Job title: Senior Lecturer
Phone: 64 9 373 7599 ext 85380
Office: Rm 435, Human Sciences Building,10 Symonds Street, Auckland
Postal: School of Environment, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland
Email: a.fowler@auckland.ac.nz

MA, PhD (Auckland)

I completed my PhD at the University of Auckland and joined the staff of the Department of Geography in 1993. This followed a two-year stint at CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research in Melbourne where I worked on the potential impacts of future climate change.

My teaching responsibilities lie across the sub-disciplines of climatology and hydrology. Environmental change (especially palaeoclimatology) and hydroclimatology are foci at senior undergraduate and graduate levels.

The "A Team"

Part of "Team Dendro" with kauri treasure (from left: Gretel Boswijk, Drew Lorrey, Anthony Fowler, John Ogden)

Research topics of recent and current PhD students are:
a) assessment of flood risk (Tony Poninghaus);
b) hydrological modelling of the impacts of land-use change (Keith Adams);
c) climate reconstruction from kauri tree-rings (Andrew Lorrey);
d) multi-proxy reconstruction of ENSO events (Joelle Gergis);
e) statistical palaeoclimatology (Maryann Pirie);
f) tropical cyclone climatology (Howard Diamond)

Other recent post-graduate research topics are:
a) regional drought hydroclimatology;
b) water balance studies related to water resources;
c) land-use change hydrology;
d) climate change impact assessment;
e) variable source area hydrology, and;
f) the climate signal in kauri tree-rings.

Research Interests

My research activity over the last two decades has covered three separate but inter-related fields. Focus during the late 1980s through to the mid-1990s was on future climate change and its potential impacts on hydrology and water resources. From the late-1990s emphasis shifted to palaeoclimatology, associated with several major FRST-funded research projects. These two fields are currently merging into new research endeavours that use our understanding of past climate to test climate models used to project future climate change and to improve scenarios of future climate (particularly in the context of hydrology and water resources).

Palaeoclimatology (specifically climate reconstruction from tree rings): This is my specific research interest in the field of climate reconstruction and has been my main research area for the last decade. Specific interests include: computer-based crossdating; changes in growth response with tree and site age (hence the potential for flawed climate reconstructions); seasonal growth response to environmental variables (growth triggers, environmental characteristics associated with peak growth, inter-tree variations in growth response); the use of integrated variables (such as soil water deficits and runoff) in response and transfer functions; and climate reconstruction. Notable recent developments include: a) a 1000 year reconstruction of the El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon from kauri tree rings; b) multi-proxy ENSO reconstruction, using diverse high-resolution proxies from ENSO teleconnection regions, and; c) work relating NZ regional multi-proxy signals to the evolving frequency of synoptic situations deduced from the instrumental record. All three of these developments are collaborative endeavours.

Future climate change and climate change impact assessment: My research in this area has been concerned with: derivation of regional climate change scenarios; climate change impact assessment methodology; assessment of the sensitivity of the soil-water regime, surface runoff, and irrigation to climate change; potential impacts of climate change on the water balance and pasture productivity; implications of climate change for water resource use and for water resource planning; and potential climate change impacts on extreme precipitation. I was most active in this research area in the early 1990s, but work has continued up to the present. Activity in this research area is now increasing as I work to couple it with the palaeoclimate research focus, above. This derives from my belief that significant progress in reducing uncertainties concerning future climate change requires comprehensive merging of research related to anthropogenic forcing with sound understanding of the nature and scale of natural variability. New initiatives in this area were incorporated in the most recent FRST palaeoclimatology contract and involve collaboration with climate modellers at NIWA and in Australia.

Hydrology and water resource planning: I also have significant research interests in near surface hydrology and water resource planning. To date, the primary focus has been on field-scale and small catchment modelling with an applied hydrology focus, specifically models suitable for planning and operational water resources management. The soil water regime and catchment water yield are the two main foci with specific applications in the field of irrigation and urban water supply planning. This research area has been strongly integrated with my climate change impacts research and expands my palaeoclimatology work into the historical instrumental record. Current plans are to strengthen this area of research through new initiatives in climate change adaptation research associated with urban storm water modelling.

Fowler AM (accepted). Variance stabilization revisited: a case for analysis based on data pooling. Tree-Ring Research.

