Any Australian and New Zealander with a home computer and an internet connection will soon be able to power up their own climate model. The work will help scientists find the causes of the record high temperatures that hit Australia and New Zealand in 2013.
The online climate experiment, Weather@Home, created by a group of scientists at the University of Oxford, the UK Met Office, the University of Melbourne and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand, allows computer users who sign up to create climate model simulations that produce 3D representations of weather for 2013.
Users can then watch these evolve in real time or let them run quietly in the background, ultimately helping scientists to better assess the impacts of climate change and its relationship to extreme weather.
You can find out more about Weather@Home Australia and New Zealand, and how sign up, here.
The Australian Science Media Centre held an online briefing with experts involved in the program from the UK, Australia and New Zealand officially launching Weather@Home Australia and New Zealand. You can watch the briefing by clicking on the link below.
SPEAKERS:
- Dr Friederike Otto, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
- Professor David Karoly, ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and the University of Melbourne and Mitchell Black, University of Melbourne
- Dr Suzanne Rosier and Dr Sam Dean, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, New Zealand
You also can watch Dr Rosier explaining Weather@Home ANZ in the video below.
The Weather@home ANZ experiment from Weather@home ANZ on Vimeo.