Associate Professor Peter Ralph is one
of the leaders of C3.
From environmental advocates like Al Gore to sceptics including John Howard, the debate surrounding the impact of climate change is rife. In a ground-breaking, cross-disciplinary research program, University of Technology Sydney (UTS) researchers are aiming to improve the accuracy of regional scale climate change models and the predictions they make.
Associate Professor Peter Ralph, Professor Derek Eamus and Dr Brad Murray, all from the Faculty of Science, are heading the Plant Functional Biology and Climate Change Cluster (C3).
Unlike many scientists looking at climate change, the C3 group of experts is not focussed on predicting changes. Instead, they are working with climate change modellers to address some of the weaknesses in current Global Circulation Models (GCMs) and vegetation function models, which not only forecast global and regional weather patterns and oceanic circulation, but play a key role in the science of climate change too.
“Current models are extremely powerful and they’re using the latest technology in computing capacity. They are very accurate when it comes to physical properties such as precipitation, wind and sea surface temperature,” says Ralph.
The Australian Community Climate Earth System Simulator (ACCESS) is the nation’s standard for developing numerical weather prediction and supporting enhanced climate studies of land and oceanic-surface interactions. The weakness of many models, including ACCESS, lies in their failure to integrate the biological functioning of Australia’s oceans and landscapes. Consequently, current models can lead to large estimate errors when predicting the impacts of climate change. “By improving the biology in these models we will reduce that error and make the models able to predict future conditions more accurately,” says Ralph.
To do this, C3 is drawing on expert knowledge across a range of disciplines. “We need the physical modellers which are micro-climatic experts, we need biological modellers who take physiology and translate that into the physics of gas exchange, and then we need the physiologists that design the experiments biological modellers can work with,” says Ralph.
C3 will be conducting research in a range of land and water-based habitats to see how each habitat alters the gas exchange within the ecosystem. For example, researchers will study the production of sea ice algae in Antarctica and how the level of production impacts upon carbon draw-down and food availability in the Southern Ocean’s ecosystem.
Together, C3 is taking a targeted look at the central component of GCMs – plant physiology and how plants alter the climate. Working on a smaller, regional scale, the research will involve developing new and highly-innovative techniques for estimating gas exchange through different terrestrial and aquatic habitats.
“At the regional scale, the research carried out by C3 will reduce the variability and the error associated with all climate change weather predictions. We will be incorporating the biological feedback into predictive models to reduce that error,” says Ralph.
From the tropics to the poles, the Australian environment provides the perfect testing ground. “Australian habitats are some of the most vulnerable to climate change,” Ralph explains. “And we need to know how they’re going to be changed and how they in turn are going to alter the weather patterns.”
Models can predict how climate change
will affect certain animals.
Perfecting GCMs has far-reaching and long-term impacts on our ability to manage future water, biodiversity and natural resources. As Ralph asks, “If we can’t predict the future of climate change and the ensuing vegetation responses accurately, then how can government be expected to prepare itself?”
This importance was not lost on the university’s Council who earlier this year supported an initiative from Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Sue Rowley to fund a number of high-impact, internationally-competitive research programs, including C3.
With very few teams around the world conducting this type of research, Ralph applauds UTS’s vision and the central role it’s playing in the study. “They’ve allowed us to build a research hub around a problem that a small number of key researchers here have a vision to solve,” he says.
In addition to the implications C3’s research holds for climate change modellers and corporate and government policy-makers, there are benefits for students too. Ralph says, “C3 research will give us a vehicle to support undergraduate teaching of the next generation of climate-savvy students and, more importantly, biologists who are numerically aware and engaged with the problem of predicting climate into the future.”
Simultaneously, C3 will provide a focus for climate change research and debate within the university. “We hope to run an open forum for general discussion of climate change issues and how the UTS community is engaged with addressing climate change problems and solutions,” says Ralph. Hosted by C3 over drinks and nibbles, these informal get-togethers further UTS’s vision to incorporate sustainability principles and practices into teaching, learning and research programs.
What’s more, the wait for results won’t be long. Ralph believes preliminary findings could be seen by early 2009, with bigger developments starting to occur within 18 months. “We have the vision, we know what the questions are, we know how we’re going to get there; we’ve got the support from the university. So now we’re just going to do it.”
A story provided by the University of Technology Sydney. This article is under copyright; permission must be sought from the University of Technology Sydney to reproduce it.
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