Dr Ailie Gallant

Ailie Gallant

B.Sc.(Hons), Ph.D.

Ailie is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in climate variability and change in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne.

Contact Details

Dr Ailie Gallant
School of Earth Sciences
University of Melbourne
VIC, 3010
Australia

Email: agallant@unimelb.edu.au
Phone: +61 3 8344 7304
Fax: +61 3 8344 7761

Biography

Ailie Gallant is a climate scientist working in the Atmosphere and Ocean Science group in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Ailie completed her undergraduate studies (B.Sc. Hons) at Monash University, Australia, in 2004 with majors in atmospheric science and applied mathematics. As part of her undergraduate studies, Ailie participated in a one-year exchange program at the University of Oklahoma, USA, where she undertook her studies at the OU School of Meteorology. On completion of her Honours degree, Ailie began a Ph.D. at Monash University in the School of Mathematical Sciences. She graduated in 2009 with her dissertation "Trends in extremes of the Australian climate".

Since 2008, Ailie has been working with Prof. David Karoly in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, first as a research assistant and then as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Ailie' s work at the University is in regional climate variability and change in Australia. Her research interests include:

Ailie loves all things climate and weather and is a self-professed weather nerd. In her spare time she enjoys participating in outdoor activities, including hiking and skiing.

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Research Interests

Ailie's research interests include a variety of topics associated with climate variability and change. These include understanding past variability and change in palaeo and modern climate and hydroclimate records, as well as projected future changes. To date, her research has focused on these core research areas for the Australasian region.

Detection and Attribution

On this topic, Ailie's research has focused on the detection and attribution of changes in aspects of Australian extreme weather and climate events. She has examined the characteristics of daily extreme weather events across Australia, including heavy rain days, heat and cold events, fire weather as well as longer-term events such as drought. She has identified some unusual variations in heavy daily rainfall events for the Australian region and more recently, has worked with developing a combined climate extremes index for Australia. Ailie's current work examines the processes causing variations and changes in extremes that have been identified in the instrumental records, including the extent to which these trends have been influenced by anthropogenic climate change.

Processes driving regional climate variations

Ailie's research in climate extremes also extends to identifying the causes of year-to-year and decade-to-decade variations and changes in the characteristics of climate extremes, such as their frequency, severity and duration. Her work examines regional atmospheric and oceanic states that are associated with extreme conditions, and if and how they are linked to known large-scale climate interactions such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Ailie's work has looked at the sensitivity of regional climates to large-scale air-sea interactions, including identifying observed changes in the response of regional climates to large-scale forcing.

Ailie is also interested in how aspects of the climate interact on multiple time scales. This is, how interannual and interdecadal climate processes modulate daily weather and seasonal-scale climate variations. Also, how known large-scale mechanisms interact with the regional atmospheric circulation to regulate variations in regional climates.

Palaeoclimate reconstructions

Ailie is currently involved with two projects, SEARCH and AUS2K, developing palaeoclimate reconstructions for improving our understanding of the range of natural climate variability in the Australasian climate record. Ailie's contribution to these projects stems from her familiarity with instrumental observations, regional climate variations and statistical methodologies. Thus far, this work has resulted in reconstructions of annual and decadal southeast Australian streamflow and rainfall for the past 200 years. Further reconstructions of other aspects of the Australasian regional climate system for the past 500-1000 years are ongoing.

Ailie is also interested in the methodological aspects of palaeoclimate reconstructions. This includes improving uncertainty estimates, examining the sensitivity of reconstructions to the methods used in their generation, and improving techniques for developing reconstructions in data sparse areas.

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Publications

Refereed publications

Gergis, J., A. J. E. Gallant, K. Braganza, D. Karoly, R. D'Arrigo, K. Allen, L. Cullen, P. Grierson and I. Goodwin, 2011: On the long-term context of the 1997-2009 'Big Dry' in south-eastern Australia: insights from a 206-year multi-proxy rainfall reconstruction. Climatic Change, (accepted).

Gallant, A. J. E. and J. L. Gergis, 2011: An experimental streamflow reconstruction for the River Murray, Australia, 1783-1988. Water Resour. Res., 47, W00G04, doi:10.1029/2010WR009832.

Gallant, A. J. E., and D. J. Karoly, 2010: A combined Climate Extremes Index for the Australian region. J. Climate, 23, 6153-6165.

Gallant, A. J. E., and D. J. Karoly, 2009: The atypical influence of the 2007 La Niña on rainfall and temperature in southeastern Australia. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L14707, doi:10.1029/2009GL039026.

Gallant, A. J. E., K. J. Hennessy, and J. S. Risbey, 2007: Trends in rainfall indices for six Australian regions: 1910-2005. Aust. Meteorol. Mag., 56, 223-239.

Manuscripts submitted for refereed publication

Gallant, A. J. E., M. J. Reeder, J. S. Risbey and K. J. Hennessy, 2012: Seasonal-scale droughts in Australia, 1911-2009. Int. J. Climatol., submitted June 2011.

Gallant, A. J. E., A. S. Kiem, D. C. Verdon-Kidd, R. C. Stone and D. J. Karoly, 2011: Understanding hydroclimate processes in the Murray-Darling Basin for natural resources management. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., 8, 1-46.

Gergis, J., R. Neukom, A. J. E. Gallant, S. J. Phipps, D. J. Karoly and PAGES Aus2K Project Members, 2012: Evidence of rapid late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium. J. Clim., submitted October 2011.

