An invited talk at AOGS

Sun, F., M. L. Roderick, and G. D. Farquhar (2013), Changes in the Global Land Precipitation Variability in Observations and in Climate Models (Invited), Asia Oceania Geosciences Society, the 10th Annual Meeting, June 23-28, 2013,Brisbane.

Sun et al. JGR 2013 submitted

Sun,F., M. L. Roderick, and G. D. Farquhar (2013) , A general property of the variance of multi-model ensembles with applications to global land precipitation, Journal of Geophysical Research (Submitted)

EGU 2013 (submitted)

Sun, F., M.L. Roderick, and G.D. Farqhuar (2013), Droughts and floods with global warming -- a perspective of surface water hydrology (Invited), European Geosciences Union General Assembly, 7-12 April.

Farqhuar, G.D., F. Sun, and M.L. Roderick (2013), Relating variations in runoff to variations in climatic conditions and catchment properties (Invited), European Geosciences Union General Assembly, 7-12 April.

Sun, F., M.L. Roderick, and G.D. Farqhuar (2013), Randomness of annual precipitation and climate model projections, European Geosciences Union General Assembly, 7-12 April.

Our WRR paper was awarded the Editor's Choice Awards of Water Resources Research

We were just notified that our WRR paper in 2011 is being recognized as a recipient of the Editors Choice Award of 2012.

The editor-in-chief of Water Resources Research Professor Kumar, in his email, told us that "Editors’ Choice Award is given to about  1% of published articles in any calendar year to provide professional recognition to scientists and students for their outstanding work. The selection is made by the Editors of WRR based on technical significance, novelty, originality, presentation, and broader implications of the publication."

The award will be formally presented at the Hydrologic Sciences Luncheon of the AGU Fall meeting in December 2012.

Sun, F., M. L. Roderick, W. H. Lim, and G. D. Farquhar (2011), Hydroclimatic projections for the Murray-Darling Basin based on an ensemble derived from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR4 climate models, Water Resour. Res., 47, W00G02, doi:10.1029/2010WR009829. [PDF] (Copyright@AGU).

Our GRL 2012 was selected as AGU featured articles, AGU research spotlight.

Sun, F., M. L. Roderick, and G. D. Farquhar (2012), Changes in the variability of global land precipitation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L19402, doi:10.1029/2012GL053369. (Featured Articles, AGU Research Spotlight) [PDF] (Copyright@AGU).

Transit of venus in 2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus,_2012

We have been with astrophysicists in the desert of Central Australia (Alice Spring) to observe the transit of Venus during May 30 to June 9 in 2012. After 2012, the next transit of Venus will be in 2117.

It was such an exciting moment on that day with absolute no cloud.

Roderick, M. L., F.Sun, and G. D. Farquhar (2012) ,Water Cycle Varies over Land and Sea, Science, 336, 1230-1231

Roderick, M. L., F.Sun, and G. D. Farquhar (2012) ,Water Cycle Varies over Land and Sea, Science, 336, 1230-1231, (On 8 June 2012) [PDF] (Copyright@AAAS)

"Ensemble" quoted from Mr Richard Feyman

In the book by Mr Richard Feyman -"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", there is a funny story, entitled "length of Emperor of China's nose".
 
“...Nobody was permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, what is the length of the Emperor of China's nose? To find out, you go all over the country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China's nose is, and you average it. And that would be very "accurate" because you averaged so many people. But it's no way to find anything out; when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don't improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging. "

Congratulations to Weeho, Yongqiang!

Lim, W. H., M. L. Roderick, M. T. Hobbins, S. C. Wong, P. J. Groeneveld, F. Sun, G. D. Farquhar (2012), The Aerodynamics of Pan Evaporation, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology,152,31-43.

Zhang, Y., R. Leuning, F. Chiew, E. Wang, L. Zhang, C. Liu, F. Sun, M. Peel, Y. Shen, M. Jung (2011), Decadal trends in evaporation from global energy and water balances, Journal of Hydrometeorology (In Press).

A talk in ANU Climate Change Institute Research Expo 2011

Climate Change and Water

Fubao Sun

The presentation will briefly outline the central role played by water in the climate system and discuss how the work of the ANU RSB group (as part of the Climate Systems Science Center of Excellence) is contributing to further understanding of changes in water availability and feedbacks to the climate system.

AGU Fall meeting 2011

Sun, F., M. L. Roderick, and G. D. Farquhar (2011), Does past performance guarantee future skill of climate models? A new approach to an important problem, AGU fall meeting, San Francisco, CA- 5-10 December.

Roderick, M. L., F. Sun, and G. D. Farquhar (2011), Drought or climate change? Distinguishing change from variability in observations and climate model projections of rainfall, AGU fall meeting, San Francisco, CA- 5-10 December.

Lim, W. H., M. L. Roderick, M. T. Hobbins, S. C. Wong, P. J. Groeneveld, F. Sun, and G. D. Farquhar (2011), A new equation for the aerodynamics of pan evaporation, AGU fall meeting, San Francisco, CA- 5-10 December.

An invited talk at the International Symposium on Environmental Changes and Efficient Use of Agricultural Resources

This conference will be, held on 20-22 October by Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Sun, F., M. L. Roderick, and G. D. Farquhar (2011), A new approach to evaluating precipitation projections (Invited), International Symposium on Environmental Changes and Efficient Use of Agricultural Resources, Shijiazhuang in China, 20-22 October.

