The ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century explores how Australia’s weather is being reshaped by climate change. We are currently offering multiple PhD opportunities to outstanding candidates.

The Centre includes five Australian universities (The University of New South Wales, Monash University, The University of Melbourne, The University of Tasmania and The Australian National University) and a suite of major national and international Partner Organizations.

We offer PhD opportunities with world-leading climate and weather researchers and modellers hailing from a range of disciplines. Most projects are supervised across universities and/or co-supervised by experts from industry or our national and international research partners. The Centre offers a supportive, progressive, exciting and welcoming work environment to build research careers – either in academia or beyond.

Research is particularly focused in the following areas:

• Weather system dynamics
• Climate variability and weather systems
• Weather systems in a warmer world
• Weather resources
• High impact weather modelling science

Some available projects are listed below. Please note, this list is not exhaustive. If you have research interest and ideas that aligns with the centre’s broader research objectives and they are not listed below, feel free to reach out to appropriate researchers in the centre, and/or complete the EOI form below detailing your research interests.

If you’re a student with strong quantitative skills (e.g. mathematics, physics, climate, model development, etc) and wish to express an interest in studying with us, click the button below to complete the expression of interest form.

21st Century Weather PhD Projects

Midlatitude weather systems in a warmer climate

As the world warms, the moisture content of the atmosphere increases, causing changes to the dynamics of weather systems. In this project, we will investigate how these changes affect rainfall in the midlatitudes, using a high-resolution atmospheric model. By simulating midlatitude weather in idealised warmer worlds, we will investigate how changes in surface temperature and temperature gradients influence large-scale midlatitude weather patterns and the weather systems, such as fronts and cyclones, embedded within them that ultimately produce rainfall.

Supervisory team: Marty Singh (Monash), Shayne McGregor (Monash)

A recipe for the Australian Monsoon

Variability of the Australian monsoon, its long-term observed trends, and its future projections with climate change are all poorly understood at present. In this project we propose to investigate key processes that influence variations in the monsoon at all time scales, with an emphasis on idealised model simulations using ACCESS. Assessment of those processes in climate models may improve our understanding of future projections.

Supervisory team: Sugata Narsey (BoM), Julie Arblaster (Monash), Jo Brown (University of Melbourne), Marty Singh (Monash)

The future of Hot + Humid heatwaves

Heatwaves are projected to increase in their intensity, frequency, and duration as global temperatures rise. However, changes in humid heatwaves and their impact on human health are lesser known. Combining contemporary knowledge on the physiological effect of hot and humid conditions with physical climate models, this project will seek to determine health-relevant projections of hot + humid heatwaves. Projections will be assessed across climate models that vary in resolution and other structural and physical properties to help determine whether improvements on the quality and accuracy of hot + humid projections are made when certain model properties are present. The project will also identify and explore how the underpinning weather systems of hot + humid heatwaves will change in the future.

Supervisory team: Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick (ANU), Steven Sherwood (UNSW), Negin Nazarian (UNSW)

The Southward extent of the Madden Julian Oscillation and its impact on Australian rainfall

The Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) is known to make a southward detour around the Maritime Continent, primarily in the Austral summer, which can cause enhanced rainfall over Northern Australia. However, we don’t know how the characteristics of this southward detour influences rainfall in tropical Australia, or the conditions under which this is most likely to occur. In this project, we will explore the favourable conditions for the southward deflection of the MJO. We will characterise how the southward deflection influences Australian rainfall and consider the implications of the findings for the future climate.

Supervisory team: Claire Vincent (University of Melbourne)

Weather Systems Crucial to Australia’s Water Resources

Australian water resources depend heavily upon ocean evaporation that is transported to the continent by weather systems. Interruptions to this atmospheric water transport can lead to drought, causing shocks to the Australian economy and our communities. In contrast, relatively few days of very heavy rainfall from the return of key weather systems can break droughts and restore water resources. In this project you will evaluate climate models’ ability to reliably simulate weather systems crucial to Australia’s water resources, including how these weather systems interact with major modes of climate variability. You will then use this new information to constrain future projections of water resources changes in a warmer world.

Supervisory team: Chiara Holgate (ANU) and Ailie Gallant (Monash)

Weather Systems as a Weather Resource

This PhD project will establish the concept of weather systems as a weather resource by examining the relationship between surface weather resources for sectors such as renewable energy; and different weather systems (e.g. cyclones, fronts etc). The weather systems that are the most and least optimal for surface weather resources will be identified, and the relative benefit/risk will be established both now and in a warming world.

Supervisory team: Ailie Gallant (Monash), Nerilie Abram (ANU)

Future changes to mid-latitude cyclones as a regulator of weather resources

Mid-latitude cyclones have been identified as crucial for several weather resource applications e.g. water resources, fire suppression etc. Using a weather object framework, high-precipitation mid-latitude cyclones will be investigated in climate model simulations to establish how changes to these systems affect weather resources across a number of sectors.

Supervisory team: Ailie Gallant (Monash), ANU Research Fellow (ANU)

Australia’s Snow Resources

This project will examine snow as a resource for Australian Alpine regions for tourism and water resources. Those weather systems that are related to significant snowfall totals in the Australian Alpine regions will be examined. The weather processes related to significant snow depths important for tourism and water resources will be identified and examined in observations and climate models.

