Future rainfall trends in the Australian region and long-term changes in global climate will only be understood once scientists have developed world-wide ocean observing systems, according to the World Climate Research Programme.
“Ocean forecasting is a strategic element in the future of climate prediction,” says Professor Peter Lemke, chair of the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme which is meeting this week in Australia for the first time. More than 50 scientists from all continents are attending the meeting at Wrest Point in Hobart.
Prof Lemke said the ambitious $1 billion World Ocean Circulation Experiment – a decade-long snapshot of the world’s ocean backed by more than 20 nations and which winds down this year – has provided an essential foundation climate prediction.
“With basic benchmarks for ocean behaviour now established, governments must now direct their efforts to supporting new tools such as satellite measurements, the planned deployment of 3,000 Argo deep ocean profiling robots and modelling centres to increase our understanding of what lies ahead for global climate.
“This will provide scientists with the capability to examine variability in the ocean and interactions between the oceans, atmosphere, land surfaces, polar and glacial regions and generate predictive models of the earth’s system,” Prof Lemke says.
A key objective of the Geneva-based World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) is to build systems which acquire enough data on these interactions to predict climate activity from seasons to several years ahead on regional scales within a radius of 50-100 kilometres.
“While the average global citizen wants to know about today’s weather, they also want to know how their world will change in terms of more or less rainfall, warmer or cooler conditions.
“For industries and government, climate prediction potentially offers substantial economic and environmental outcomes. When regional models can be achieved, governments will see the economic and environmental benefits that flow from their investment in climate research and can integrate these assessments into their management policies,” Prof Lemke says.
He pointed to scientific understanding of tropical oceans – significantly greater than temperate regions and borne out in advance notice of the most recent El Ni¿o event – as evidence of success under WCRP initiatives.
Formed in 1979, the WCRP is sponsored by the World Meteorological Organisation, the International Council for Science and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. Its results feed directly into the Scientific Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The comprehensive IPCC assessments, the latest released in January, 2001 and the next due in 2007, provide the authoritative, up-to-date scientific advice need to inform the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
CSIRO’s Dr John Church, a lead author on sea level rise for the IPCC’s latest report, is Australia’s science representative on the World Climate Research Programme.
Australian research organisations working within the World Climate Research Programme include the Australian Antarctic Division, Antarctic and Southern Ocean Cooperative Research Centre, Australian Greenhouse Office, Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO.
Prof Lemke said some key questions remaining to be answered by science in global climate research are:
- Will rainfall accelerate under warming global conditions?
- How to improve cloud modelling prediction, with its implications for rainfall variability?
- How much sea level rise will be due to glacial and ice sheet melt and ocean thermal expansion?
- What influence will the substantial addition of fresh water from abrupt climate change over polar regions affect ocean circulation?
- What effect will changes in atmospheric and chemistry have on climate?
- To what extent can natural climate variability be predicted?
- What is the extent of human-induced influences on climate?
- How much carbon can be absorbed by the world’s oceans?
