The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society and the American Meteorological Society, are delighted to announce the Joint 25th AMOS National Conference and 12th International Conference for Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography, AMOS-ICSHMO 2018, to be held at UNSW Sydney from 5 to 9 February 2018.

AMOS-ICSHMO 2018 will bring together experts in meteorology, oceanography and other climate sciences from around the world as well as government representatives, NGOs, businesses and the media to focus on problems specific to the Southern Hemisphere.

There will be over 40 thematic sessions covering topics in meteorology, oceanography and other climate sciences under the broad themes of weather, ocean processes, atmospheric processes, climate, land surface processes, Antarctic science, climate services and community engagement. Two sessions are of particular interest to ASPeCt (Antarctic Sea-ice Processes and Climate) members and the wider Antarctic community:

6.3 Challenges and progress in modelling the Antarctic climate system

Dr Will Hobbs, Dr Petra Heil, Dr Marilyn Raphael

The unique ocean-ice-atmosphere system of the high latitude Southern Hemisphere has global significance, since it is instrumental in the ocean’s uptake of heat and carbon, and in accelerating sea-level rise due to basal melt of ice shelves. Due to the complexity of this system, both coupled and uncoupled ocean and atmosphere models struggle to represent both interannual variability and longer term trends. This poses a significant challenge to our understanding of past and future changes in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean region. In this session we invite contributions related to all domains of the Southern Ocean climate system – ocean, ice and atmosphere - that consider the current state of modelling capability, that demonstrate technical progress in the field, or that consider potential pathways to future breakthroughs, including sea-ice observations and uncertainties and methods of verification for sea-ice simulations.

AND

6.1 Antarctic Sea Ice: Variability, Trends, and Drivers

James Renwick, Marilyn Raphael, Will Hobbs, Sam Dean

For most of the last 30 years, total Antarctic sea ice extent has been increasing slowly, a trend that in a warming world seems counter-intuitive, poorly modelled, and is yet to be fully explained. Since September 2016, total sea ice extent has dropped to record low levels and has yet to recover. The rapid loss of sea ice in late 2016 also remains unexplained. Many factors affect Antarctic sea ice extent, including the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the effects of upper ocean circulation, and ocean waves. Sea ice extent changes exhibit strong regional variability, with different behaviour between the Amundsen and Ross Seas, and across the Weddell Sea. Understanding what drives Antarctic sea ice variability is now a major research question in the study of Southern Hemisphere climate. This session will address open questions in research on Antarctic sea ice and welcomes contributions on Antarctic sea ice observations, process studies, variability, trends, forcings, and modelling.

Abstract submission is open until 31 August 2017.

A full list of the sessions is available on the conference website.