Potential impacts of climate change present significant challenges for land use planning, emergency management and risk mitigation across Australia. Even in current climate conditions, the Rockhampton Regional Council area is subject to the impacts of natural hazards, such as bushfires, floods, and tropical cyclones (extreme winds and storm surge). All of these hazards may worsen with climate change. To consider future climate hazard within council practices, the Rockhampton Regional Council received funding from the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Grants Program Project for a project under the Settlements and Infrastructure theme. This funding was provided to evaluate the ability of urban planning principles and practices to accommodate climate change and the uncertainty of climate change impacts. Within this project, the Rockhampton Regional Council engaged Geoscience Australia to undertake the modelling of natural hazards under current and future climate conditions. Geoscience Australia's work, within the broader project, has utilised natural hazard modelling techniques to develop a series of spatial datasets describing hazards under current climate conditions and a future climate scenario. The following natural hazards were considered: tropical cyclone wind, bushfire, storm tide, coastal erosion and sea-level rise. Outputs of this project include a report, hazard maps and digital spatial data.

A statistical downscaling approach is used to compare changes in environmental indicators of tropical cyclone characteristics between three greenhouse gas emissions scenarios in the Australian region, using results from models used for the IPCC 4th Assessment Report. Maximum potential intensity is shown to change linearly with global mean temperature, independent of emissions scenario, with a 2-3% increase per degree of global warming in Australia's tropical regions. Changes in vertical wind shear are more ambiguous, however the magnitude of changes in tropical cyclone genesis regions is small. The genesis potential index increases significantly in all scenarios, and appears to be driven by the increase in MPI. Results for Australia's tropical regions suggest that tropical cyclone intensity is highly likely to increase with global warming, while results for frequency are suggestive of a frequency increase, but less conclusive. Further work to assess frequency changes will allow quantification of changes in tropical cyclone hazard under climate change.

ODP drilling in Prydz Bay by Leg 119 (1988) and Leg 188 (2000) investigated Cainozoic paleoenvironments of the continental shelf, slope and rise. Drilling on the shelf reveal a pre-glacial alluvial or delta plain system covering the Prydz Bay basin -- a plain characterized by austral conifer woodland in Late Cretaceous that changed to Nothofagus rainforest scrub by mid to late Eocene time. Evidence of mountain glaciation in late Eocene time is seen in sand grain textures in channel sands. Interbedded clays and sands and an increase in marine dinoflagellates signals a marine transgression of the delta plain. In the late Eocene to early Oligocene, Prydz Bay shifted from being a fluvio-deltaic complex with vegetation to a marine continental shelf environment. The transition is marked by a sequence boundary and marine flooding surface onlapped by glaciomarine muds with dropstones that denote the first appearance of floating ice on the shelf, followed by diamicts that contain shelly fossils. No core exists for early Oligocene to early Miocene times, and seismic data suggest the transition from shallow to normal depth, prograding continental shelf, with submarine canyons on the slope and channel/levees on the rise. Cores from the continental rise provide evidence of a Neogene long-term (m.y.) decrease in sedimentation rates and short-term (Milankovitch periods) cyclicity between principally biogenic and terrigenous sediment supply due possibly to cyclic changes in onshore glaciers and related changes in ocean circulation. Mid Miocene times saw more-rapid slowing of sedimentation rates, a shift to enhanced IRD, and changes in clays and other minerals. These transitions result from enhanced glacial erosion of onshore and shelf source areas and reduced input from glacial meltwater as the ice became progressively colder. The Early Pliocene saw the deposition of overcompacted glacial diamictons on the shelf, and bank/trough morphology produced by formation of an ice stream ice in western Prydz Bay. Debris flows formed a trough mouth fan on the continental slope. Compositional changes in the trough mouth fan suggests peak erosion and therefore possibly peak ice volumes at about 1.1 Ma. Late Pleistocene times (post 780 ka.) saw a reduction in frequency of extreme advances by the main ice drainage system, in response to reduced precipitation accompanying cooling, extreme erosion of the inner shelf and changes in the interaction of the ice sheet response time and the prevailing climate cycle length. These changes probably reflect the overall cooling of the Antarctic from non-glacial, to restricted temperate glaciers to poly thermal ice sheet to the present cold based ice sheet. Superimposed on this overall cooling trend are pulses of warmer conditions, indicated by beds of warmer water nannoplankton and changes diatom assemblages

