event
Thursday 07 Nov 2013: Applied Maths seminar - Neil Holbrook
Neil Holbrook - Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia
H170 13:00-14:00
Over recent decades, Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures have been warming at a relatively rapid rate compared with many other regions of the world, while elsewhere an intensification of the South Pacific Gyre has pushed East Australian Current waters further southwards causing an intense multi-decadal warming of the western Tasman Sea. On interannual time scales, El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole dominate the climates of Indo-Pacific Ocean Rim countries and islands. Most dominant, however, ENSO-related temporal and distribution changes are observed throughout the Indo-Pacific Ocean, including changes to ocean temperatures, heat content, Australian coastal sea level and regional tropical cyclones, rainfall, and Indo-Pacific net primary productivity. While recent observations suggest there has been a shift in ENSO-type characteristics over the past few decades, Pacific decadal variability itself has a modulating effect on ENSO. This talk will synthesise some of Neil and his team’s recent research findings associated with Indo-Pacific Ocean interannual to multi-decadal variability and trends in ocean temperature, heat content, sea level and chlorophyll based on remotely sensed and in situ observations, ocean reanalysis data, and model simulations. Specifically, he will discuss ocean climate changes and dynamic linkages observed across the Indo-Pacific Ocean in recent times.
Neil Holbrook is Associate Professor of Climatology and Climate Change in the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia. He is a large-scale physical oceanographer by training with interests and expertise in climate variability and change. He has published extensively on the ocean’s role in climate variability and extremes, and climate change, focusing on the South Pacific and more recently the Indo-Pacific Ocean. In the last few years, Neil has been working closely with marine ecologists, economists and social scientists on a number of climate change, fisheries, and biodiversity conservation projects. He has also been working closely with government, NGOs and industry in his role as Convener of Australia’s Climate Change Adaptation Research Network for Marine Biodiversity and Resources. Neil is President of the International Commission on Climate, Associate Investigator on the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Fellow of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, and Associate Editor of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal.
