SE Australian Recent Climate History

We are pleased to welcome Swiss researcher Raphael Neukom to the University of Melbourne as part of a National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellowship. He will be working with us for six months between July–August 2010 and April–July 2011 developing Southern Hemisphere climate reconstructions.

Raphael is a palaeoclimatologist who received his PhD from the University of Bern for compiling all the annually-resolved proxy records for South America as part of the Past Global Changes (PAGES) regional 2K initiative and developing the first large-scale climate reconstructions for the continent.

His two most recent publications include a summer and winter temperature and precipitation reconstructions for southern South America as far back as A.D. 900.

He is spending time with Joelle Gergis and Ailie Gallant discussing reconstruction methodology and data management to help the SEARCH project develop its long-term climate reconstructions for south-eastern Australia and the broader Australasian region.

During his fellowship, Raphael will compile all the currently available high-resolution records from Australasia and South America regions to develop seminal Southern Hemisphere–wide climate reconstructions.

Reconstructions of past atmospheric circulation from this less-studied region of the globe will then be compared against climate model data to assess the regional climate variability in different parts of the Southern Hemisphere.

Raphael plans to have his results ready in time for incorporation into the next global climate change assessment report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) due out in 2013.

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University of Melbourne Federation Fellow, Professor David Karoly, will hold a public talk in Bathurst to outline the SEARCH project’s landmark research into the climate history of south-eastern Australia.

Professor Karoly will also be calling for assistance to identify local sources that may be of use to the project, such as early instrumental weather records and documentary accounts.

Date: Thursday 29 July 2010
Time: 3:00PM – 4:30PM
Venue: Rahamim, St Joseph’s Mount, 34 Busby Street, Bathurst NSW

Download the invitation (PDF).

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The State Library of New South Wales has published a feature on the SEARCH project in their quarterly SL Magazine.

In the article, lead researcher Joelle Gergis describes how the project is drawing on the wealth of information available in the State Library of New South Wales’ First Fleet journals collection.

Download a PDF copy of the article here.

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Black Thursday. Image: State Library of Victoria

The SEARCH project will draw on the expertise of volunteers to build a comprehensive online database of early Australian meteorological records and historical accounts of weather events.

Volunteers will work out of our partner libraries, The State Library of Victoria, The State Library of New South Wales and the National Library of Australia to help us populate the SEARCH Project’s OzDocs Database with this valuable information about South-East Australia’s climate past.

This citizen science project will see our volunteers scouring historical documents such as early settlers’ diaries, the colony’s first newspapers and Government Gazettes, for evidence of significant weather events.

This data will help us piece together details of our climate history, allowing the SEARCH team to view our current climate patterns in the context of natural historical variability.

The OzDocs project is currently in pilot stage. If you would like to contribute as a volunteer, please sign up for a user account, or contact the project team at info@climatehistory.com.au for further information.

The Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) project is undertaking a similar climate history citizen science project, spearheaded by SEARCH project partner researcher Dr Rob Allen from the UK Met Office.

A volunteer team in Adelaide is looking at the early South Australian weather records of Charles Todd, who kept meticulous weather data from Adelaide between the 1870s to the early 1900s.

The ACRE project was recently profiled on the ABC’s Stateline.

One of the most successful citizen science projects is Galaxy Zoo, an online astronomy project that enlists the general public to assist with the classification of millions of galaxies from telescopic images.

Lucas Laurson’s article in Science from June 25 2010 also profiles various research organisations undertaking citizen science projects.

The Journal of Arthur Bowes-Smyth, State Library of New South Wales

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Image courtesy of the Australian Institute of Marine Science

Over 70 palaeoclimate scientists from across Australia and around the world were in Melbourne last week for the Aus2K regional workshop.

The meeting was an opportunity for scientists to present the latest palaeoclimate reconstruction data for our region; information that will feed into the fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due in 2014.

The event was hosted at the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Sciences.

The workshop was co-organised by SEARCH project lead researcher, Dr Joelle Gergis, along with Past Global Changes (PAGES).

The Age featured a page three interview with Dr Gergis and fellow SEARCH Project researcher Prof David Karoly.

Further information about the Aus2K workshop is available from the PAGES website.

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The University of Melbourne’s Voice newspaper has featured The South-Eastern Australian Recent Climate History project on page 2 of its May edition.

Lead researcher, Dr Joelle Gergis, discussed the background to this landmark linkage project, while project historian, Professor Don Garden outlined how historical documentary records would be utilised. The feature is available on The Voice‘s website.

The Voice is inserted into The Age on the first Monday of every month. The Age‘s circulation is over 200,000 and as such, the feature represents great exposure for the project.

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International palaeoclimate researchers will visit Melbourne from 31 May – 2 June for the Past Global Changes (PAGES) Aus2k workshop, to be hosted by the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Sciences.

The workshop will target the need for extended estimates of regional-scale climate variables to reduce uncertainties about climate change and its potential impacts in the Australasian region.  For further information about the workshop, or to register, please visit the PAGES Aus2k website.

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Science Meets Parliament 2010. Image: Lorna Sim / FASTS

SEARCH project researchers, Joelle Gergis and Ailie Gallant were recently in Canberra, attending Science Meets Parliament, with the support of  the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

Science Meets Parliament offers scientists from around Australia the opportunity to meet with MPs and discuss issues of importance. This year’s delegates also attended a series of professional development workshops focussing on science communication.

Joelle wrote a feature for The University of Melbourne’s Science Matters, describing how climate change emerged as a key issue during the workshops and meetings.

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The SEARCH project team is excited to announce that our project’s Environmental Historian, Assoc. Prof. Don Garden has just released his book Droughts, Floods and Cyclones; El Ninos that shaped our colonial past.

The book is a comprehensive study of El Nino events in colonial Australia, examining how colonists came to understand their climate and its extremes, and develop precautionary measures.

Assoc. Prof. Garden is President of the Federation of Australian Historical Societies.

Droughts, Floods and Cyclones is available from leading book stores and from Australian Scholarly Publishing.

Details of the book launch will be available soon.

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The months of January and February have marked the first of a number of research trips to come during my PhD. I have spent four weeks in Canberra working with our project partner, the National Library of Australia. The library treated me to the privileges enjoyed by the NLA’s 2010 summer scholars, providing me with an excellent opportunity to discuss ideas and resources with other historians.

Poster presented by Claire Fenby at the AMOS conference (click to enlarge

With the invaluable advice of the staff at the NLA, I uncovered a wealth of information and potential sources. My time was spent reading manuscripts (predominantly diaries and letters), newspapers, rare books, looking through the pictures collection and getting a feel for the breadth of the unique map collection.

The manuscripts collection contained, for example, first-hand accounts of the effect of flood on a farm near Wollongong, of the Black Thursday bushfires in Victoria and years of agricultural and pastoral returns.

Rare newspapers provided editorials criticising the continued poor state of roads following yet another destructive wet season and called for agricultural societies to promote research into crops that were resistant to the ravages of the Australian climate.

Material from the library’s collections will be very helpful for developing in-depth case studies of how past weather and climate conditions influenced society over the 1788–1860 period.

Along with my time spent at NLA, I also researched the Australian Agricultural Company records at the Noel Butlin Archive at ANU, presented a poster at the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society’s 17th Annual Conference and gave a seminar at the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society.

- Claire Fenby, PhD Candidate

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