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BMRC is now part of CAWCR: The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research.
For more information on The Centre please go to http://www.cawcr.gov.au
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1. El Niño - Southern Oscillation impacts and prediction.
Studied the impacts of the El Niño - Southern Oscillation, and its use in prediction, for over 30 years. Demonstrated that it can be used to forecast seasonal tropical cyclone activity, crop yields, and health and environmental impacts. Recent work has focussed on improving the way climate forecasts are communicated, and on spreading the capacity to carry out climate research, using facilities available through the Internet, to developing countries and students.
2. Trends in extremes
Co-organised (with Mike Manton) five workshops (the fifth to be held in March 2004), partly funded by the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research, to improve the way we monitor climate extremes in the Southwest Pacific and Southeast Asian regions. I have a continuing interest in describing, and understanding, trends in climate extremes in Australia.
3. Climate and history
I have written papers on William Stanley Jevons (a 19th century polymath) and his descriptions of Australian climate, and on the development of operational climatology in Australia, as well as historical papers on the 1888 ("Centennial") Australian drought, and the historical relationships between health and climate.
4. Statistics and climate research.
I have published an occasional paper on statistical techniques for climate research, including one of the early papers using Canonical Correlation Analysis to document teleconnections. My most recent "methodological" paper questions our devotion to null hypothesis significance tests.
5. Climate change
Developed “high-quality” historical data sets for Australia, and used these to study Australian climate changes, including the apparently inexorable warming of Australian droughts over the past few decades. As part of the Indian Ocean Climate Initative studied the causes of the decrease in rainfall over sothwest Western Australia over the past few decades.
6. Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre
As part of the newly established Bushfire CRC, am preparing data sets to allow the investigation of how climate fire weather may have changed in the recent past.
7. Health and climate variability
In collaboration with the Australian National University and the Queensland University of Technology, studying the impacts of climate variations on health, especially Ross River virus, and how climate may help in predicting climate impacts. Also studying climate change impacts on health..
