Journal article

Convection-permitting climate model representation of severe convective wind gusts and future changes in southeastern Australia

A Brown, A Dowdy, TP Lane

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences | COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH | Published : 2024

Abstract

Previous research has suggested that the frequency and intensity of surface hazards associated with thunderstorms and convection, such as severe convective winds (SCWs), could potentially change in a future climate due to global warming. However, because of the small spatial scales associated with SCWs, they are unresolved in global climate models, and future climate projections are uncertain. Here, we evaluate the representation of SCW events in a convection-permitting climate model (Bureau of Meteorology Atmospheric Regional Projections for Australia, BARPAC-M) run over southeastern Australia for the months of December-February. We also assess changes in SCW event frequency in a projected ..

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

Computational support and resources were provided by the Australian National Computational Infrastructure. BARPA data were produced and provided by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology as part of the Electricity Sector Climate Information project (https://www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au/en/projects/esci/, last access: 2 February 2024), and the authors would like to personally thank Christian Stassen for assisting with accessing those data. We would also like to thank Andreas F. Prein and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and suggestions as part of the peer review process.