This Professional Opinion reports the interim findings of a consultancy undertaken for the Secretariat for the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) by Geoscience Australia in the period 15 December 2010 to 2 April 2011. Geoscience Australia was engaged by SPREP to assist in developing a business case for a Pacific Climate Change Portal. This portal will act as a focus for climate and climate change information relevant to the Pacific, provide up to date information for decision makers, and researchers, and improve communication and collaboration in adaptation initiatives by national, regional and international stakeholders. Geoscience Australia has consulted as much as possible in the time available with stakeholders for the portal identified by SPREP to be 'core'. These stakeholders include the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), United Nations organisations, notably the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), along with SPREP itself. The consultations allowed Geoscience Australia to identify key issues, recommend core functionalities of the portal and a preferred operational model and identify partnerships and resources required for sustainable, long term operation of the portal. As a part of this consultancy, Geoscience Australia constructed a 'demonstrator' Pacific Climate Change web portal to illustrate how users could operate the proposed key functionalities of the portal, and to give potential users an illustration of two 'look and feel' options. This demonstrator portal can be visited at http://www.pacificportal.com.au/ . It will be active until approximately the end of June 2011.

We highlight the importance of developing and integrating fundamental information at a range of scales (regional to national to local) to develop consistency, gain ownership, and meet the needs of a range of users and decision makers. We demonstrate this with a couple of case studies where we have leveraged national databases and computational tools to work locally to gain ownership of risks and to develop adaptation options. In this sense we endorse the notion of combining top down and bottom up approaches to get the best outcome.

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

The Australia/New Zealand wind actions standard (AS/NZS 1170.2 2011), rely to a significant extent on the peak gust wind speed observations collected over more than 70 years by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). The Building Code of Australia (BCA) utilises AS/NZS 1170.2 to minimise natural hazard risk to people and buildings. The current wind loading code, and the performance of our infrastructure (residential, commercial, industrial and critical infrastructure) with regards to wind hazard, is based primarily on the Dines anemometer interpretation of the peak gust wind speed (commenced in the 1930's). In the mid-1980's, BoM began a program to replace the aging pressure tube Dines anemometer (paper record) with the Synchrotac and Almos digital cup anemometers. During the anemometer replacement process, many localities had more than one type of anemometer operating for significant periods. recording extreme events. Systematic differences in determining the magnitude of extreme events during this overlap period, raised serious concerns about the utility of the peak gust wind speed database. This study utilises statistical extreme value distribution analysis (Generalised Pareto Distribution; GPD) examining coincident maximum wind gusts over a fixed 30 minute time window. The analysis estimated of the 500-year return-period (RP) peak gust wind exceedance level derived from the coincident Dines and cup anemometer wind gust measurements. The extreme gust wind speeds for seven sites (coincident measurement period of 89 years) were considered, indicating a bias between the Dines and cup anemometers from +7% to +14% over the speed range from 45 to 60 m/s.

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.

Geoscience Australia is the national custodian for coastal geoscientific data and information. The organisation developed the OzCoasts web-based database and information system to draw together a diverse range of data and information on Australia's coasts and its estuaries. Previously known as OzEstuaries, the website was designed with input from over 100 scientists and resource managers from more than 50 organisations including government, universities and the National Estuaries Network. The former Coastal CRC and National Land and Water Resources Audit were instrumental in coordinating communication between the different agencies. Each month approximately 20,000 unique visitors from more than 140 countries visit the website to view around 80,000 pages. Maps, images, reports and data can be downloaded to assist with coastal science, monitoring and management. The content is arranged into six inter-linked modules: Search Data, Conceptual Models, Coastal Indicators, Habitat Mapping, Natural Resource Management, Landform and Stability Maps. More....

This metadata relates to the ANUGA hydrodynamic modelling results for Busselton, south-west Western Australia. The results consist of inundation extent and peak momentum gridded spatial data for each of the ten modelling scenarios. The scenarios are based on Tropical Cyclone (TC) Alby that impacted Western Australia in 1978 and the combination of TC Alby with a track and time shift, sea-level rise and riverine flood scenarios. The inundation extent defines grid cells that were identified as wet within each of the modelling scenarios. The momentum results define the maximum momentum value recorded for each inundated grid cell within each modelling scenario. Refer to the professional opinion (Coastal inundation modelling for Busselton, Western Australia, under current and future climate) for details of the project.

Australian present and past weather data as produced by the Bureau of Meteorology. Dataset contains: Present weather data as international code; Past weather data as international code; plus additional supporting information.

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.

Some of the most visible consequences arising from climate change are sea level rise and more intense and frequent storms. On the open coast and low lying estuarine waterways these impacts will lead to the increased risks of inundation, storm surge and coastal erosion that can damage beaches, property and infrastructure and impact on a significant number of people. Understanding the potential risk of these coastal hazards is critical for coastal zone management and the formulation of adaptation responses, while early action is likely to be the most cost effective approach to managing the risk. Geoscience Australia (GA) is assisting the Australian Government's Department of Climate Change to develop a 'first pass' National Coastal Vulnerability Assessment. GA and the University of Tasmania (UTas) are developing fundamental spatial datasets and GIS modelling tools to identify which land areas of the Australian coast are likely to be physically sensitive to the effects of sea level rise, storms and storm surge. Of special interest is to identify sensitive areas where there is significant property and infrastructure that will be the focus of a more detailed study in a second pass assessment. A new national shoreline geomorphic and stability map or Smartline, developed for the project by UTas, is a key new spatial dataset. The Smartline is an interactive, nationally-consistent coastal GIS map in the form of a segmented line. Each line segment identifies distinct coastal landform types using multiple attribute fields to describe important aspects of the geology, geomorphology and topography of the coast. These data enable an assessment of the stability of the coast and its sensitivity to the potential impacts of shoreline erosion (soft coast) and inundation (low-lying coast), providing a useful indicative coastal risk assessment.