Dr. Martin Singh - Honours Projects

Field of study: Atmospheric science

Support offered: Possible scholarship of up to $7.5k through the Centre of Excellence for Weather in the 21st Century

The most intense thunderstorms on Earth are found in the tropics. Will their strength change with climate change? And how much to the storms themselves influence the climate as a whole? In this project we will use a relatively new method to investigate the two-way interaction of thunderstorms and their environment in observations and in climate models. The results will tell us about the ways in which clouds eject moisture into the environment, and how that influences subsequent cloud development.

Supervisor: Martin Singh

Field of study: Atmospheric science

Support offered: Possible scholarship of up to $7.5k through the Centre of Excellence for Weather in the 21st Century

Bushfires are likely to get worse as the climate warms. This makes intuitive sense--things catch fire more easily if it is hot. But it is actually not high temperatures that makes fires worse, but low humidities. In the future, the atmosphere becomes more hungry for water vapour, evaporation increases, and fires worsen. What is less remarked upon is that this effect is very different if one thinks about relative humidity versus other measures of vapour demand (such as vapour deficit). In this project we will test how sensitive projections of fire danger are to how one thinks about the effect of moisture. Could we be vastly under- or overestimating future fire danger?