Phipps, S. J. , J. Gergis, H. McGregor, A. J. E. Gallant, R. Neukom, S. Stevenson, T. van Ommen, J. Brown, M. Fischer and D. Ackerley, 2012: Palaeoclimate data-model comparison: concepts and application to the climate of Australasia over the past 1500 years. J. Clim., submitted February 2012.

Un-refereed publications

Gallant, A. J. E. and B. Trewin, 2010: Fire and rain: the summer that eclipsed the bounds of extreme weather in the northern hemisphere, Bull. Aust. Met. Ocean. Soc., 23, 95-97.

Gallant, A. J. E. and I. Macadam, 2010: Towards improving statistical practices in climate science: conference report from the 12th International Meeting on Statistical Climatology, Bull. Aust. Met. Ocean. Soc., 23, 68.

Gergis, J. and A. J. E. Gallant, 2010: Lessons on climate science communication from Science Meets Parliament, Bull. Aust. Met. Ocean. Soc., 23, 25-26.

Gallant, A. J. E., 2009: 9th International Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography: panel session addressing the 7 February Bushfires, Bull. Aust. Met. Ocean. Soc., 22, 5-6.

Conference papers

Gallant, A. J. E., and L. V. Alexander, 2011: Identifying drivers of interannual variations in Australian extremes, 18th National Conference of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society/Annual conference of the New Zealand Meteorological Society, Wellington, New Zealand, 27-29 January.

Gallant, A. J. E., and D. J. Karoly, 2010: Climate patterns and causal processes, Murray-Darling Basin Authority Science Review, Murray-Darling Basin Authority, 32pp.

Gallant, A. J. E., and L. V. Alexander, 2010: Drivers of interannual variations in Australian extremes, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco USA, 13-17 December.

Gallant, A. J. E., and D. J. Karoly, 2010: Variations of climate extremes in Australia during 1911-2008, 11th International Meeting on Statistical Climatology, Edinburgh Scotland, 12-16 July.

Gallant, A. J. E., J. L. Gergis, and K. Braganza, 2010: Quantifying uncertainties associated with calibrating proxy data against instrumental records - an ensemble approach, 11th International Meeting on Statistical Climatology, Edinburgh Scotland, 12-16 July.

Gergis, J., A. J. E. Gallant, D. J. Karoly and K. Braganza, 2010: Reconstructing climates of the past 500 years using annually-resolved palaeoclimate records: methods, challenges and recent advances, 1st PAGES AUS2K workshop: towards data synthesis, Melbourne, Australia, 31 May-2 June.

Gallant, A. J. E., and D. J. Karoly, 2010: A combined extremes index for Australia, 17th National Conference of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Canberra Australia, 27-29 January.

Gallant, A. J. E., K. J. Hennessy, J. S. Risbey, and M. J. Reeder, 2010: Variations and trends in Australian drought characteristics, 17th National Conference of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Canberra Australia, 27-29 January.

Gergis, J. L., A. J. E. Gallant, K. Braganza, and D. J. Karoly, 2010: Reconstructing pre-20th century climate variability in south-eastern Australia using palaeo, documentary and early instrumental data, 17th National Conference of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Canberra Australia, 27-29 January.

Gallant, A. J. E., and D. J. Karoly, 2009: Recent changes in rainfall and temperature during La Niña episodes in the southern Murray-Darling Basin, 9th International Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography, Melbourne Australia, 9-13 February.

Gallant, A. J. E., and K. J. Hennessy, 2008: Application of the pattern scaling technique to distributions of temperature and precipitation for use in climate projections, 16th National Conference of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Geelong Australia, 29 January-1 February.

Gallant, A. J. E., K. J. Hennessy, and F. Mpelasoka, 2007: Changes in Australian droughts using a simple water-balance model, 24th International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics: General Assembly, Perugia Italy, 2-13 July.

Gallant, A. J. E., 2007: An investigation of the "breakpoint" method for determining sudden shifts in rainfall, 14th National Conference of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Adelaide Australia, 5-8 February.

Gallant, A. J. E., 2006: A comparative assessment of observed changes in Australian droughts, 17th Australia New Zealand Climate Forum, Canberra Australia, 5-7 September.

Gallant, A. J. E., and J. S. Risbey, 2004: Development and testing of a climate extremes index for Australia, 16th Australia New Zealand Climate Forum, Lorne Australia, 8-10 November.

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Education
2009:
Doctor of Philosophy (Atmospheric Science), School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University, Australia
Thesis:
Trends in extremes of the Australian climate
Supervisors:
Prof. Michael Reeder, Mr. Kevin Hennessy, Dr. James Risbey
2004:
Bachelor of Science (Honors - 1st class), School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University, Australia
Honors project:
Estimates of changes in fire danger indices for southeastern Australia under global warming conditions
Supervisors:
Dr. James Risbey, Prof. David Karoly
Majors:
Atmospheric Science, Applied Mathematics
Minor:
Astronomy
2002/2003:
Bachelor of Science (exchange program), School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, USA

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Outreach and Media

Ailie has an extensive history in being involved in the wider atmospheric science community and engaging the public in climate science.

Professional affiliations

Ailie served as a member of various committees of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society from 2005-2011, including serving 4 years as National Secretary. She is also a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

Public Outreach

Ailie has been involved in several public outreach activities. These have included public talks to community groups on climate change, and lessons with primary and high-school aged school children on the weather, climate and natural disasters.

Media activities

Ailie was recently featured in a satirical rap called 'I'm a climate scientist' created by the ABC television show Hungry Beast. Other recent activities have included an article on changes in Australian extremes in The Age and Wild Magazine.

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Links

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This page was last modified on: Friday, 10-Feb-2012 10:17:24 EST