Undergraduate opportunities at the University of Melbourne
The ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century explores how Australia’s weather is being reshaped by climate change. We offer highly competitive scholarships intended to provide undergraduate students from Australian universities with an introduction to cutting-edge climate science and weather change research.
Students should be in their second, third, or post-honours year and interested in pursuing honours or a postgraduate degree in climate or weather change science. At the University of Melbourne, 21st Century Weather projects will run for 75 hours, to be worked flexibly over a six-week period.
If you have any questions about our undergraduate research scholarships, please contact the Centre’s Associate Director Leadership and Training Melissa Hart.
To apply for an undergraduate research project, please complete this form, which is also available at the bottom of the page.
Fire & flood compound events
Supervisor: Dr Kimberley Reid
Description: In October 2023, Gippsland, Victoria was ravaged by fires followed immediately by floods. Compound extremes are when multiple hazards occur simultaneously, so that the total impacts are greater than the sum of the events occurring individually. Research often focuses on wet and windy or hot and dry compound events, but there hasn’t been much research on fires and flooding occurring sequentially.
In this project, the student will create a catalogue of fire and flood compound events for Victoria. Depending on the student’s skills and how quickly they progress, they may also assess the types of weather patterns that lead to this compound hazard.
Wind droughts
Supervisor: Dr Andrew Brown
Description: Periods of low wind speeds (wind droughts) can have significant impacts for energy reliability and prices, through prolonged reductions in wind energy generation. As part of this project, the student will use weather models and observations to characterise wind drought occurrences and variability in key renewable energy regions in Australia.
Additionally, the student will examine the diurnal cycle of coastal winds under wind drought conditions, to see whether mesoscale processes such as sea breezes can play a role in energy generation during wind droughts.
Local & remote influences on coastal rainfall
Supervisor: Dr Ashneel Chandra
Description: Do we get more rain over higher sea surface temperature (SST) regions near the Queensland coast? In this project, the student will quantify the relative contribution of local (SST) vs remote (atmospheric circulation) influences to the amount of rainfall near the Queensland coast. For this, the student will use a combination of observations and reanalysis. In addition, the student may look at how the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) modulates the relative importance of SST and atmospheric circulation contributions to rainfall over the region.
Investigating historical heavy rainfall
Supervisor: Dr Chris Chambers
Description: In early June 2016, a large rainband with an embedded subtropical cyclone brought extensive heavy rainfall to New South Wales. High-resolution simulations have been run to investigate how ocean temperatures in different areas affected the storm. The student will investigate how well these different simulations replicated observed wind and rainfall by comparing observational data with model data.