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The Arcturus greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring station began operation in July 2010 50 km southeast of Emerald, Queensland. The station was part of a collaborative project between Geoscience Australia (GA) and CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (CMAR) to establish and operate a high precision atmospheric monitoring facility for measurement of baseline greenhouse gases in a geological carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) region. The primary purpose of the station was to establish newly developed greenhouse gas monitoring technology and demonstrate best practice for regional baseline atmospheric monitoring appropriate for geological storage of carbon dioxide. An Eddy Covariance flux tower was installed at the station to compliment baseline atmospheric measurements by providing; supplementary meteorlogical measurements, atmospheric turbulence and stability parameters, the net vertical transport of water vapour and CO2 to (and from) the surface, establishing the energy, water and carbon balance for the area. The site is located in a semi-arid, subtropical clime with a summer (Dec-Feb) wet season. The site lies on the boundary between pasture to the west, and cropping to the east, split north to south. EC measurements were taken at 10 Hz frequency and used to prepare 30 minute averages. Data was collected for 2.5 years from 10 June 2011 to 31 December 2013. It was processed using standard OzFlux methods, involving rigorous QA/QC to ensure the output of high quality data. For more information on the site location, installation and instrument set-up see the Installation Report for Arcturus (Berko et al., 2012), while for more information on the metadata and data store for the EC and baseline monitoring instruments see the Metadata Report: Arcturus atmospheric greenhouse gas monitoring (Etheridge et al. 2014).

Global solar exposure is the total amount of solar energy falling on a horizontal surface. The hourly global solar exposure is the total solar energy for one hour. Typical values for hourly global exposure range up to 4 MJ/m2 (megajoules per square metre). The values are usually highest in the middle of the day and around summer, with localised variations caused mainly by variations in atmospheric conditions, primarily cloudiness. See metadata statement for more information.

Data provided by AIR Worldwide to Geoscience Australia as part of the review of the PCRAFI Phase II project, which examined hazard and risk from TCs and earthquakes in the Pacific. The review was conducted in 2010. This data should be considered in-confidence and is not for distribution or external use.

Eddy Covariance (EC) is considered a key atmospheric technique for quantifying CO2 leakage. However the complex and localised heterogeneity of a CO2 leak above the background environmental signal violates several of the critical assumptions made when implementing the EC technique, including: - That horizontal gradients in CO2 concentration are zero. - That horizontal and vertical gradients in the covariance of CO2 and orthogonal wind directions are zero. The ability of EC measurements of CO2 flux at the surface to provide information on the location and strength of CO2 leakage from below ground stores was tested during a 144 kg/day release event (27 March - 13 June 2012) at the Ginninderra controlled release facility. We show that the direction of the leak can be ascertained with some confidence although this depends on leak strength and distance from leak. Elevated CO2 levels are seen in the direction of the leakage area, however quantifying the emissions is confounded by the potential bias within each measurement through breaching of the assumptions underpinning the EC technique. The CO2 flux due to advection of the horizontal CO2 concentration gradients, thought to be the largest component of the error with the violation of the EC technique's assumptions, has been estimated using the modelling software Windtrax. The magnitude of the CO2 flux due to advection is then compared with the measured CO2 flux measured using the EC technique, to provide an initial assessment of the suitability of the EC technique to quantifying leakage source rates.

