Anthony Kiem | The University of Newcastle (original) (raw)
Papers by Anthony Kiem
The National Climate Change Research Facility (NCCARF) is undertaking a program of Synthesis and ... more The National Climate Change Research Facility (NCCARF) is undertaking a program of Synthesis and Integrative Research to synthesise existing and emerging national and international research on climate change impacts and adaptation. The purpose of this program is to provide decision-makers with the information they need to manage the risks of climate change. This report on drought and the future of rural communities in regional Victoria forms part of a series of studies/reports commissioned by NCCARF that look at historical extreme weather events, their impacts and subsequent adaptations. These studies examine particular events primarily extremes and seek to explore prior vulnerabilities and resilience, the character and management of the event, subsequent adaptation and the effects on present-day vulnerability. The reports should inform thinking about adapting to climate change that is, capacity to adapt, barriers to adaptation, and translating capacity into action. While it is reco...
Recent applications of the University of Yamanashi Hydrological Model (YHyM) to the Mekong and Ye... more Recent applications of the University of Yamanashi Hydrological Model (YHyM) to the Mekong and Yellow river basins reveals significant inter-annual variability in observed discharge during post-winter months (i.e. March to June/July. The impact of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) during these months is minimal and therefore the variation in observed discharge is not explained by variation in post-winter precipitation. This study investigates the relationship between ENSO, winter snow accumulation and post-winter snowmelt as a potential cause of the observed inter-annual variability in post-winter discharge. The results indicate that El Nino (La Nina) years are associated with above (below) average snow covered area (SCA) in both the Mekong and Yellow river basins and therefore the inter-annual variability in observed post-winter discharge is related to ENSO. This study emphasises the need for accurate SCA and snowmelt models in order to reduce uncertainty in hydrological pred...
Flooding over the last three years in various parts of eastern Australia, following more than a d... more Flooding over the last three years in various parts of eastern Australia, following more than a decade with very little flooding, has highlighted the fact that the risk of flooding is not the same from one time period (e.g. season, year, or decade) to the next and that traditional assumptions of hydroclimatic stationarity are invalid. Compounding this is the potential for non-stationarity in flood risk due to projected impacts of anthropogenic climate change. That is, under projected global warming the resulting changes to ocean–atmospheric circulation patterns are likely to lead to shifts in the location, magnitude and frequency of extreme precipitation events and the associated flooding. Therefore it is clear that “stationarity is dead” and that work is urgently required to: (a) re-evaluate current (or baseline) flood risk estimates to take into account the influences of natural climate variability, (b) develop estimations of future flood risk that take into account both the role ...
Australasian Journal of Water Resources
Flood frequency analysis and existing engineering practice assumes that flood events are randomly... more Flood frequency analysis and existing engineering practice assumes that flood events are randomly distributed. However, as understanding of large-scale ocean-atmospheric processes and associated hydroclimatic variability (and change) increases, the assumption that flood events are random seems unlikely to be valid. This paper examines historical flood data from 10 major catchments in South East Queensland (SEQ), Australia with the aim of testing for nonrandom patterns in the timing of the largest flood events. The results show that most (~80%) large floods in the study catchments have occurred within sets of 5-year periods separated by 35 years of lower flood risk. This finding is consistent with previous studies that have reported 20-to 40-year cycles in rainfall, flooding and drought across most of eastern Australia. Based on these insights, an explanation for the nominal 40-year cycle in SEQ flooding is proposed, and implications for describing and managing flood risk are discussed.
Climatic Change
The Australian coastal zone encompasses tropical, sub-and extra-tropical climates and 23 accommod... more The Australian coastal zone encompasses tropical, sub-and extra-tropical climates and 23 accommodates about 80% of Australia's population. Sea level extremes and their physical 24 impacts in the coastal zone arise from a complex set of atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial 25 processes that interact on a range of spatial and temporal scales and will be modified by a 26 changing climate, including sea level rise. This review details significant progress over recent 27 years in understanding the causes of past and projections of future changes in sea level and 28 coastal extremes, yet a number of research questions, knowledge gaps and challenges 29 remain. These include efforts to improve knowledge on past sea level extremes, integrate a 30 wider range of processes in projections of future changes to sea level extremes, and focus 31 efforts on understanding long-term coastline response from the combination of contributing 32 factors.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Drought is a threat to public health. Individual and community adaptive capacity is crucial when ... more Drought is a threat to public health. Individual and community adaptive capacity is crucial when responding to the impacts of drought. Gaps remain in the understandings of the relationship between wellbeing and adaptive capacity, and whether increased wellbeing can lead to improved adaptive capacity (or vice versa). This paper explores the relationship between drought, wellbeing and adaptive capacity to provide insights that will inform actions to enhance adaptive capacity, and hence increase opportunities for effective drought adaptation. The theory of salutogenesis and the associated sense of coherence (SOC) are used to measure adaptive capacity and to explain why some individuals remain well and adapt to adversity while others do not. An online survey of rural residents (n = 163) in drought-affected New South Wales (NSW), Australia, was conducted from November 2018 to January 2019. Linear regression was used to model the relationships between SOC, sociodemographic factors, drough...
