Atmosphere WG meeting minutes 25/03/2025
11 participants on Zoom
Brief update from WG co-chairs and ACCESS-NRI: Yi Huang, Charmaine Franklin, Matt Woodhouse, Heidi Nettelbeck
- Charmaine (BoM): reported that the Access-A and -AE ensemble systems are now running in near real-time on the Bureau’s new HPC, with research shifting focus to LFRic and RAL4, including new ancillary file development and testing of an interactive aerosol scheme.
- Yi provided an update on computing resources, noting strong usage by university members for cloud-interaction simulations and cloud feedback studies led by various team members.
- Matt mentioned that CSIRO is undergoing restructuring, which may impact their activities, including potential reduced capacity for CMIP7 preparations.
Machine Learning/Atmosphere Workshop (Melbourne, Aug 2026): Heidi Nettelbeck
- Discussed aim of workshop to focus on how Atmosphere WG could use machine learning to complement and advance existing physical atmospheric models rather than replacing them with emulators. Matt and Yi expressed interest in parameterisation aspects and hybrid physics-machine learning approaches, while Charmaine emphasized the need to bridge differences with the ML working group’s focus. The group agreed their aim should be to develop machine learning techniques that enhance current models through parameterisation, bias reduction, and post-processing of model outputs.
Atmosphere WG co-chair shake-up Matt Woodhouse, Heidi Nettelbeck
- Two Atmosphere WG co-chairs (Matt and Charmaine) are ready to hand over the baton as co-chairs after 2.5 years in the position. They announced their intention to step down and open up the positions to the community, with a focus on finding two new co-chairs to work with Yi and Heidi. The role involves approximately two hours of work per month, including monthly planning meetings, and would be beneficial for someone’s CV or career development. Self-nominations are open! The group aims to have new co-chairs in place by their April meeting.
Science talk
- Implementation of aerosol-aware ice nucleation particle (INP) parameterisations in the high-resolution regional UM model over the Southern Ocean, Zhangcheng Pei
- Zhangcheng from the University of Tasmania presented on investigating cloud ice processes in the UM regression model over the Southern Ocean, highlighting improvements in liquid water path and radiation simulations when using aerosol-microphysics coupling.
- Inferring long-term cloud responses to warming from their short-term variability, Qinggang Gao
- Qinggang from the University of Melbourne discussed cloud responses to warming from natural variability, examining cloud feedback in the UK Earth System Model and finding significant biases in outgoing radiation over the maritime continent.
Compute/storage resources: Heidi Nettelbeck
- Get your experiment proposals in for Q1/2026. We have 1.5 MSU allocation this quarter. See here for how to apply for Atmosphere WG Resources.
Next Atmosphere WG meeting: 29 April 2026 TBC