Following the drilling of a shallow CO2 reservoir at the Qinghai research site, west of Haidong, China, it was discovered that CO2 was continuously leaking from the wellbore due to well-failure. The site has become a useful facility in China for studying CO2 leakage and monitoring technologies for application to geological storage sites of CO2. During an eight day period in 2014, soil gas and soil flux surveys were conducted to characterise the distribution, magnitude and likely source of the leaking CO2. Two different sampling patterns were utilised during soil flux surveys. A regular sampling grid was used to spatially map out the two high flux zones which were located 20-50 m away from the wellhead. An irregular sampling grid with higher sampling density in the high flux zones, allowed for more accurate mapping of the leak distribution and estimation of total field emission rate using cubic interpolation. The total CO2 emission rate for the site was estimated at 649-1015 kgCO2/d and there appeared to be some degree of spatial correlation between observed CO2 fluxes and elevated surface H2O fluxes. Sixteen soil gas wells were installed across the field to test the real-time application of Romanak et al.'s (2012) process-based approach for soil gas measurements (using ratios of major soil gas components to identify the CO2 source) using a portable multi-gas analyser. Results clearly identified CO2 as being derived from one exogenous source, and are consistent with gas samples collected for laboratory analysis. Carbon-13 isotopes in the centre of each leak zone (-0.21 and -0.22 ) indicate the underlying CO2 is likely sourced from the thermal decomposition of marine carbonates. Surface soil mineralisation (predominantly calcite) is used to infer prior distribution of the CO2 hotspots and as a consequence highlighted plume migration of 20 m in 11 years. Detachment of the plume from the wellbore at the Qinghai research site markedly increases the area that needs surveying at sufficient density to detect a leak. This challenges the role of soil flux and soil gas in a CCS monitoring and verification program for leak detection, whereas these techniques may best be applied for characterising source and emission rate of a CO2 leak.

Fugitive methane emissions, in particular relating to coal seam gas (CSG),has become an emerging issue in Australia over the last few years. There has been significant controversy in US regarding the magnitude of fugitive emissions during production from unconventional gas wells, with large differences in emissions reported between studies using different measurement approaches. . Preliminary research into a small number of Australia's unconventional fields suggest the average fugitive emissions per well are lower than that found in the US. The primary challenge is that the techniques for quantifying methane leakages are still at an early stage of development. Current methods for the small to medium scale use chamber based approaches or vehicles installed with fixed sampling lines and high precisions gas analysers. These technologies are promising, but generally have not been ground truthed in field conditions against known emission rates to estimate effectiveness. They also have limited application in environments where vehicle access is not possible. The Ginniderra facility is being upgraded to support a methane controlled release experiment in 2015. This will enable testing of and verifying methods and technologies for measuring and quantifying methane emissions. To address the absence of suitable techniques for emmission measurement at medium scales, several BOREAL lasers will be deployed which work at scales of 20-1000 m. It is also envisaged airborne techniques utilising laser and hyperspectral will be deployed, along with tomography work utilising multiple concurrent concentration measurements.

The Tropical Cyclone Scenario Selector Tool (TC SST) provides an interactive application to interrogate the stochastic event catalogue which underpins the 2018 Tropical Cyclone Hazard Assessment (TCHA18). The application allows users to search for TC events in the catalogue based on location and intensity (either TC intensity category, or maximum wind speed), visualise the tracks and the wind fields of those events, and download the data for further analysis.

Included fields: Bureau of Meteorology Station Number. Year month day in YYYY,MM,DD format. Present weather at (00, 03, 06, 09, 12, 15, 18, 21) hours Local Time, as international code. Quality of present weather at (00, 03, 06, 09, 12, 15, 18, 21) hours Local Time. Past weather at (00, 03, 06, 09, 12, 15, 18, 21) hours Local Time, as international code. Quality of past weather at (00, 03, 06, 09, 12, 15, 18, 21) hours Local Time.

Wind multipliers are factors that transform regional wind speeds to local wind speeds considering local effects of land cover and topographic influences. It includes terrain, shielding, topographic and direction multipliers. Except for the direction multiplier whose value can be defined specifically by the Australian wind loading standard AS/NZS 1170.2, terrain, shielding and topographic multipliers are calculated using this software package based on the adaptations of formulae outlined in the AS/NZS 1170.2. This package is an upgraded version of wind multiplier computation software (https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/82481) used to produce wind terrain, shielding and topographic multipliers for national coverage using an input of Land Cover Classification Scheme (LCCS) level 4 version 1.0.0 ( 2015) and 1-second SRTM level 2 derived digital elevation models (DEM-S) version 1.0. In order to improve the classification resolution in the built environment, the LCCS layer is overlaid with both mesh block and settlement types. The output is based on tiles with dimensions about 1 by 1 decimal degree in netCDF format. It includes terrain, shielding and topographic multiplier respectively. Each multiplier further contains 8 directions. The upgraded package is stored in Geoscience Australia public-facing repository and can be accessed via https://github.com/GeoscienceAustralia/Wind_Multipliers