Climatic Change
Drought is known as a “creeping disaster” because drought impacts are usually noticed months or y... more Drought is known as a “creeping disaster” because drought impacts are usually noticed months or years after a drought begins. In the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs), there is almost no ability to tell when a drought will begin or end, especially for droughts other than meteorological droughts. Monitoring, forecasting and managing drought in the PICTs is complex due to the variety of different ways droughts occur, and the diverse direct and indirect causes and consequences of drought, across the PICT region. For example, the impacts of drought across the PICTs vary significantly depending on (i) the type of drought (e.g. meteorological drought or agricultural drought); (ii) the location (e.g. high islands versus atolls); (iii) socioeconomic conditions in the location affected by drought; and (iv) cultural attitudes towards the causes of drought (e.g. a punishment from God versus a natural process that is potentially predictable and something that can be managed). Thi...
<p>Weather systems in the southern Indian Ocean drive synoptic-scale precip... more <p>Weather systems in the southern Indian Ocean drive synoptic-scale precipitation, temperature and wind variability in East Antarctica, sub-Antarctic islands and southern Australia.  Over seasonal to decadal timescales, the mean condition associated with combinations of these synoptic weather patterns (e.g., extratropical cyclones, fronts and regions of high pressure) is often referred to as variability in the westerly wind belt or the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). The westerly wind belt is generally considered to be zonally symmetric around Antarctica however, on a daily timescale this is not the case. To capture the daily variability of regional weather systems, we used synoptic typing (Self-Organising Maps) to group weather patterns based on similar features, which are often lost when using monthly or seasonal mean fields. We identified nine key regional weather types based on anomaly pattern and strength. These include four meridional nodes, three mixed nodes, one zonal node and one transitional node. The meridional nodes are favourable for transporting warm, moist air masses to the subantarctic and Antarctic region, and are associated with increased precipitation and temperature where the systems interact with the Antarctic coastline.  These nodes have limited association with the SAM, especially during austral spring.  In contrast, the zonal and mixed nodes were strongly correlated with the SAM however, the regional synoptic representation of SAM positive conditions is not zonally symmetric and is represented by three separate nodes.  These different types of SAM positive conditions mean that the commonly used hemispheric Marshall index often fails to capture the regional variability in surface weather conditions in the southern Indian Ocean. Our results show the importance of considering different synoptic set ups of SAM conditions, particularly SAM positive, and identify conditions that are potentially missed by SAM variability (e.g., extreme precipitation events). Our results are particularly important to consider when interpreting SAM or westerly wind belt reconstructions in the study region (from ice cores, tree rings, or lake sediments).  Here we present a case study using the synoptic typing results to enhance our understanding of the Law Dome (East Antarctica) ice core record, focussing on links to large scale modes of climate variability and Australian hydroclimate.  These results enhance the usefulness of ice core proxies in coastal East Antarctica and assist with determining where and how it is appropriate to use coastal East Antarctic ice core records for reconstructions of large scale modes of climate variability (e.g. SAM and ENSO) and remote hydroclimate conditions.</p>
Scientific Reports
The southwest Pacific (SWP) region is vulnerable to tropical cyclone (TC) related impacts which a... more The southwest Pacific (SWP) region is vulnerable to tropical cyclone (TC) related impacts which adversely affect people, infrastructure and economies across several nations and territories. Skilful TC outlooks are needed for this region, but the erratic nature of SWP TCs and the complex ocean–atmosphere interactions that influence TC behaviour on seasonal timescales presents significant challenges. Here, we present a new TC outlook tool for the SWP using multivariate Poisson regression with indices of multiple climate modes. This approach provides skilful, island-scale TC count outlooks from July (four months ahead of the official TC season start in November). Monthly island-scale TC frequency outlooks are generated between July and December, enabling continuous refinement of predicted TC counts before and during a TC season. Use of this approach in conjunction with other seasonal climate guidance (including dynamical models) has implications for preparations ahead of severe weather...
