Meteorological Society of New Zealand Newsletter 158 Spring2019 Page 1 ISSN 0111-1736 (Print) ISSN 2624-4640 (Online) Meteorological Society Of New Zealand (Inc.) NEWSLETTER 158 Spring 2019 See our website for the pdf Meteorological Society of New Zealand Newsletter 158 Spring2019 Page 2 Meteorological Society Of New Zealand (Inc.) NEWSLETTER 158 Spring 2019 PO Box 6523, Marion Square, Wellington 6141, New Zealand Please forward contributions to Bob McDavitt, [email protected] CONTENTS Page Foreword from our President 3-4 AGM 5-6 Around the Regions 7 Autumn: NIWA review 8-10 Notable events 10-15 Pick of the clips 16-468 Your Committee until the AGM President: Michael Martens Immediate Past President: Sylvia Nichol Secretary: Katrina Richards Treasurer: Gregor Macara Circulation Manager: Lisa Murray Website Liaison: Stefanie Kremser Journal Editor: Nava Fedaeff Newsletter Editor: Bob McDavitt Auckland VP: Petra Pearce Wellington VP: [vacant] Christchurch VP: Jiawei Zhang Dunedin VP: Daniel Kingston Hamilton VP: Tim Gunn General Committee: Luke Sutherland-Stacey, Mike Revell HydroSoc Liaison: Charles Pearson Views and endorsements expressed in this newsletter are those of the contributors and advertisers, and not necessarily those of the Meteorological Society of New Zealand. The mention of specific companies or products does not imply that they are endorsed or recommended by the Society. Meteorological Society of New Zealand Newsletter 158 Spring2019 Page 3 From our President I would like to use this opportunity to update you on the progress of prepara- tions for the annual conference of the society and what I have been up to during the last few months. Our annual conference will take place in Wellington from 25.11.-27.11. this year and will cover all aspects of climatology and meteorology, from observations, numerical predictions to research and climate projections. We are expecting around 100 participants, including invited speakers and keynote presenters. To further elevate the importance of our conference and to increase its visibility beyond the atmospheric science community, the organising committee and I are working on inviting key people from central and local government as guests and/or invited speakers. At a forum with government ministers and the prime minister on the 19th of August I was able to talk with Climate Change Minister James Shaw and subsequently have been able to secure his attendance for this year’s conference. Moreover, Climate Change Ambassador Kay Harrison was vis- iting MetService on the 22nd of August and I had a chance to talk with her not only about the important work MetService is doing for New Zealand and the Southwest Pacific region, but also advocate for the MetSociety and the im- portant work we are doing by encouraging the interest in atmosphere, weather and climate, particularly as related to the New Zealand region (see pictures be- low). I invited her to our annual conference in November and she has also sub- sequently accepted the invitation. Furthermore, we are in contact with key peo- ple from other ministries and local government and hope to secure a few more guests and invited speakers for this year’s conference. As a reminder, if you haven’t done so already, please submit your abstract and regardless if you are presenting or not, make sure you register for the confer- ence before 01.10.19 to be eligible for early bird tickets and do consider buying tickets for the dinner, for which places are limited. For more information and to register, please go to our conference website: https://www.metsoc.org.nz/metsoc-conference/ In other news, I was at the Royal Society’s constituent forum 1st of July. There we discussed the future of the Royal Society, how the Society can better and more efficiently engage with its constituent members and how to increase the cultur- al diversity of the Royal Society and its awards and fellowship programs. Fur- thermore, I’ve been working closely on the MoU with Andrew Marshall (current president of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society) and we will likely have the agreement signed by the end of September. This will result in mutual benefits for members of both societies. Finally, we have made great progress in overhauling our prizes and awards for outstanding scientists and early career scientists and will hopefully be able to present the new rules and guidelines at the AGM in November. Ngā manaakitanga, Michael Martens, President Meteorological Society of New Zealand Newsletter 158 Spring2019 Page 4 From left to right (Michael Martens [President of the MetSociety NZ], Norm Henry [General Manager Science Strategy, MetService], Kay Harrison [Climate Change Ambassador, MFAT], James Lunny [WMO Manager, MetService]). Michael Martens in