Coupled and Ocean Model Studies of the Stability and Variability of the Earth


when googling ENSO IPO SAM IOD you get some great references that counter the IPCC line that pushes man-made climate change is dominant

here is one of them ............

There remains great uncertainty as to how variable the earth's climate system is. We propose to study the variability and stability of past and present and future climates using coupled ocean-atmosphere-ice-land surface models and stand-alone ocean and atmosphere models. This project covers four diverse yet intimately linked areas of research. 1. Investigation of large scale patterns of climate variability. While much focus on climate variability is associated with the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Southern Hemisphere extratropics has its own distinct patterns of variability. Of particular importance is the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) which is characterised by changes in the strength and position of the strong midlatitude westerlies. This ‘mode’ of variability is particularly robust – occurring in many climate models, even where ENSO is not captured – and has far reaching effects on the ocean and ice systems as well as regional climate. This has recently become an area of intense research, in particular as a robust trend in the characteristics of the SAM have become evident. Our work will investigate the response of the climate system to both variability and trends in the SAM. Continued research will also focus on the effect of the interaction between the atmosphere, ocean and sea ice systems in modulating the SAM. 2. While the patterns of variability may be hemispheric in nature distinct regional effects are evident. Australia (and New Zealand) are within the domain of the SAM and as such a large part of the continental climate variability (including rainfall and temperatures) are likely influenced by the SAM. In addition other patterns of variability including ENSO and an Indian Ocean counterpart – the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)– will have a controlling effect over the continent. We will be investigating the mechanisms behind the variability and trends for both Australian and New Zealand rainfall and determine the associated predictability of extreme climate events. The synoptic-style character of midlatitude climate hampers predictive skill at extended timescales. This is especially important for a country such as Australia with its semi-arid to arid climate and the predisposition to droughts. Increased knowledge of the influence the extratropics have on Australian climate, especially in terms of precipitation patterns and temperatures, will help to increase the skill of seasonal forecasting and thus be able to improve agricultural and water management decisions. The respective influences of the SAM, ENSO and IOD will be explored across the Australian continent, and more regionally for southwest Western Australia (as a continuation of the work by England et al., 2006) and Southeastern Australia (following on from previous work by Pook et al., 2006) 3. Over the past few decades significant changes in ocean circulation have also become apparent. A part of these trends is likely due to long term variations in the SH variability and associated changed in sea-ice distributions. Our work will focus on present day changes in the Southern Ocean thermohaline circulation, in particular changes associated with Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW). Simulated changes in sea-ice, atmospheric-ocean interactions and freshwater fluxes will be related to AABW variability. This in turn, will give us a better understanding of the stability of the Southern Ocean to climate pertubations. A number of perturbations (related to trends in Antarctic ice cover, the Southern Annular Mode and freshwater fluxes) will be applied to a present-day control run in order to establish the response of the Southern Ocean THC to climate change. The above work will revolve around both available observations and simulations carried out on one of the leading climate models – the NCAR CCSM – whose efficacy has been demonstrated on the APAC (SGI Altix) supercomputer. This is a computationally expensive model – simulating the global atmosphere, ocean, land and sea-ice at high spatial resolution, and as such requires significant time even across large numbers of processors. It also generates very large datasets of climate variable timeseries, and as such also has significant storage requirements. 4. Finally we will continue on a rather distinct line of interdisciplinary work that will look at the dispersal ability of marine species using a coupled global biological-ocean model. This research has the ability to distinguish between natural and anthropogenic species introduction - a particular concern as climate patterns, that affect both ocean circulation and habitat suitability, change. This research carried out on the APAC Linux cluster received the 2006 Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.