Knowledge of past, current, and future hydroclimatic risk is of great importance. However, like m... more Knowledge of past, current, and future hydroclimatic risk is of great importance. However, like many other countries, Australia's observed hydroclimate records are at best only ∼ 120 years long (i.e. from ∼ 1900 to the present) but are typically less than ∼ 50 years long. Therefore, recent research has focused on developing longer hydroclimate records based on palaeoclimate information from a variety of different sources. Here we review and compare the insights emerging from 11 published palaeoclimate records that are relevant for annual to sub-decadal hydroclimatic variability in eastern Australia over the last ∼ 1000 years. The sources of palaeoclimate information include ice cores, tree rings, cave deposits, and lake sediment deposits. The published palaeoclimate information was then analysed to determine when (and where) there was agreement (or uncertainty) about the timing of wet and dry epochs in the pre-instrumental period (1000-1899). The occurrence, frequency, duration, and spatial extent of pre-instrumental wet and dry epochs was then compared to wet and dry epochs since 1900. The results show that instrumental records (∼ 1900-present) underestimate (or at least misrepresent) the full range of rainfall variability that has occurred, and is possible, in eastern Australia. Even more disturbing is the suggestion, based on insights from the published palaeoclimate data analysed, that 71 % of the pre-instrumental period appears to have no equivalent in the instrumental period. This implies that the majority of the past 1000 years was unlike anything encountered in the period that informs water infrastructure, planning, and policy in Australia. A case study, using a typical water storage reservoir in eastern Australia, demonstrates that current water resource infrastructure and management strategies would not cope under the range of pre-instrumental conditions that this study suggests has occurred. When coupled with projected impacts of climate change and growing demands, these results highlight some major challenges for water resource management and infrastructure. Though our case study location is eastern Australia, these challenges, and the limitations associated with current methods that depend on instrumental records that are too short to realistically characterise interannual to multi-decadal variability, also apply globally. 1 Introduction Knowledge of drought and flood history is of great importance and has many implications for current and future water resource management. To date, methods to quantify drought/flood frequency and risk have relied primarily on instrumental records. However, recent research demonstrates
International Journal of Climatology
&... more &am…
Australasian Journal of Water Resources
Science of The Total Environment
The National Climate Change Research Facility (NCCARF) is undertaking a program of Synthesis and ... more The National Climate Change Research Facility (NCCARF) is undertaking a program of Synthesis and Integrative Research to synthesise existing and emerging national and international research on climate change impacts and adaptation. The purpose of this program is to provide decision-makers with the information they need to manage the risks of climate change. This report on drought and the future of rural communities in regional Victoria forms part of a series of studies/reports commissioned by NCCARF that look at historical extreme weather events, their impacts and subsequent adaptations. These studies examine particular events primarily extremes and seek to explore prior vulnerabilities and resilience, the character and management of the event, subsequent adaptation and the effects on present-day vulnerability. The reports should inform thinking about adapting to climate change that is, capacity to adapt, barriers to adaptation, and translating capacity into action. While it is reco...
Recent applications of the University of Yamanashi Hydrological Model (YHyM) to the Mekong and Ye... more Recent applications of the University of Yamanashi Hydrological Model (YHyM) to the Mekong and Yellow river basins reveals significant inter-annual variability in observed discharge during post-winter months (i.e. March to June/July. The impact of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) during these months is minimal and therefore the variation in observed discharge is not explained by variation in post-winter precipitation. This study investigates the relationship between ENSO, winter snow accumulation and post-winter snowmelt as a potential cause of the observed inter-annual variability in post-winter discharge. The results indicate that El Nino (La Nina) years are associated with above (below) average snow covered area (SCA) in both the Mekong and Yellow river basins and therefore the inter-annual variability in observed post-winter discharge is related to ENSO. This study emphasises the need for accurate SCA and snowmelt models in order to reduce uncertainty in hydrological pred...
Flooding over the last three years in various parts of eastern Australia, following more than a d... more Flooding over the last three years in various parts of eastern Australia, following more than a decade with very little flooding, has highlighted the fact that the risk of flooding is not the same from one time period (e.g. season, year, or decade) to the next and that traditional assumptions of hydroclimatic stationarity are invalid. Compounding this is the potential for non-stationarity in flood risk due to projected impacts of anthropogenic climate change. That is, under projected global warming the resulting changes to ocean–atmospheric circulation patterns are likely to lead to shifts in the location, magnitude and frequency of extreme precipitation events and the associated flooding. Therefore it is clear that “stationarity is dead” and that work is urgently required to: (a) re-evaluate current (or baseline) flood risk estimates to take into account the influences of natural climate variability, (b) develop estimations of future flood risk that take into account both the role ...