Supervisory team: Ailie Gallant (Monash)

Transdisciplinary PhDs on the Communication of Weather and Climate Science

We are seeking prospective PhD students to work on transdisciplinary research problems related to the communication of climate change and weather science. The projects will incorporate aspects of climate science and social science and are offered jointly between the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather and the Monash University Climate Change Communications Research Hub. Applicants with strong backgrounds in the physical sciences, environmental science or social sciences, or from a relevant transdisciplinary background, are encouraged to apply. Eligibility requires a minimum of four years of study with a degree that includes a research thesis component (Bachelor + Honours, or Bachelor+Masters program). To register your interest and find out more about the application process, please contact the supervisory team.

Supervisory team: Ailie Gallant (Monash) & Elizabeth Lester (Monash)

Structure and intensity of Australian region tropical cyclones in future climate

Tropical cyclones are projected to decrease in their frequency, but increase in their intensity as global temperatures rise. However, changes in the TC structure (wind field and rain), which is what produces hazardous conditions upon landfall are not well understood. This project seeks to gain some understanding of the changes in tropical cyclone structure that may occur in the future in the Australian region by simulating historical tropical cyclones under current conditions and then re-simulating them under future conditions based on CMIP6 projections and assessing their changes.

Supervisory team: Liz Ritchie-Tyo (Monash)

Rainfall patterns associated with tropical lows in the Australian region

Recent flooding events in far-north Queensland have been associated with “tropical lows” – cyclonic vortices with wind speeds less than the threshold to define them as a tropical cyclone. Despite their weak winds, these weather systems can bring heavy rainfall to overland regions. However, their climatology, behaviour, and trends are not well documented or understood. In this project, the climatology, behavior, conditions for development, impacts, and trends, both historical and future, will be investigated.

Supervisory team: Liz Ritchie-Tyo (Monash) and Michael Barnes (Monash)

Ocean impacts on tropical weather

Our models do well at forecasting tomorrow’s weather, but how well can they predict the weather a decade from now? Where will the rain be heavier? Where will it be windier? We know that the world is warming, but the impact that this has on things like rainfall is complex and can only be addressed by running the models at higher resolution. The ocean is a key component in the weather, for example providing the source of energy for tropical cyclones. There is, however, still much that we don’t understand about how the ocean and atmosphere interact at the small scales resolved by our latest weather models. One important aspect of this interaction is the way that heat moves between the atmosphere and the upper ocean. To improve our ability to forecast weather in the future, our ocean models need to improve the way they represent how heat is drawn from, and returned to, the air above.

This PhD project will investigate where and how weather systems in the tropics impact, and are impacted by, the ocean’s “weather” – the “mesoscale” features like eddies and jets the fill much of the ocean. Your research will involve running state of the art numerical models on the Australian national supercomputer, together with analysing the latest observations of the atmosphere and ocean.

For more information and to apply, visit the University of Tasmania website.

Supervisory team: Christopher Aiken (University of Tasmania)

Dynamics of air-sea coupling

To better understand how weather will evolve throughout the 21st century, we need to narrow the gap between climate modelling and numerical weather prediction. A key step toward this goal is the accurate, fine-scale coupling of heat, water, and momentum fluxes across the ocean–atmosphere interface. As ocean model resolution increases, fine-scale processes such as boundary currents, jets, meanders, coastal upwelling, and transient eddies become more clearly resolved. These features, in turn, leave distinct imprints on surface winds, clouds, precipitation, and convection, which feedback to modify ocean eddies, fronts, and currents through altered surface energy fluxes (Frenger et al., 2013; Ma et al., 2016; Skyllingstad et al., 2019).

Inadequate resolution of these coupled processes contributes to some of the most persistent biases in current climate models, including errors in the intensity and position of storm tracks and tropical cyclones, the frequency and structure of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, and the strength of coastal upwelling systems — regions responsible for over half of the world’s fish catch (Hewitt et al., 2017; Held et al., 2019; Meehl et al., 2019).

This project will investigate fine-scale air–sea interactions in the context of a changing climate. One initial aim is to understand how vertical resolution in ocean models affects the distribution of wind stress in the upper ocean. We hypothesise that improved resolution of the Ekman spiral could significantly influence the transport of heat and salt, with implications for air–sea coupling, especially over continental shelves (e.g., Aguiar et al., 2024). Additional questions include: What is the optimal spatial and temporal resolution for coupling atmosphere, ocean, and land models? What coupling strategies best capture fine-scale processes, particularly in complex environments such as coastal regions?

For more information and to apply, visit the University of Tasmania website.

Supervisory team: Paul Spence (University of Tasmania)

Climate downscaling and flood risk assessment with machine learning

This project will examine historical and future changes in high-impact weather associated with storm rainfall that drives flooding. The project involves adapting the innovative Bris stretched-grid ML forecasting model specifically for climate downscaling to generate high-resolution climate projections from global datasets. These projections will enable analysis of changes in rainfall intensity, event duration, and annual exceedance probabilities to assess the future vulnerability of flood-prone regions in Australia.

Supervisory team: Dr. Sanaa Hobeichi and Prof. Lisa Alexander, Dr Catherine De Burgh-Day (BoM)