How suburb temperature and rainfall projections were determinedHow suburb temperature and rainfall projections were determined

How suburb temperature and rainfall projections were determined

The Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence ("QCCCE") provides graphs of historical and projected temperature and rainfall for Queensland suburbs which span a wide range of temperature and rainfall regimes. 

QCCCE is the only state-based climate science research centre in Australia, and is a whole-of-government unit located within the Office of Climate Change.

QCCCE undertakes targeted research and delivers specialised information to inform Queensland's response to climate change, climate variability and climate extremes. It provides information and science on climate change impacts, including the application of international research and science to the Queensland context.

Working with data and information from CSIRO, BOM and other sources, QCCCE develops and reports on scenarios for future climate change across Queensland's regions to help different sectors of society anticipate what might lie ahead depending on how greenhouse emissions change in the future and other factors.

Harden Up - graphs of historical and projected rainfall and temperature for Queensland's suburbs

Queensland has one of the most variable climates in the world, with rainfall and climate varying considerably from year-to-year and decade-to-decade. Global Climate Models also show Queensland's rainfall and temperature will change into the future leading to a higher frequency of extreme weather events.

  • Graphs produced by QCCCE show year-to-year changes in rainfall and temperature for your suburb. This information is based on temperature and rainfall observations at BOM weather stations stored on BOM's climate database known as ADAM, the Australian Data Archive for Meteorology, (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/cdo/about/sites.shtml).
  • The QCCCE extract data from ADAM, perform quality checks and then mathematically interpolate this data to a 5km x 5km grid across Australia. The Harden Up graphs of historical rainfall and temperature for the 3,200 suburbs included in Harden Up are based on these best-estimate calculations. The accuracy of these calculations is highly dependent on the underlying station density (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/) which has changed through time. In 2010 BoM received data from approximately 135 climate stations in Queensland recording maximum and minimum temperature and approximately 1525 stations recording rainfall.

 

Historical and projected future changes in 30-year average rainfall and temperature are also shown on Harden Up suburb pages. For each suburb, rainfall and temperature data are averaged over 30 year periods to highlight long term changes and variability. Climate models developed by various international climate agencies differ in their projections of temperature and rainfall. These projections also differ depending on future greenhouse emissions scenarios. Graphs show model projections for a high future emissions scenario and depict the range in which eighty per cent of model projections lie, as well as the mid-range value of all models for future years to 2070.

 

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