teaching

 

In General


A Climate Model for students and teaching: The Monash Simple Climate Model


Undergraduate


Courses:

EAE3111: Climate dynamics [lecture notes]

EAE2011: Environmental problem solving and visualisation.


Graduate


Courses:

M4541: Advanced Climate Dynamics

EAE4020/5020: Statistics for Climate dynamics [lecture material]

M4401: Introduction to Honours Computing / FORTRAN


CLEX lecture series


Statistics for Climate Dynamics [lecture material]


Projects:

Current research projects will be based on my current research focus, which can change relatively fast. A good first Idea for Honours projects with me as supervisor you can get by looking at my research and publications website and below at the PhD projects.


see also EAE School honours projects for Dietmar Dommenget


Most of my honours project would, in one or the other way, involve work with my simple climate model: -> [GREB-model] (The Monash Simple Climate Model).



PhD Projects


PhD projects strongly depend on my current research, on the interest and skills of the student and on the fundings available. To get an idea about my research and how a PhD project could look like, take a look at my research and publications website.


A few ideas for PhD project that would currently interest me:


  1. ★ Dynamics of El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO)

The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) mode is the most important mode of natural variability on time scales from seasons to a few years. State-of-the-art climate models (e.g. CMIP5 models) can simulate this mode, but the dynamics and feedbacks that control this mode are significantly biases in CMIP5 model simulations. It is also unclear how exactly are the different physical processes contributing to the dynamics of ENSO. There are number of different aspects of ENSO dynamics that can be explored in PhD projects. They range from developing theoretical models of the ENSO dynamics, analysis of CMIP models or conducting sensitivity experiments with climate models to understand ENSO.


  1. ★ El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in idealised worlds

The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) mode is the most important mode of natural variability on time scales from seasons to a few years. We conducted a series of idealsed world simulations, in which we simplified the ocean basins and land distribution to different configurations (e.g., single basins, twin basin, three basins, etc.). The resulting dynamics of ENSO and tropical basins interactions are very interesting and allow for many different studies. Aspects like ENSO strength, period, pattern formation, non-linearity and tropical basin interaction can all be studied with this setup.


  1. ★ El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the past 500mill years of the Earth history

Over the past 500mill. years the configuration of land ocean has change dramatically. This will have affected the dynamics of El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) mode, the most important mode of natural variability on time scales from seasons to a few years. In this project we will simulate the global climate at different time periods of the Earth history to study how ENSO hs changed over time.


  1. ★ Tropical Pacific Mean State Changes

State-of-the-art climate models suggest that tropical Pacific mean state will change into a permanent El Nino state associated with a weakening and shift of the Walker circulation, which will have significant impact on large-scale precipitation patterns. However, the observed tropical Pacific mean state change over the past few decades is the opposite. The project aims to understand why the models are so different from what is observed, and tries to build a conceptual understanding on what processes will control the tropical mean state changes.


  1. ★  Tropical Basin Interactions

The three tropical ocean basins interact with each other via the tropical atmosphere to lead to interactive climate variability on monthly to decadal time scales. This is a fairly new field of research. The project will aim at understanding how this interaction works. We will focus on developing conceptual and theoretical models to describe this interaction. This project will be a combination of model and observations data analysis, idealised climate model simulations and the development of a simple conceptual model.


  1. ★  Development of Climate Models

State-of-the-art climate models are highly complex models that simulate many different climate subsystems (atmosphere, ocean, land, ice, chemistry, clouds, precipitation, etc.) that fully interact with each other. Unfortunately, they also fully interact with all their errors leading to substantial biases in the simulation of the mean climate. These biases are likely to be one of the main limitations of todays climate models. The project will aim at a new approach in climate model development: We will try to correct the interaction between subsystem by "flux" correcting the interaction that will force the model to have a realistic mean state around which it can respond to external forcings (global warming). This project could be in collaboration with the Max Planck institue in Hamburg, Germany; working on their newest climate model ICON-RUBY.


  1. ★ Simulations Ice Age Cycles

I have developed the simple climate model GREB that can simulate the climate response to external forcing with realistic regional and seasonal patterns. It can compute 100,000yrs of simulation per day. Thus it is a nice tool to study long time Ice Ages cycles. A key aspect of the climate system on time scales longer than 1000yrs is the deep ocean heat content and carbon storage. The aim of this project is simulate realistic ice-age cycles with a fully coupled earth system model including an ice sheet and carbon cycle model. This may require some model development.


  1. ★ The Early Atmosphere of Mars

The Mars climate paradox is that abundant geological evidence points towards voluminous water on the surface of Mars in the past, whereas various climate models have not been able to achieve sustained temperatures above the freezing point. New research suggests that high amounts of carbonyl sulfide (OCS) would have been present in the Martian atmosphere during and for a while after volcanically active periods. OCS is about 10 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than methane. The project will aim at simulating the early Mars atmosphere with a simplified atmospheric general circulation model. This is an interdisciplinary project in collaboration with assoc. prof. (geology) Andrew Tomkins.



Currently we have funding for PhD scholarships as part of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Climate Extremes. Have a look at the projects website:


http://www.climateextremes.org.au/