Ph.D.

Honorary Research Associate

My duties at the School involve teaching and doing research in climatology. The subject is an important part of physical geography, being related to the long-term study of weather phenomena and its impact on many aspects of our physical and social environment.

Research Interests

Research at the postgraduate level reflects my own interest in radiation and satellite climatology. Previous work has involved a variety of projects including satellite mapping of solar radiation in Australia, remote sensing of air-sea heat fluxes in the tropical Pacific ocean and mapping precipitation from polar-orbiting satellites in south-western Tasmania. In recent years we have examined the climatology of ultraviolet radiation, its response to stratospheric ozone thinning and its effect on the marine biota of the Southern Ocean. Solar and ultraviolet radiation has been monitored on campus since 1994 and a recently-acquired Brewer spectrophotometer provides ozone data ad well.

Teaching

After a brief introduction in first year, there follows a course emphasising various climate processes at the global, synoptic and local scale. The third year course discusses fundamentals of microclimatology, from the radiation and energy balance to air pollution models. Students may specialise in climatology at the fourth year honours level. Assessment for the honours year involves both thesis and course work.

Units

• KGG302 - Remote Sensing: Introduction
  

Selected Publications:

• Allen, K., Francey, R., Michael, K. and Nunez, M, 1999, 'Measurements of erythemal irradiance near Davis Station, Antarctica: effects of inhomogeneous surface albedo', Geophys. Res. Letters, 26, pgs. 1381-1384
• Nunez, M., Eliasson, I. And Lindgren, J, 2000, 'Spatial Variability in incoming longwave radiation at Goteborg, Sweden', Theor. Appl. Climatol (in press)
• Kuchinke, C. and Nunez, M, 2001, 'Spectral dependence in the cosine response of broadband UV instruments', J. Geophys. Research, 106, pgs. 14287-14300
• Nunez, M., Kuchinke, C. and Gies P., 2002, 'Using broadband erythemal instruments to measure relative irradiance', J. Geophys. Research (in press)

Full Publication List

Current and Supervised Project/s:

• Bathymetric modeling
• Semi-Empitical Model for Fire Spread on Micro Scale
• UV Climate over the Southern Ocean and its biological impact
• Solar Radiation, Coral Bleaching and Climate Change
• A heat balance of the Great Barrier Reef with particular emphasis on recent SST trends.
• Direct and Diffuse Partitioning of Ultraviolet Radiation in the waters around Heron Island
• Ultraviolet Radiation in the Great Barrier Reef