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| CSIRO | SOLVE | Issue 12 | Aug 07 | |
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ARTICLE
ENVIRONMENT:
A Climate of Cooperation By Wendy Pyper
Climate change crosses national boundaries, and so does an Australia–China project to determine if there is a connection between the two countries’ rainy seasons.Scientists are analysing the relationship between southern Australia’s winter rainy season and East Asia’s summer monsoon season to see if there is a common reason why winter rainfall in the south-west of Western Australia and summer rainfall in northern China have decreased substantially since the mid-1960s. Joining forces to explore the link, as part of a broader investigation into climate change, are statisticians Dr Yun Li and Dr Bronwyn Harch, from CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, and climate physicist Dr Jianping Li, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Atmospheric Physics.
If there is an interaction between the two rain systems the information could help to improve tools being developed to manage climate risk. Dr Yun Li says that northern China and south-west Western Australia lie in mid-latitude climate zones, on the same degree of longitude (110º to 120ºE). “So they may be exposed to similar climatic processes,” he says. “There is evidence showing that the observed summer rainfall variability over northern China is similar to the winter variability over south-west Western Australia, particularly in relation to the drying trend. We suspect this may be caused by an interaction between the Australian winter monsoon and the East-Asian summer monsoon.” The team is investigating the potential interaction between the two monsoon systems, and the impact of changes in Australian climate on summer rainfall over northern China, through a two-year project set up under the Australia–China Climate Change Partnership. The partnership is part of the Australian Government’s Bilateral Climate Change Partnerships program, run by the Australian Greenhouse Office, which aims to pursue an effective global response to climate change, develop practical benefits for Australia and its partners, and build the capacity of developing nations to act on climate-change issues. Dr Jianping Li says the project could provide a potential approach to help understand climatic variation and its mechanism in northern China and find new factors or clues to predict climate change. Program director Helen Grinbergs says a better understanding of the interaction of the Australian and East-Asian monsoon systems could help develop tools and policies to address the effects of climate change, especially in the areas of agriculture and water-resource management. “The agricultural sector is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change,” she says. “Ensuring continued productivity and profitability, while simultaneously reducing the greenhouse signature of the sector, is a priority shared by both nations.” The project team will collect observed and modelled rainfall data, and other climate- and weather-related data, from Australia, China and various global databases. Using the data they will analyse possible relationships, develop and apply statistical models to assess the impact of the Australian monsoon on summer rainfall in China, and aim to understand and describe any physical interaction between the northern and southern hemisphere monsoons. CSIRO’s Dr Harch says that by bringing together expertise in statistics and atmospheric science, the researchers aim to develop methods to couple statistical models for observations with physical models of climate processes. “This approach can improve the reliability of climate-change projections by reducing the uncertainty around the projections, and thereby improving risk-informed decision-making.” This is good news for farmers and water-resource managers who need to make decisions about, for example, when to plant a crop, at what level water allocations should be set, or when to release environmental flows from dams. Dr Harch says the Australia–China collaboration provides other research advantages. “This partnership brings together knowledge and expertise from different countries, which is critical when you’re dealing with complex problems such as climate change that cross national boundaries. “But it is also applying a multidisciplinary approach to the problem, and it is in the cross-disciplinary boundaries that methodology innovation occurs. This approach will build the capacity of both organisations to contribute to climate-change research. It could be that decision support tools used in agriculture or water-resource management do not account for the interactions between the monsoons at all, or in the right way.” She says any new information can be fed into these to provide better predictions. “The impact of droughts and floods can be devastating on these sectors, so accurate tools to predict their impact are very important.” More robust knowledge about climate-change effects will help Australian and Chinese business and industry become world leaders in their adaptation to climate change, and better contribute to international efforts on climate change.APPLICATION A multidisciplinary team is investigating the relationship between the East-Asian summer monsoon and the Australian winter rainy season, under an Australia–China Climate Change Partnership project. BENEFIT To determine if there is a common reason why winter rainfall in south-west Western Australia and summer rainfall in northern China have decreased over the past 40 years and, if so, to improve tools to help manage-climate risk. For further information contact: |
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