Australasian Journal of Water Resources
Flood frequency analysis and existing engineering practice assumes that flood events are randomly... more Flood frequency analysis and existing engineering practice assumes that flood events are randomly distributed. However, as understanding of large-scale ocean-atmospheric processes and associated hydroclimatic variability (and change) increases, the assumption that flood events are random seems unlikely to be valid. This paper examines historical flood data from 10 major catchments in South East Queensland (SEQ), Australia with the aim of testing for nonrandom patterns in the timing of the largest flood events. The results show that most (~80%) large floods in the study catchments have occurred within sets of 5-year periods separated by 35 years of lower flood risk. This finding is consistent with previous studies that have reported 20-to 40-year cycles in rainfall, flooding and drought across most of eastern Australia. Based on these insights, an explanation for the nominal 40-year cycle in SEQ flooding is proposed, and implications for describing and managing flood risk are discussed.
Climatic Change
The Australian coastal zone encompasses tropical, sub-and extra-tropical climates and 23 accommod... more The Australian coastal zone encompasses tropical, sub-and extra-tropical climates and 23 accommodates about 80% of Australia's population. Sea level extremes and their physical 24 impacts in the coastal zone arise from a complex set of atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial 25 processes that interact on a range of spatial and temporal scales and will be modified by a 26 changing climate, including sea level rise. This review details significant progress over recent 27 years in understanding the causes of past and projections of future changes in sea level and 28 coastal extremes, yet a number of research questions, knowledge gaps and challenges 29 remain. These include efforts to improve knowledge on past sea level extremes, integrate a 30 wider range of processes in projections of future changes to sea level extremes, and focus 31 efforts on understanding long-term coastline response from the combination of contributing 32 factors.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Drought is a threat to public health. Individual and community adaptive capacity is crucial when ... more Drought is a threat to public health. Individual and community adaptive capacity is crucial when responding to the impacts of drought. Gaps remain in the understandings of the relationship between wellbeing and adaptive capacity, and whether increased wellbeing can lead to improved adaptive capacity (or vice versa). This paper explores the relationship between drought, wellbeing and adaptive capacity to provide insights that will inform actions to enhance adaptive capacity, and hence increase opportunities for effective drought adaptation. The theory of salutogenesis and the associated sense of coherence (SOC) are used to measure adaptive capacity and to explain why some individuals remain well and adapt to adversity while others do not. An online survey of rural residents (n = 163) in drought-affected New South Wales (NSW), Australia, was conducted from November 2018 to January 2019. Linear regression was used to model the relationships between SOC, sociodemographic factors, drough...
Climatic Change
Drought is known as a “creeping disaster” because drought impacts are usually noticed months or y... more Drought is known as a “creeping disaster” because drought impacts are usually noticed months or years after a drought begins. In the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs), there is almost no ability to tell when a drought will begin or end, especially for droughts other than meteorological droughts. Monitoring, forecasting and managing drought in the PICTs is complex due to the variety of different ways droughts occur, and the diverse direct and indirect causes and consequences of drought, across the PICT region. For example, the impacts of drought across the PICTs vary significantly depending on (i) the type of drought (e.g. meteorological drought or agricultural drought); (ii) the location (e.g. high islands versus atolls); (iii) socioeconomic conditions in the location affected by drought; and (iv) cultural attitudes towards the causes of drought (e.g. a punishment from God versus a natural process that is potentially predictable and something that can be managed). Thi...
