Indian Ocean causes drought and heatwaves in South America
Indian Ocean convection caused a powerful planetary wave that led to a drought in South America and a marine heatwave in the South Atlantic that lasted for months.
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Category: RP4 Climate Variability
Research brief: Winter storms accelerate disintegration of sea ice in the Arctic
Winter storms over the Arctic leave a legacy that breaks up the ice, melts it from beneath and has led to constant ongoing decline in old ice that far exceeds the period of the storm itself.
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Research brief: Indian Ocean played key role in rapid 2016 Antarctic ice decline
Antarctic sea ice had been growing in area since 1979, despite the influence of global warming. Then unexpectedly in the austral spring of 2016, there was a rapid decline. CLEX researchers used multiple runs of a coupled ocean-atmosphere climate model to investigate whether these distant influences played a role and, if so, the level of the contribution to the sea-ice decline.
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Research brief: Observations of small ocean eddies in the Arctic using glider technology
Using novel ocean glider technology, a team of researchers from France, Norway, and Australia observed small eddy-like lenses of cold water in July 2017 along the western Svalbard shelf in the Arctic.
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Research brief: Southern ozone hole observations could improve seasonal forecasts
CLEX researchers find strong correlation between ozone hole size and Australian summer temperatures. While there is no causal link between the two, the changes are driven by the same source – ocean temperatures.
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Research brief: Global warming temperatures set to accelerate as trade winds slow
Natural variability has been found to play a role in the speed of warming of land surface temperatures. With indications that the negative Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation is now becoming positive, this suggests that the hiatus period is over and we are likely entering a phase of accelerated warming of global surface air temperatures.
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Research brief: Data assimilation produces more realistic representation of Antarctic warming
New research confirms the long-term cooling over Antarctica during the last millennium and the delayed onset of anthropogenic warming are found in simulations that assimilate palaeoclimate data. This is not evident in simulations without data assimilation.
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Research brief: New statistical method identifies robust reconstructions of past ENSO events
This study employs a new statistical approach to reconstructing ENSO which enables researchers to identify times in the past when palaeo-ENSO reconstructions are most robust. They found that ENSO reconstructions are most reliable from 1580-1700, and from 1825 to present.
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Research brief: New method produces more precise and complete representation of wave climate variability
CLEX researchers present a new method to examine seasonal variations in the global wave climate that accounts for the full directional wave spectra and includes wave systems with different frequencies and directions separately.
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“Impossible” research produces 400-year El Niño record and reveals astonishing change
Dr Mandy Freund and CLEX colleagues have produced a world first 400-year long record of El Niño activity. It’s a record that was previously considered impossible to extract from coral cores.
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Research brief: Which species matter most for marine ecosystems to survive climate change?
CLEX researchers and colleagues discovered which species are most important in transferring climate change impacts through the ecosystem using a model that simulated the southeast Australian ecosystem through to 2050.
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Research brief: New understanding reveals how jets and cyclones interact
A new framework for cyclone jet interaction improve our understanding of how the turbulent atmosphere is organised in coherent motions via the jet stream
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Research Briefs
Research brief: More accurate prediction of tree mortality during droughts
Research brief: New calculations reveal Arctic could be ice-free at 1.5°C
Research brief: New dataset shows NW cloudbands are increasing over Australia
Research brief: Winter storms accelerate disintegration of sea ice in the Arctic