Dr. Shayne McGregor - Honours Projects

Dynamics underpinning the different flavours of ENSO

Supervisor: Shayne McGregor
Field of Study: Climate and Atmospheric science
Support offered: Potential for a $7500 scholarship through CLEX

Previous work has shown that the meridionally broader sea surface temperatures (SSTs) during CP type ENSO events lead to zonal wind stresses that are also meridionally broader than those found during EP-type events, leading to differences in the near-equatorial wind stress curl. Given that the post-ENSO event ocean response (and how effectively the event terminates) is a function of the events wind stress curl through the initiation of oceanic Rossby waves, these strong EP and CP event near-equatorial curl differences suggest that these off-equatorial wind stress changes have the potential to significantly impact the temporal evolution of ENSO events.

To answer this question we will develop two different versions of simple coupled model, with each individual model effectively representing a different flavour of ENSO, that couples a simple existing ocean model with a statistical atmosphere that will be derived in this work.

For further information contact: Shayne McGregor

McGregor et al. 2022: Distinct Off-Equatorial Zonal Wind Stress and Oceanic Responses for EP-and CP-Type ENSO Events, Journal of Climate.

Projected changes in ENSO teleconnections to Australia

Supervisor: Shayne McGregor
Field of Study: Climate and Atmospheric science
Support offered: Potential for a $7500 scholarship through CLEX

Previous studies suggest that ENSOs global surface temperature and precipitation teleconnections will be amplified in a warmer world, but what this means for Australia still remains a valid question? Will this amplification be experienced, will it be noticeable above the normal level of teleconnection variability (i.e., not all El Nino events lead to large scale drying in Australia’s east).

Background - CMIP6 models suggest that ENSOs teleconnections will increase in a warmer world during Dec-Feb (McGregor et al. 2022, GRL). There were however, two issues with this study which make it’s application to Australia difficult. Firstly, the Australian regions analysed were very large, so it would be nice to use a more relevant set of Australian regions to investigate this further. Secondly, the only season analysed in this past work was Dec-Feb, where the ENSO teleconnection to Australia is typically small relative to the winter and spring months.

This study will analyse ENSO’s Australian teleconnections as represented in CMIP6 models, to get a better understanding of how these teleconnections are projected to change under a range of emissions scenarios.

For further information contact: Shayne McGregor

McGregor et al. 2022: Projected ENSO Teleconnection Changes in CMIP6, Geophysical Research Letters.