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.

40 years atmospheric reanalysis for Australia region. http://www.ecmwf.int/products/data/archive/descriptions/e4/index.html

Developing a framework and computational methodology for evaluating the impacts and risks of extreme fire events on regional and peri-urban populations (infrastructure and people) applicable to the Australian region. The research considers three case studies of recent extreme fires employing an ensemble approach (sensitivity analysis) which varies the meteorology, vegetation and ignition in an effort to estimate fire risk to the case-study fire area and adjacent region.

Tropical cyclones are the most common disaster in the Pacific, and among the most destructive. In December 2012, Cyclone Evan caused over US$200 million damage in Samoa, nearly 30 percent of Samoan GDP. Niue suffered losses of US$85 million following Cyclone Heta in 2004-over five times its GDP. As recently as January 2014, Cyclone Ian caused significant damage throughout Tonga, resulting in the first payout of the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Pilot system operated by the World Bank (2014). According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intense tropical cyclone activity in the Pacific basin will likely increase in the future (IPCC 2013). But such general statements about global tropical cyclone activity provide little guidance on how impacts may change locally or even regionally, and thus do little to help communities and nations prepare appropriate adaptation measures. This study assesses climate change in terms of impact on the human population and its assets, expressed in terms of financial loss. An impact focus is relevant to adaptation because changes in hazard do not necessarily result in a proportional change in impact. This is because impacts are driven by exposure and vulnerability as well as by hazard. For example, a small shift in hazard in a densely populated area may have more significant consequences than a bigger change in an unpopulated area. Analogously, a dense population that has a low vulnerability to a particular hazard might not need to adapt significantly to a change in hazard. Even in regions with high tropical cyclone risk and correspondingly stringent building codes, such as the state of Florida, a modest 1 percent increase in wind speeds can result in a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in loss to residential property. Quantifying the change impact thus supports evidence-based decision making on adaptation to future climate risk.

Not available

No abstract available

Weather radar data provided by the Bureau of Meteorology for initial investigation into thunderstorm tracking and analysis applications

Geological storage of CO2 is a leading strategy for large-scale greenhouse gas emission mitigation. Monitoring and verification is important for assuring that CO2 storage poses minimal risk to people's health and the environment, and that it is effective at reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Eddy Covariance (EC) has been proposed as a long-term monitoring solution for geological storage projects and is considered suitable for monitoring areas 1000 - 100,000 m2 in size. Eddy Covariance is a key micrometeorological technique which has traditionally been used for assessing ecosystem exchange of CO2 in a variety of natural and agricultural settings. It measures the vertical transfer of scalar variables such as CO2 via eddies from upwind of the instrumentation, and correlates the measured CO2 flux to the upwind source area based on several key assumptions. These assumptions include that the upwind source area is homogeneous, flat and uniform, which in turn requires that horizontal gradients in CO2 concentration are zero and that horizontal and vertical gradients in the covariance of CO2 concentration and orthogonal wind directions are zero. Work undertaken at the GA-CO2CRC Gininnderra controlled release facility, where CO2 is released from the shallow subsurface (at 2 m depth), suggests that CO2 leakage in the near subsurface will follow paths of least resistance up to the surface. Similar observations have been observed at the ZERT facility in Montana and CO2 Field Lab in Norway. This leads to CO2 leaks having localised, patchy surface expression, rather than a diffuse wide-scale leak which one typically expects (Lewicki et al. 2010). The implication of this is that the source area for a leak is highly inhomogeneous, meaning the magnitudes of CO2 flux values measured using EC are grossly unreliable. These limitations were discussed in Leuning et al.'s (2008) review on CCS atmospheric monitoring technologies yet are not addressed in much of the recent EC leak quantification literature. This presentation will present findings from the first subsurface release at the CO2CRC facility in Canberra (March - May 2012), where EC data was analysed for application in leak detection and quantification. The CO2 release rate was 144 kg/d. Eddy Covariance was successfully used to detect the leak by comparing CO2 fluxes in the direction of the leak to baseline wind sectors. Median CO2 fluxes in the leak direction were 9.1 µmol/m2/s, while the median background flux was 1.0 µmol/m2/s. Separate measurements taken using a soil flux meter found that the daytime background soil flux had a median flux of 1.8 µmol/m2/s but the peak soil flux over a leak was 1100 µmol/m2/s. Quantification and spatially locating the leak were attempted, but due to the problem of source area inhomogeneity, no substantive progress could be made. How an inhomogeneous source area contributes to 'lost' CO2 from the system, through advection and diffusion, will be discussed, coupled with suggestions for how these parameters can be evaluated in future experimental design. Leuning R., Etheridge D., Luhar A., and Dunse B., 2008. Atmospheric monitoring and verification technologies for CO2 sequestration. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 2(3), 401-414. Lewicki J. L., Hilley G. E., Dobeck L., and Spangler L., 2010. Dynamics of CO2 fluxes and concentrations during a shallow subsurface CO2 release. Environmental Earth Sciences, 60(2), 285-297.

We have developed an autonomous CO2 monitoring station, based around the Vaisala GMP343 sensor. The station is powered by a solar panel and incorporates a data logger and a directional antenna for line-of-sight wireless communication with a base station. The base station communicates via the Telstra mobile phone data network. The concept of atmospheric tomography was tested at the Ginninderra site and proved very successful as a method of locating and quantifying a spatially small release of CO2. In this case the sensors were separated from the source by 40 m. The opportunity to test the method over a larger distance arose during the controlled release of Buttress gas during the stage 2B experiment at the Otway site. Gas was released at 8 tpd during daylight hours, and an approximate ring of 8 monitoring stations was deployed around the release point; the ring was about 800 m in diameter. Gas was released on 12 occasions, chosen to match wind directions that would carry the plume in the direction of one of the sensors. The dataset was too limited to carry out the full-scale Bayesian inversion that was demonstrated in the Ginninderra test (which lasted two months) but a simple inversion was possible. This located the source of the release correctly to within 20 m. The test demonstrated that inexpensive sensors could achieve enough stability and sensitivity to work (in this particular application) at the few ppm level. Moreover quite simple dispersion models could be used to predict plume geometry up to 500 m from the release. Overall the experiment indicates the basis of an inexpensive method for remotely monitoring areas of around a km2 for spatially small leakages.

The Australian Solar Energy Information System V2.0 has been developed as a collaborative project between Geoscience Australia and the Bureau of Meteorology. The product provides pre-competitive spatial information for investigations into suitable locations for solar energy infrastructure. The outcome of this project will be the production of new and improved solar resource data, to be used by solar researchers and the Australian solar power industry. it is aimed to facilitate broad analysis of both physical and socio-economic data parameters which will assist the solar industry to identify regions best suited for development of solar energy generation. It also has increased the quality and availability of national coverage solar exposure data, through the improved calibration and validation of satellite based solar exposure gridded data. The project is funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. The ASEIS V2.0 has a solar database of resource mapping data which records and/or map the following Solar Exposure over a large temporal range, energy networks, infrastructure, water sources and other relevant data. ASEIS V2.0 has additional solar exposure data provided by the Bureau of Meteorology. - Australian Daily Gridded Solar Exposure Data now ranges from 1990 to 2012 - Australian Monthly Solar Exposure Gridded Data now ranges from 1990 to 2011 ASEIS V2.0 also has a new electricity transmission reference dataset which allows for information to be assessed on any chosen region the distance and bearing angle to the closest transmission powerline.