Supervisors:

Location: Monash

The aim of this project is to gain a better understanding of the drivers of seasonal climate extremes over Australia, with a focus on the potential role of tropical ocean basins.

Tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are known to have a large impact on the global circulation, as convection over warm waters produces heating in the atmosphere and triggers Rossby waves which are then able to influence weather and climate in the extra-tropics.

The student researcher will use a range of observations and climate model outputs to examine the variability of extreme temperature and rainfall across Australia. They will also use outputs from model experiments to test the relative impact of tropical SSTs in the Pacific and Indian Oceans on the distributions of extreme climate fields. This project is an exciting opportunity to gain experience in running and analysing a numerical model while also learning about what can cause extreme heat or rainfall events in Australia.

 

Requirements: This work could potentially contribute to a peer‐reviewed publication, and some knowledge in programming language or visualization software (e.g. Python, Fortran, NCL, R or IDL) is desirable.

 

If you are interested in this project, please fill out the application form.