Our WRR paper has been selected as AGU Research Spotlight

Sun,F., M. L. Roderick, W. H. Lim, and G. D. Farquhar (2011), Hydroclimatic projections for the Murray-Darling Basin based on an ensemble derived from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR4 climate models, Water Resour. Res., 47, W00G02, doi:10.1029/2010WR009829. (Featured Articles, AGU Research Spotlight) [Among weekly most popular articles of WRR]

Per invited, Mike will deliver two talks at EGU and IUGG

[1] Roderick M.L., F. Sun, and G.D. Farqhuar (2011), Climate Variability versus Climate Change – How can you tell the difference?, (Keynote address), International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), Melbourne, 28 June – 7 July.

[2] Roderick, M.L., F. Sun, W.H. Lim, and G.D. Farqhuar (2011), Robust responses of the terrestrial component of the hydrological cycle to global warming, (Invited), Perspectives for the Future of Hydrology in a Changing Environment. Memorial Session in Honour of Professor Jim Dooge (invited speakers only), EGU Meeting: 3-8 April.

The wettest year of Murray Darling Basin in the last 110 years

It has been a decade for this basin in a danger to be drying out, which has widely been attributed to global warming.

However, in the manuscript we submitted to Water Resources Research last July when this drought was persisting, we discovered a very interesting characteristic -- randomness of annual precipitation over MDB (Murray Darling Basin) using 1900-2008 observational data. This randomness dominates the variability of rainfall over MDB. Based on the randomness, we expect equal possibility to become drier or wetter in the future, and estimate the range of changes in mean annual precipitation at different levels of possibility. Just by the chance, the change in P over 30-years climatic period, could be as large as 11%, which could be translated into 29% change in runoff.

A stunning fact is that the annual rainfall of 2010 is 795.6 mm/a, as reported today. It is the wettest year over the last 110 years!

The forcings causing this rainfall variability, whether they are induced by human or nature, should also behave randomly as does the rain over MDB.

No year mm/a
1 2010 795.6
2 1956 786.53
3 1950 779.85

Invited (or keynote) addresses given by Graham or Mike in 2010!

[1] Farquhar, G. D., F. Sun, M. L Roderick, and W. H. Lim (2010), Global change, soil water content, stomatal behavior and the statistics of rainfall (Invited), AGU fall meeting, San Francisco, CA- 14-18 December.

[2] Roderick M.L., F. Sun, W.H. Lim, and G.D. Farqhuar (2010), Water, Forests and Fire, (Keynote address), International Frontiers of Science and Technology - Sir Mark Oliphant Conference: Canopy Processes in a Changing Climate, International Union Forest Research Organisations, Falls Creek (Vic) & Tarraleah (Tas), 7-15 October.

Rivers know the theory

"It seems that the rivers know the theory. It only remains to convince the engineers of the validity of this analysis." by a German mathematician Emil Gumbel (1891-1966)

A talk in Research School of Earth Science, at ANU

A new approach to evaluating precipitation projections: Testing over the Murray-Darling Basin

Speaker: Fubao Sun

Hales Room, 3 PM, 26 October, 2010

Congratulations to Hebin for the recent publication doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2010.09.014!

He, B., T. Oki, F. Sun, D. Komori, S. Kanae, Y. Wang, H. Kim, and D. Yamazaki (2010), Estimating monthly total nitrogen concentration in streams by using artificial neural network, J. of Environmental Management., doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2010.09.014.

A new paper accepted by Geophysical Research Letters!

Sun,F., M. L. Roderick, G. D. Farquhar, W. H. Lim, Y. Zhang, N. Bennett, and S. H. Roxburgh (2010), Partitioning the variance between space and time, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L12704, doi:10.1029/2010GL043323. [Among weekly most popular articles across all AGU journals: last 3 weeks] [PDF] (Copyright@AGU)

The method presented generally applies to any two dimentional array. A time series of any climatic, hydrologic, ecologic data can be used in the context of model evaluation, product comparison and change of climate variability.

A joke I made was Marked in newsmthBBS for its originality! LOL

10 years ago, the 4th Teaching Building, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

Our class adviser is a nice oldie. But the class he taught was some boring partly for his low voice and hard of hearing. Sleeping or talking were better choices there, so seats in the front were very easy to get. And even better, back seats were not full, so fellows always came in from the front door and swaggered to the back.

However, the situation changed just before the final exam. One day, a buddy came in from the front and swaggered to the back as usual. All of the sudden, he realised there were no seats for him at all on the back. Then he paced up and down but simply didn't want to return to the front.

"Come earlier please, if you really want to have a seat on the back!" finally the teacher said with a little shy, after staring him for a while.

"HaHaHa~", all the students burst into laughing. The laughing was so long that nobody was able to be sleeping any more. I bet this might be the only sentence for all students to remember in that semester.

Afterward, whenever I met my classmates, I tested whether they went to that class or not, using this sentence. Some did, and even remembered that fellow's name but some did not. What a shame!

Presentations in 2009

Sun, F., M. L Roderick, G. D. Farquhar, W. H. Lim, N. Bennett, S.H. Roxburgh (2009), Changes of the variances of global precipitation based on the IPCC AR4 Climate Models, 2009 AGU fall meeting, San Francisco, CA- 14-18 Dec. 2009.

Lim, WH., M.L. Roderick, G.D. Farquhar, S.C. Wong, P.J. Groeneveld, M.T. Hobbins, and F. Sun (2009), The Aerodynamics of Pan Evaporation, 2009 AGU fall meeting, San Francisco, CA- 14-18 Dec. 2009.

Farquhar, G., W. H. Lim, F. Sun, S. C. Wong & M. Roderick (2009), Climate Change and its likely effects on food production (Invited), Proceedings of The 3rd International Conference on Integrated Approaches to Improve Crop Production Under Drought Prone Environments (InterDrought-III) .