Date: 13th Dec 2022, Tuesday (11:00am – 12:00pm)
Presenter: Scott Power (Centre for Applied Climate Sciences, University of Southern Queensland)

Abstract:
Prof Power will give an overview of the Centre and its current activities. The Centre’s applied nature, the importance of stakeholder engagement to its mission, and current activities and highlights will be emphasized.

Date: 19th Dec 2022, Monday (11:00am – 12:00pm)
Presenter: Song Chen (CCRS)
Topic: Developments of 100 m uSINGV

Abstract:
As a highly urbanised coastal city located near the equator, the growing urbanisation of Singapore can strongly influence the local meteorology and make it more vulnerable to meteorological hazards, such as the Urban Heat Island (UHI), urban flash flooding, and urban air pollution. To better understand these phenomena and to mitigate their adverse effects, high-resolution urban modelling has been a key research priority at CCRS. This presentation will introduce the recent efforts at CCRS on development of 100 m uSINGV, the urban version of UM based weather/climate modelling system in Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS). The talk will include the creation of ancillaries such as Land Use/Land Cover and urban morphologies, preliminary near-surface results comparing with observations, and impacts of high-resolution on the boundary layer representation. Progress of the anthropogenic heat capability in uSINGV and its impacts will also be briefly introduced.

Date: 18th Jan 2023, Wednesday (11:00am – 12:00pm)
Presenter: Nandini Ramesh (CSIRO)
Topic: Autumn Monsoons: A Newly Discovered Climate Type

Abstract:
Over most tropical land areas, the annual peak in precipitation occurs during summer, associated with the local monsoon circulation. However, in some coastal regions in the tropics the bulk of annual precipitation occurs in autumn, after the low-level summer monsoon westerlies have abated. Examples include the Nordeste region of Brazil, southeastern India, parts of the Malay Peninsula, and coastal Tanzania. Unlike equatorial regions, they receive little rainfall during local spring. Such areas are present along the eastern coasts of nearly all continents, suggesting that they comprise a coherent yet previously unrecognised global phenomenon. In this talk, I will show that these regions, which have previously been treated as independent regional anomalies, display several common characteristics, and explore a few hypotheses to explain the emergence of this unique “autumn monsoon” seasonal cycle along eastern coastlines across the global tropics.

Date: 16th Feb 2023, Thursday (11:00am – 12:00pm)
Presenter: Davide Faranda (French National Centre for Scientific Research)
Topic: Climate change has exacerbated the exceptional 2022 European-Mediterranean drought

Abstract:
A prolonged drought affected Western Europe and the Mediterranean region in the first nine months of 2022 producing large socio-ecological impacts. The role of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) in exacerbating this drought has been often invoked in the public debate, but the link between atmospheric circulation and ACC has not received much attention so far. Here we address this question by applying the method of circulation analogs, which allows us to identify atmospheric patterns in the period 1836-2021 very similar to those occurred in 2022. By comparing the circulation analogs when global warming was absent (1836-1915) with those occurred recently (1941-2021), and by excluding interannual and interdecadal variability as possible drivers, we identify the contribution of ACC. The 2022 drought was associated with an anticyclonic anomaly over Western Europe persistent over December 2021-August 2022. Circulation analogs of this atmospheric pattern in 1941-2021 feature 500 hPa geopotential height anomalies larger in both extent and magnitude, and higher temperatures at the surface, relative to those in 1836-1915. Both factors exacerbated the drought, by increasing the area affected and enhancing soil drying through evapotranspiration. While the occurrence of the atmospheric circulation associated with the 2022 drought has not become more frequent in recent decades, there is an increase of its interdecadal variability for which the influence of the Atlantic Multidecadal oscillation cannot be ruled out.

Date: 22nd Feb 2023, Wednesday (11:00am – 12:00pm)
Presenter: Xiangzhong (Remi) Luo (National University of Singapore)
Topic: Climate change impacts on global photosynthesis: perspectives from cross scale observations

Abstract:
Vegetation photosynthesis is the largest carbon flux in the global carbon cycle, removing CO2 from the atmosphere and contributing to climate change mitigation. Meanwhile, climate change, characterised by elevated CO2 concentration, rising temperature, and shifted rainfall, has caused considerable changes in global photosynthesis, though the magnitude – and even sometimes the direction – of the change are uncertain. In this talk, I will introduce our recent works in quantifying the response of vegetation photosynthesis to climatic drivers over short and long terms, using multiple observations across spatial scales (i.e. leaf traits, eddy covariance, remote sensing, atmospheric CO2 observation), as well as process-based land surface models and ecological theories.