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This paper discusses the possible changes in the climatic parameters of relevance to atmospheric corrosion that may occur from 2030 to 2070 due to climate change. Both general parameters devised by fully coupled ocean–atmosphere climate models and more regional parameters are defined. The overall process of atmospheric corrosion is broken into its constituent processes which, for an island such as Australia, consist of aerosol generation, aerosol transport, aerosol deposition, pollutant retention on surfaces, wetting of polluted surfaces, and the chemistry of moisture films on surfaces. The possible effects of climate change on each of these processes are analysed and discussed, and initial results indicating that each may be affected by climate change. However, as variation in the constituent processes is heavily dependent on parameters that vary significantly across Australia, and the effect of the variations differs for different processes, it is difficult to make a general prediction of the average impact of climate change on corrosion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia has a weather-driven annual periodic amplitude in sea surface height of ~0.4 m. Such a signal generates a mass variation that is readily detected by the GRACE mission. We used this naturally occurring phenomenon over a region of ~2.6×105 km2 to evaluate the accuracy of the GRACE estimates of temporal mass variation. Comparison of the Groupe de Recherche de Géodesie Spatiale 10-day GRACE solutions and observations from a nearby tide gauge show a correlation of 0.93, indicating that the GRGS GRACE solutions capture well the regional signal. On the other hand, the MOG2D-G barotropic model accounts for only ~50% of the non-gravitational annual signal, suggesting either deficiencies in the model or that some other non-barotropic process is occurring. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Annual coupled Rossby waves are generated at the west coast of Australia and propagate westward across the eastern Indian Ocean from 10° to 30°S in covarying sea level height (SLH), sea surface temperature (SST), and meridional surface wind (MSW) residuals, generally traveling slower than uncoupled Rossby waves while increasing amplitude. The waves decouple in the western Indian Ocean as SST and SLH residuals become decorrelated, with wave amplitudes decreasing and westward phase speeds increasing. Here, the ocean and atmosphere thermal and vorticity budgets of the coupled Rossby waves in the eastern Indian Ocean along 20°S are diagnosed. In the upper ocean, these diagnostics find the residual SST tendency driven by the residual meridional geostrophic advection of mean temperature with warm SST residuals dissipated by upward latent heat flux to the atmosphere. In the troposphere, these upward latent heat fluxes drive mid-to-upper-level residual diabatic heating via excess condensation, balanced there by upward residual vertical thermal advection. The resulting upward residual vertical velocity drives residual upper-level divergence and lower-level convergence, the latter balanced in the troposphere vorticity budget by the residual meridional advection of planetary vorticity. This yields poleward MSW residuals collocated with warm SST residuals, as observed. The SLH tendency is modified by a positive feedback from wind stress curl residuals, the latter acting to increase the amplitude and decrease the westward phase speed of the wave. These diagnostics allow a more exact analytical model for coupled Rossby waves to be constructed, yielding wave characteristics as observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Barrier Reef represents the largest modern example of a mixed siliciclastic-carbonate system. The Burdekin River is the largest source of terrigenous sediment to the lagoon and is therefore an ideal location to investigate regional patterns of mixed sedimentation. Sediments became coarser grained and more poorly sorted away from the protection of eastern headlands, with mud accumulation focused in localised "hat spots' in the eastern portion of embayments protected from southeast trade winds. The middle shelf has a variable facies distribution but is dominated by coarse carbonate sand, North of Bowling Green Bay, modern coarse carbonate sand and relict quartzose sand occur. Shore-normal compositional changes show Ca-enrichment and Al-dilution seawards towards the reef, and shore-paraller trends show Ai-dilution westwards (across bays) along a Ca-depleted mixing line. Intermediate siliciclastic-carbonate sediment compositions occur on the middle shelf due to the abundance of relict terrigenous sand, a pattern that is less developed on the narrow northern Great Barrier Reef shelf. Rates of sediment deposition from seismic evidence and radiochemical tracers suggest that despite the magnitude of riverine input, 80-90% of the Burdekin-derived sediment is effectively captured in Bowling Green Bay Over millennial time-scales, stratigraphic controls suggest that sediment is being preferentially accreted back to the coast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]