Cloudiness over the Southern Ocean: reducing a key knowledge gap and source of climate model uncertainty. Southern Ocean clouds are key ingredients of the global climate system and yet are only poorly understood and poorly represented in climate models. Through the use of advanced observational analysis techniques this research will provide a deep understanding of key Southern Ocean cloud regimes and improve their representation in models.
The Southern Ocean boundary layer: winds, turbulence, sea spray and clouds. Both satellite products and climate models have large biases in the energy and water budgets over the Southern Ocean (SO). This is a direct consequence of a poor understanding of the structure and dynamics of the SO atmospheric boundary layer, which has arisen from an inability to make the necessary observations in this harsh environment. Due to the availability of new Australian research infrastructure, large steps forw ....The Southern Ocean boundary layer: winds, turbulence, sea spray and clouds. Both satellite products and climate models have large biases in the energy and water budgets over the Southern Ocean (SO). This is a direct consequence of a poor understanding of the structure and dynamics of the SO atmospheric boundary layer, which has arisen from an inability to make the necessary observations in this harsh environment. Due to the availability of new Australian research infrastructure, large steps forward are now possible with modest investment. This project will conduct and combine observations from the recently acquired marine vessel, RV Investigator, and the collocated airborne and surface observations to understand the structure and evolution of the unique, pristine SO boundary layer and to evaluate satellites and climate models.Read moreRead less
How does orography enhance precipitation in Australian wintertime storms? This project aims to employ targeted field observations, numerical simulations and new satellite capabilities to identify the dynamical and microphysical mechanisms that enhance and redistribute precipitation across the alpine regions of south eastern Australia and Tasmania. These observations will be used to evaluate operational numerical weather simulations specifically focusing on quantitative precipitation forecasts an ....How does orography enhance precipitation in Australian wintertime storms? This project aims to employ targeted field observations, numerical simulations and new satellite capabilities to identify the dynamical and microphysical mechanisms that enhance and redistribute precipitation across the alpine regions of south eastern Australia and Tasmania. These observations will be used to evaluate operational numerical weather simulations specifically focusing on quantitative precipitation forecasts and estimates. The observations will also be used to extend known biases in the national gridded precipitation analysis that are a result of the complex mountain terrain. This identification of the physical processes that enhance and redistribute precipitation over the alpine regions across south east Australia and Tasmania will lead to better precipitation estimates and forecasts and better water management.Read moreRead less
GBR as a significant source of climatically relevant aerosol particles. Every cloud drop is formed from a microscopic aerosol particle, known as a cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). In unpolluted environments the CCN particles originate from biogenic sources. Determining the magnitude and driving factors of biogenic aerosol production in different ecosystems is crucial to the development and improvement of climate models. This project aims to determine the mechanisms of new particle production fro ....GBR as a significant source of climatically relevant aerosol particles. Every cloud drop is formed from a microscopic aerosol particle, known as a cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). In unpolluted environments the CCN particles originate from biogenic sources. Determining the magnitude and driving factors of biogenic aerosol production in different ecosystems is crucial to the development and improvement of climate models. This project aims to determine the mechanisms of new particle production from one of the biggest ecosystems in Australia, the Great Barrier Reef. It is expected that the project will establish whether marine aerosol along the Queensland coast is coral-derived and show that this aerosol can affect the CCN concentration and therefore cloud formation and the hydrological cycle.Read moreRead less
Improving the physical understanding, numerical simulation and forecasts of severe storms and precipitation events over major Australian cities. This strategic research project will improve our physical understanding and numerical simulation of severe storms over major Australia cities, which underpins future improvements in the forecasts of such storms. It will add to the capability of households, local government and industry to better prepare for major rainfall, hail, wind and flood events.