<p>Weather systems in the southern Indian Ocean drive synoptic-scale precip... more <p>Weather systems in the southern Indian Ocean drive synoptic-scale precipitation, temperature and wind variability in East Antarctica, sub-Antarctic islands and southern Australia.  Over seasonal to decadal timescales, the mean condition associated with combinations of these synoptic weather patterns (e.g., extratropical cyclones, fronts and regions of high pressure) is often referred to as variability in the westerly wind belt or the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). The westerly wind belt is generally considered to be zonally symmetric around Antarctica however, on a daily timescale this is not the case. To capture the daily variability of regional weather systems, we used synoptic typing (Self-Organising Maps) to group weather patterns based on similar features, which are often lost when using monthly or seasonal mean fields. We identified nine key regional weather types based on anomaly pattern and strength. These include four meridional nodes, three mixed nodes, one zonal node and one transitional node. The meridional nodes are favourable for transporting warm, moist air masses to the subantarctic and Antarctic region, and are associated with increased precipitation and temperature where the systems interact with the Antarctic coastline.  These nodes have limited association with the SAM, especially during austral spring.  In contrast, the zonal and mixed nodes were strongly correlated with the SAM however, the regional synoptic representation of SAM positive conditions is not zonally symmetric and is represented by three separate nodes.  These different types of SAM positive conditions mean that the commonly used hemispheric Marshall index often fails to capture the regional variability in surface weather conditions in the southern Indian Ocean. Our results show the importance of considering different synoptic set ups of SAM conditions, particularly SAM positive, and identify conditions that are potentially missed by SAM variability (e.g., extreme precipitation events). Our results are particularly important to consider when interpreting SAM or westerly wind belt reconstructions in the study region (from ice cores, tree rings, or lake sediments).  Here we present a case study using the synoptic typing results to enhance our understanding of the Law Dome (East Antarctica) ice core record, focussing on links to large scale modes of climate variability and Australian hydroclimate.  These results enhance the usefulness of ice core proxies in coastal East Antarctica and assist with determining where and how it is appropriate to use coastal East Antarctic ice core records for reconstructions of large scale modes of climate variability (e.g. SAM and ENSO) and remote hydroclimate conditions.</p>
Scientific Reports
The southwest Pacific (SWP) region is vulnerable to tropical cyclone (TC) related impacts which a... more The southwest Pacific (SWP) region is vulnerable to tropical cyclone (TC) related impacts which adversely affect people, infrastructure and economies across several nations and territories. Skilful TC outlooks are needed for this region, but the erratic nature of SWP TCs and the complex ocean–atmosphere interactions that influence TC behaviour on seasonal timescales presents significant challenges. Here, we present a new TC outlook tool for the SWP using multivariate Poisson regression with indices of multiple climate modes. This approach provides skilful, island-scale TC count outlooks from July (four months ahead of the official TC season start in November). Monthly island-scale TC frequency outlooks are generated between July and December, enabling continuous refinement of predicted TC counts before and during a TC season. Use of this approach in conjunction with other seasonal climate guidance (including dynamical models) has implications for preparations ahead of severe weather...
Knowledge of past, current, and future hydroclimatic risk is of great importance. However, like m... more Knowledge of past, current, and future hydroclimatic risk is of great importance. However, like many other countries, Australia's observed hydroclimate records are at best only ∼ 120 years long (i.e. from ∼ 1900 to the present) but are typically less than ∼ 50 years long. Therefore, recent research has focused on developing longer hydroclimate records based on palaeoclimate information from a variety of different sources. Here we review and compare the insights emerging from 11 published palaeoclimate records that are relevant for annual to sub-decadal hydroclimatic variability in eastern Australia over the last ∼ 1000 years. The sources of palaeoclimate information include ice cores, tree rings, cave deposits, and lake sediment deposits. The published palaeoclimate information was then analysed to determine when (and where) there was agreement (or uncertainty) about the timing of wet and dry epochs in the pre-instrumental period (1000-1899). The occurrence, frequency, duration, and spatial extent of pre-instrumental wet and dry epochs was then compared to wet and dry epochs since 1900. The results show that instrumental records (∼ 1900-present) underestimate (or at least misrepresent) the full range of rainfall variability that has occurred, and is possible, in eastern Australia. Even more disturbing is the suggestion, based on insights from the published palaeoclimate data analysed, that 71 % of the pre-instrumental period appears to have no equivalent in the instrumental period. This implies that the majority of the past 1000 years was unlike anything encountered in the period that informs water infrastructure, planning, and policy in Australia. A case study, using a typical water storage reservoir in eastern Australia, demonstrates that current water resource infrastructure and management strategies would not cope under the range of pre-instrumental conditions that this study suggests has occurred. When coupled with projected impacts of climate change and growing demands, these results highlight some major challenges for water resource management and infrastructure. Though our case study location is eastern Australia, these challenges, and the limitations associated with current methods that depend on instrumental records that are too short to realistically characterise interannual to multi-decadal variability, also apply globally. 1 Introduction Knowledge of drought and flood history is of great importance and has many implications for current and future water resource management. To date, methods to quantify drought/flood frequency and risk have relied primarily on instrumental records. However, recent research demonstrates
International Journal of Climatology
&... more &am…
Australasian Journal of Water Resources
Science of The Total Environment