Geomorphic mapping of the ~30 km Lake Edgar fault scarp in SW Tasmania suggests that three large surface-rupturing events with vertical displacements of 2.4 - 3.1 m have occurred in late Quaternary times. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) chronology from a sequence of three periglacial fluvial terraces associated with scarp incision provides constraint on the age of these events. The ages of alluvial/colluvial fans derived from the youngest fluvial terraces constrain the most recent event to ca 17 - 18 ka. The chronology of the two preceding events is more poorly constrained. The near coincidence of ages from the base of the youngest terrace and the penultimate terrace suggest that penultimate faulting might have occurred during active fluvial deposition ca 25 - 28 ka. The oldest recognised event occurred subsequent to the ca 61 ka deposition of gravels on the highest of the three terraces and prior to the deposition of ca 48 ka gravels exposed in the footwall fan. The vertical displacement implies earthquake magnitudes in the order of MW 6.8 - 7.0. Estimates for the average slip rate calculated for the two complete seismic cycles range from 0.17 - 0.20 mm/yr (unweighted mean). This sequence represents the first recurrence data for surface-rupturing earthquakes on an eastern Australian Quaternary fault. The Lake Edgar Fault, which originally formed in the Palaeozoic, is undoubtedly susceptible to reactivation under conditions imposed by the contemporary Australian intraplate stress field. While displaying episodic rupture behaviour, the fault appears to rupture with a "characteristic" magnitude. These findings are significant for seismic hazard assessment both in Australia and in intracratonic areas worldwide.

The grid shows the Koeppenclassification indices across Australia in the form of two-dimensional array data. The classification is based on standard 30-year period (1961-1990) rainfall and temperature grids. See Lineage for more information.

The South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project was initially developed in the early 1990's as a response to concerns expressed by South Pacific Forum Leaders about the potential impacts of global warming on climate and sea levels in the Pacific. This AusAID funded project was established with the goal of providing an accurate, long term record of sea levels in the South Pacific both for Forum countries and for the international scientific community which need such information to better understand how the Pacific oceanographic and meteorological environment is changing. That information will better equip governments and communities to respond, adapt to and manage the impacts of short and long term environmental change in the region. During the 1990's a network of high resolution sea level and climate monitoring stations was established in the South West Pacific and processed and analysed data from those stations made available to stakeholders. Since 2001, a significant new environmental monitoring component has been added a Continuous Global Positioning System network (CGPS). CGPS receivers will be established near and linked to the sea level monitoring stations in all partner countries and will measure vertical and horizontal land movements on the islands to help determine absolute sea level change.

A review commissioned by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in June 2001 entitled 'Natural Disasters in Australia: reforming mitigation, relief and recovery arrangements' concluded that a new approach to natural disasters in Australia was needed. While disaster response and reaction plans remain important, there is now a greater focus towards anticipation of mitigation against natural hazards, involving a fundamental shift in focus beyond relief and recovery towards cost-effective, evidence-based disaster mitigation. This new approach now includes an assessment of the changes in frequency and intensity of natural hazard events that are influenced by climate change, and aims to achieve safer, more sustainable Australian communities in addition to a reduction in risk, damage and losses from future natural disasters. Geoscience Australia (GA) is developing risk models and innovative approaches to assess the potential losses to Australian communities from a range of sudden impact natural hazards. GA aims to define the economic and social threat posed by a range of rapid onset hazards through a combined study of natural hazard research methods and risk assessment models. These hazards include earthquakes, cyclones, floods, landslides, severe winds and storm surge/tsunami. This presentation provides an overview of the risk that peak wind gusts pose to a number of Australian communities (major capital cities), and for some cities examines how climate change may affect the risk (utilising modelling underpinned by a small subset of the IPCC greenhouse gas emission scenarios).

Climate change has become a real challenge for all nations throughout the world. The Fifth IPCC Assessment Report (2007) indicates that climate change is inevitable and those nations that quickly adapt will mitigate risk from the threats of the increased strength of tropical cyclones, storm surge inundation, floods and the spread of disease vectors. Decision making for adaptation will be more effective when it is based on evidence. Evidence-based disaster management means that decision makers are better informed, and the decision making process delivers more rational, representative and objective climate change outcomes. To achieve this, fundamental data needs to be translated into information and knowledge, before it can be put to use by the decision makers as policy, planning and implementation. The exposure to these increased natural hazards includes the communities, businesses, services, lifeline utilities and infrastructure. The thorough understanding of exposed infrastructure and population under current and future climate projections is fundamental to the process of future capacity building. The development of the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) is a significant national project being undertaken by Geoscience Australia (GA). NEXIS collects, collates, manages and provides the information required to assess multi-hazard impacts. Exposure information is defined as a suite of elements at risk from climate change which includes human populations, buildings, businesses and infrastructure.

This project aims to improve the estimation of tropical cyclone risk in the Australian region by employing a numerical simulation approach based on a climate model. Climate models are the main tools used for predicting the effects of climate change, but usually they have employed resolutions too coarse to simulate reliably smaller weather systems such as tropical cyclones. In this work, a regional climate model of unprecedented fine resolution (the CSIRO regional model CCAM) will be implemented over the Australian region and an improved estimate both of present-day and future tropical cyclone hazard will be made. When combined with the results of a tropical cyclone damage model, new estimates of the tropical cyclone risk to infrastructure in northern Australia will be obtained

This paper describes two studies modelling the potential impacts of extreme events under sea level rise scenarios in two potentially vulnerable coastal communities: Mandurah and Busselton in Western Australia. These studies aim to support local adaptation planning by high resolution modelling of the impacts from climate change.