Wattzup - a context-aware residential demand-response system for smart energy management. This project falls within the National Research Priorities an environmentally sustainable australia and frontier technologies for building and transforming Australian industries. This project will develop an innovative context aware smart energy management system that will effectively reduce consumption and wastage in residential energy usage among individual homes. It will also be an important new technolo ....Wattzup - a context-aware residential demand-response system for smart energy management. This project falls within the National Research Priorities an environmentally sustainable australia and frontier technologies for building and transforming Australian industries. This project will develop an innovative context aware smart energy management system that will effectively reduce consumption and wastage in residential energy usage among individual homes. It will also be an important new technology that will be able to support the Australian utility industry in terms of incorporating context-sensitive demand-response strategies. The key innovation of the system will be to leverage a range of rich contextual information that is easily accessible and available for effective residential energy management.Read moreRead less
ARC Centres of Excellence for Climate System Science. Our capacity to assess the threat of climate change is undermined by an unacceptable level of uncertainty in the understanding and modelling of regional climates. The Centre will undertake world-class research targeting identified weaknesses in the physical, chemical and biological components of the climate system. We will engage and nurture graduate students and postdoctoral follows through a program of graduate training and mentoring to per ....ARC Centres of Excellence for Climate System Science. Our capacity to assess the threat of climate change is undermined by an unacceptable level of uncertainty in the understanding and modelling of regional climates. The Centre will undertake world-class research targeting identified weaknesses in the physical, chemical and biological components of the climate system. We will engage and nurture graduate students and postdoctoral follows through a program of graduate training and mentoring to permanently transform our understanding of climate systems science particularly for the Australian region. The key outcome will be a dramatic enhancement in national capacity to understand and project the scale of future regional climate change.Read moreRead less
Precipitation in wintertime storms across southeast Australia, Tasmania and the Southern Ocean. The pristine conditions and strong wind-shear over the Southern Ocean affect the formation of precipitation in clouds over the region, which is vital to the water supply of southeastern Australia and Tasmania. This project will evaluate and improve the ability to simulate this precipitation, which will lead to better water resource management.
Cloud-data centres resource allocation under bursty conditions. Cloud-data centres resource allocation under bursty conditions. The project aims to design, implement, and integrate solutions to manage resources in cloud data centres (CDCs), especially when operating under bursty workload conditions. CDCs are expected to assure performance whilst optimising resource usage at a minimum cost, but efficiently providing resources with specific performance requirements can be difficult. This project i ....Cloud-data centres resource allocation under bursty conditions. Cloud-data centres resource allocation under bursty conditions. The project aims to design, implement, and integrate solutions to manage resources in cloud data centres (CDCs), especially when operating under bursty workload conditions. CDCs are expected to assure performance whilst optimising resource usage at a minimum cost, but efficiently providing resources with specific performance requirements can be difficult. This project intends to develop scalable solutions with industry approved software plug-ins. This is expected to affect both trustworthy information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure (delivering more resilient CDCs) and economic sustainability (reducing CDC usage cost for both users and providers) of today’s computerised society.Read moreRead less
Contention-Aware Scheduling in Cloud Data Centres. This project aims to design, implement, and integrate solutions to improve resource use of private cloud data centres (CDCs). CDCs are expected to guarantee performance while optimising resource usage at a minimum cost. This incurs technical challenges that must be tackled to efficiently provision on-demand resources with specific performance requirements. The project intends to push the applicability of both current techniques and the ones to b ....Contention-Aware Scheduling in Cloud Data Centres. This project aims to design, implement, and integrate solutions to improve resource use of private cloud data centres (CDCs). CDCs are expected to guarantee performance while optimising resource usage at a minimum cost. This incurs technical challenges that must be tackled to efficiently provision on-demand resources with specific performance requirements. The project intends to push the applicability of both current techniques and the ones to be designed in this project to industry-scale CDCs, and identify metrics and variables to holistically control service-level agreements of hosted applications. Scalable solutions with industry approved software plug-ins are the major outcomes of this project. The outcomes of this project will have a substantial impact on both environmental (lowering energy consumption to lead to greener infrastructure) and economic sustainability (reducing cloud usage cost for both users and providers) of today’s much computerised society.Read moreRead less