Professor Jason Evans

My Research Goals

• Understanding the water cycle at regional scales
• Quantifying the strength of land-atmosphere interaction
• Producing robust regional climate projections
• Investigation of climate change impacts on various human and natural systems
• Improve our understanding and modelling of unusual bushfire behaviour

My Research in Detail

My group currently includes four post-doctoral researchers and four PhD students, along with collaborations with several faculty members and co-supervision of a further three post-docs and two PhD students. The research is centred around issues in regional climate and water resources. I have a strong background in mathematics and hence much of my research has involved development and application of modelling tools. My current research involves questions about the regional impacts of changes in climate - both past and future - and the strength of the interaction between the land surface and atmosphere. My main interests include modeling regional climate, interdisciplinary studies of water resource issues, changing climate impacts on water quantity and changing land use impacts on water. Several of the main research projects undertaken within the group are outlined below.

CORDEX-AustralAsia

CORDEX (Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment) is an international project providing global coordination of Regional Climate Downscaling for improved regional climate change adaptation and impact assessment. I am lead of the CORDEX-AustralAsia domain. This project is focused on downscaling CMIP5 Global Climate Model simulations and, along with NARCliM, will provide the most comprehensive regional scale climate projections to date.

NSW / ACT Regional Climate Modelling (NARCliM) project

NARCliM is producing an ensemble of regional climate projections over south-east Australia in collaboration with the NSW government Office of Environment and Heritage. These simulations will be used to investigate regional climate processes and their future changes, as well as facilitating climate change impacts and adaptation research.

East Coast Low project

This project is part of the Eastern Seaboard Climate Change Initiative (ESCCI) sponsored by the NSW government Office of Environment and Heritage. The focus of this project is to use relatively high resolution (10km) regional climate model simulations to investigate how the frequency and intensity of East Coast Lows may change in the future due to global warming. These storm systems often develop quickly and can remain relatively small spatially, making them difficult for global models to capture. The project will also attempt to quantify the influence of local topography and sea surface temperatures on the East Coast Lows.

Sub-daily precipitation extremes

This project is an international collaboration initiated by the GEWEX Hydroclimate Panel. Several studies have used local data to show that sub-daily precipitation extremes can be intensifying even if at daily and longer time-scales this is not the case. This project is aiming to bring together a large dataset of high quality sub-daily precipitation from around the globe. Trends in this sub-daily precipitation can then be investigated globally including questions around mechanistic causes and model capabilities.

Extreme bushfire dynamics

This project attempts to understand the physical processes behind some of the most unusual and extreme bushfire events. The main tool for this work is a coupled atmosphere-fire model which facilitates the dynamic interaction of the atmosphere, fire and the terrain.

Murray-Darling Basin Project

This project focuses on land-atmosphere interactions in the Murray-Darling Basin. I am attempting to answer questions concerning the effects of land-atmosphere feedbacks on precipitation in the watershed. What is the extent of precipitation recylcing in the MDB? Where is the land-atmosphere interaction strongest?

The major tool for this study is a regional climate model. In this case I am using a version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model.

This work contributes to the Australian Energy and Water Exchanges initiative (OzEWEX).