conversation with Kay Harrison. More information about the AGM and results from the photo competition will be emailed lat- er this month. Meteorological Society of New Zealand Newsletter 158 Spring2019 Page 5 YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND OUR AGM (even if not at our conference) NOTICE AND Agenda for the 40th (XL) Annual General Meeting of the Meteorological Society of New Zealand 5:15 pm to 6:15 pm, Monday 25 November 2019 Te Toki a Rata Lecture Theatre 1, Victoria University of Wellington (Kelburn) 1. Attendance 2. Apologies 3. Confirmation of minutes of previous AGM. 4. Matters Arising 5. President’s report (President, Michael Martens) 6. Treasurer’s report (Treasurer, Gregor Macara) 7. Appointment of Financial Reviewer 8. Subscription rate (Circulation Manager, Lisa Murray) 9. Election of Officers (Immediate Past President, Sylvia Nichol) 10. Other Matters • Proposed changes to the Constitution (see next page) If you want your apology recoded please send to [email protected] Meteorological Society of New Zealand Newsletter 158 Spring2019 Page 6 Meteorological Society of New Zealand Newsletter 158 Spring2019 Page 7 Meetings during Winter around the regions (not many) Christchurch University of Canterbury next Monday (June 17th). "Energetic constraints on climate model errors in precipitation" by Prof. Christian Jakob Prof Christian Jakob is a scientist at Monash University. He is a fellow of the Australian Mete- orological and Oceanographic Society and won the Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award in 2016. Climate models have significant errors in precipitation globally, but in particular in the trop- ics. Most models overestimate annual mean tropical precipitation, with the largest errors oc- curring over the warm tropical oceans of the Western Pacific, Indian Ocean and Atlantic. In addition to the mean errors, there are significant shortcomings in the rainfall variability in space and time. Given its immediate impact on tropical rainfall, most of the errors are usual- ly attributed to shortcomings in the representation of deep tropical convection, and most at- tempts at their remedy focus on changes to the processes involved in it. We show that in observations the tropics, defined as the latitude belt from 30 degrees north to 30 degrees south, are very close to radiative convective equilibrium every day. This indi- cates that to first order tropical precipitation and radiative cooling are in balance even on short (daily) timescales. We show that this balance is a result of small regions of precipita- tion with very inefficient cooling – the deep tropics – and large regions of efficient cooling but little precipitation – the subtropics. We show that models obey this balance. This opens the intriguing possibility that mean rainfall errors in the deep tropics are the result of errors in radiative cooling and that the model’s convection is simply a slave to the radiative cooling away from the rainy regions. We investigate this hypothesis using several models run in a variety of configurations, rang- ing from Aquaplanet experiments with the German ICON model, to AMIP simulations with a range of models with and without cumulus parametrization. The models produce a wide range of tropical rainfall values and all of them are directly related to the tropical radiative cooling. We investigate the key regions of radiative cooling changes as the model rainfall changes and highlight potential mechanisms involved. We conclude that it is just as likely that climate model rainfall errors in the tropics are the result of errors in radiative cooling due to the misrepresentation of tropical cirrus and/or subtropical boundary layer clouds as they are the result of errors in the cumulus parametri- zation. Wellington Monday 22 July, 6.00–7.00 pm Speakers: Thomas Coughlan (chair), David Hall, Amelia Sharman, Dave Frame and Sylvia Nis- sen. BWB Talk: Climate Crisis and Revolution Climate crisis is upon us. By choice or necessity, New Zealand will transition to a low- emissions future. But can this revolution be careful? Can it be attentive to the disruptions it inevitably creates? Or will carefulness simply delay and dilute the changes that future people require of us? Join as authors of the latest addition to the BWB Texts series, A Careful Revolution, explore the politics and practicalities of the low-emissions transition, touching on issues of justice, tikanga, trade-offs, finance, futurism, adaptation, and more. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=- =-= Meteorological Society of New Zealand Newsletter 158 Spring2019 Page 8 WINTER 2019 according to NIWA 7th-warmest winter on record and near normal rainfall These monthly summaries are available online, and may be viewed at the following