Braganza K, Gergis JL, Power SB, Risbey JS, Fowler AM (in press) A multi-proxy index of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, A.D. 1525-1982. J. Geophys. Res. (doi:10.1029/2008JD010896)

Gergis J, Fowler AM (2009) A history of ENSO events since A.D. 1525: implications for future climate change. Climatic Change, 92, 343–387.

Fowler AM, Palmer J, Fenwick P (2008) An assessment of the potential for centennial-scale reconstruction of atmospheric circulation from selected New Zealand tree-ring chronologies. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 265, 238–254.

Lorrey A, Williams P, Salinger J, Martin T, Palmer J, Fowler A, Zhao J, Neil H (2008) Speleothem stable isotope records interpreted within a multi-proxy framework and implications for New Zealand palaeoclimate reconstruction. Quaternary International, 187, 52–75.

Fowler AM, Boswijk G, Gergis J, Lorrey A (2008) ENSO history recorded in Agathis australis (kauri) tree rings. Part A: kauri’s potential as an ENSO proxy. International Journal of Climatology, 28, 1-20.

Fowler AM (2008) ENSO history recorded in Agathis australis (kauri) tree rings. Part B: 423 years of ENSO robustness. International Journal of Climatology, 28, 21–35.

Lorrey AM, Fowler AM, Salinger J (2007). Regional climate regime classification as a qualitative tool for interpreting multi-proxy palaeoclimate data spatial patterns: A New Zealand case study. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 253, 407–433.

Adams KN, Fowler AM (2006) Improving empirical relationships for predicting the effect of vegetation change on annual water yield. Journal of Hydrology, 321, 90–115.

Boswijk G, Fowler A, Lorrey A, Palmer J, Ogden J (2006) Extension of the New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) chronology to 1724 BC. The Holocene, 16, 188–199.

Cook ER, Buckley BM, Palmer JG, Fenwick P, Peterson MJ, Boswijk G, Fowler A (2006) Millennia-long tree-ring records from Tasmania and New Zealand: a basis for modelling climate variability and forcing, past, present and future. Journal of Quaternary Science, 21, 689–699.

Gergis J, Braganza K, Fowler A, Mooney S, Risbey J (2006) Reconstructing El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) from high-resolution palaeoarchives. Journal of Quaternary Science, 21, 707–722.

Gergis JL, Fowler AM (2006). How unusual was late Twentieth Century El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)? Assessing evidence from tree-ring, coral, ice and documentary archives, A.D. 1525–2002. Advances in Geosciences, 6, 173–179.

Fowler A (2005) Sea-level pressure composite mapping in dendroclimatology: advocacy and an Agathis australis (kauri) case study. Climate Research, 29, 73–84.

Fowler A, Lorrey A, Crossley P (2005) Seasonal growth characteristics of kauri. Tree-Ring Res., 61, 3–20.

Gergis J, Fowler A (2005) Classification of synchronous oceanic and atmospheric El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events for palaeoclimate reconstruction. International Journal of Climatology, 25, 1541–1565.

Fowler A, Adams K (2004) Twentieth century droughts and wet periods in Auckland (New Zealand) and their relationship to ENSO. International Journal of Climatology, 24, 1947–1961.

Fowler A, Boswijk G, Ogden J (2004) Tree-ring studies on Agathis australis (kauri): a synthesis of development work on Late Holocene chronologies. Tree-Ring Res., 60, 15–29.

Fowler A, Boswijk G (2003). Chronology stripping as a tool for enhancing the statistical quality of tree-ring chronologies’. Tree-Ring Res., 59, 53–62.

Williams P, Fowler A (2002) Relationship between oxygen isotopes in rainfall, cave percolation water and speleothem calcite at Waitomo, New Zealand. Journal of Hydrology (NZ), 41, 53–70.

Fowler A (2002) Assessment of the validity of using mean potential evaporation in computations of the long-term soil water balance. Journal of Hydrology, 256, 248–263.

Buckley B, Ogden J, Palmer J, Fowler AM, Salinger J (2000) Dendroclimatic interpretation of tree-rings in Agathis australis (kauri). 1. climate correlation functions and master chronology. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand: 30, 263–275.

Fowler A, Palmer J, Salinger J, Ogden J (2000) Dendroclimatic interpretation of tree-rings in Agathis australis (kauri): 2. Evidence of a significant relationship with ENSO. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand: 30, 277–292.

TBA