News from the Working Groups

wg newsThe last two months has seen lots of activity in the six working groups. Below a short summary; if you want to know more, or to get involved, just contact the chairs.

The Observational Data WG has seen several changes, with Juan Pablo Guerschman (CSIRO) stepping down as chair, being replaced with Chris Rüdiger (Monash University) and Marta Yebra (ANU). Many thanks to Juan Pablo for his efforts over the last two years, and welcome Chris and Marta! Simultaneously, the WG also has gone through a bit of a renaissance, with a number of new activities being instigated, including closer alignment with three important initiatives in Australia and internationally. For a detailed update on the new direction of this working group, read this.

The Model Evaluation and Benchmarking WG is reconsidering the best opportunities to achieve its overall goal, to test and improve the water and energy aspects in Australia’s models, and in particular the CABLE model.

The Data Assimilation WG has been progressing the Soil Water Estimation and Evaluation Project (SWEEP). A draft manuscript based on the data set collated so far has been prepared and will be circulated to the data contributors over the next few weeks.

The Trends and Extremes WG has been making much progress on a special issue on Australian natural hazards for the journal Climatic Change. At time of writing, four of the seven papers are ready for submission, with another three papers close to completion. This activity has led to a very detailed account on what is currently known about the climatic influences on Australia’s natural hazards, as well as knowledge gaps and future research actions.

The Vegetation Processes WG is one of the initiators of a new national initiative to bring together a national set of field observations of vegetation biomass and fuel data. You can read more on this initiative here. In addition, the WG continues to progress a review paper on the biophysical functioning of Australia’s vegetation.

The Hydrological Prediction WG is also undergoing some changes, with both co-chairs Fiona Johnson (UNSW) and Tom Pagano (BoM) stepping down, and Dongryeol Ryu (University of Melbourne) coming in as new WG chair. Many thanks to Fiona and Tom for keeping this WG going. The WG has been having some internal discussion about future direction, and contact has been made with the international Hydrological Ensemble Prediction Experiment (HEPEX) to more closely align Australia’s contribution to OzEWEX and HEPEX.

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