Theme 2: Future climate

High resolution climate projections and impacts

Climate change poses a potential risk to water, food and environmental security. There is growing evidence to show that anthropogenic effects are heightening the trends or effects of the change in climate during this warming period.

South eastern Australia is one of the country's most valuable areas, with significant primary production. The Murray-Darling Basin alone generates 40 per cent of the nation's agricultural production, with 70 per cent of Australian irrigation occurring in the region.

A question of particular importance for water managers in the Murray-Darling Basin is how climate change may affect streamflows in the Basin. SEACI will use a number of global climate models and downscaling techniques to produce a range of high resolution climate change scenarios, with a view to improving estimates of likely future changes in average climate, inter-annual variability and extreme events, and associated impacts on streamflows.

Research questions

Partner agencies are interested in finding out:

How is the climate (average, inter-annual variability and extreme events for rainfall, temperature and evaporation) likely to change over the next 25-65 years?
What are the probabilities attached to these changes?
What are the relationships between the drivers operating at different timescales and have these changed over time?
How can methods for regional projections be improved to provide greater confidence for stakeholders?

Projects

To answer these questions CSIRO is undertaking work on three projects that will:

Produce downscaled climate change scenarios for hydrologic impact assessment
Produce updated, high resolution rainfall, temperature, evaporation and water balance projections (for ten Catchment Management Authority regions of Victoria)
Determine likely changes in behaviour of extreme rainfall events (focussing on the southeast corner of the Murray-Darling Basin).

Expected outcomes

At the conclusion of this research we expect to have:

produced climate change scenarios at spatial and temporal resolutions required for hydrological modelling in the south east corner of the Murray-Darling Basin.
produced high-resolution climate change projections across the State of Victoria.
assessed the changes in the characteristics of rainfall extremes that are likely to occur under the enhanced greenhouse effect.

MORE INFORMATION:

Theme 2: High Resolution Climate Projections and Impacts fact sheet | Download PDF 72 KB