbourne, Australian National University and the University of Tasmania. The centre's research primarily focuses on climate extremes. The annual CLEx Winter School was held at the University of Melbourne from June 24th – 28th under the theme 'Modelling the climate system'. During the course of the week we heard from different academics and researchers on the fundamentals of climate modelling, model evaluation, the Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator (ACCESS) weather models, computing for climate modelling, data assimilation and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). It was interesting to hear about the sixth phase of the project (CMIP6), as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC’s) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) will be using climate model information obtained from the CMIP6 model analyses. There’s a good write up about it here and another about the ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’ (ECS) issue here. We also heard about the Young Earth Systems Scientists (YESS) Community, which is an international and multidisciplinary network of early career researchers in earth system sciences. For lab work we were divided into groups and each group was given a task to work on. Our group had to melt Greenland and Antarctica and determine what impact that would have on the climate. It was nice to have the computational modelling systems (CMS) team around, for additional support. On day 4 we heard from all the groups about their projects and got to see a range of interesting plots. As soon as we finished the session, my friend and I took a tram to Federation Square to explore the city. As we walked on Princess Bridge, we were able to see the beautiful hues of dusk, over the River Yarra. We then walked to the State Library of Victoria (a must see for anyone who travels to Melbourne, in my opinion!). Established in 1854, it is the oldest public library in Australia and one of the first free public libraries in the world. We had a communication workshop on the last day of the Winter School and as a person interested in science communication, I found it very useful. I will tell you more about it in my next post. I am glad I got the opportunity to be a part of the CLEx Winter School because it provided a good introduction to climate modelling. The hands-on lab work supplemented the lectures and helped me understand concepts of climate modelling better. Not having a background in numerical analysis did make it slightly challenging for me to understand certain concepts discussed during some of the lectures, but it was a good place for me to start thinking about the fundamentals of modelling. Statistician George Box’s remark ‘all models are wrong, but some are useful’ was quoted in a few of the lectures. It was a good way of reminding us that while our climate models will not simulate the real scenario, their outputs and other features will enable us to have a better understanding about the sophisticated processes. I have come back from this Winter School feeling motivated! I am looking forward to using the skills I gained and the connections I made, to carry out more impactful research during my PhD😊
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AuthorBudding climate scientist from Sri Lanka, currently pursuing a PhD on heatwaves, at the Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC) at UNSW, Sydney. Believes in using effective science communication to bridge the gap between science and society :) Archives
June 2021
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