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.

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.

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.

Modelling tropical cyclone Yasi using TCRM

There is increasing recognition that minimising methane emissions from the oil and gas sector is a key step in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions in the near term. Atmospheric monitoring techniques are likely to play an important future role in measuring the extent of existing emissions and verifying emission reductions. They can be very suitable for monitoring gas fields as they are continuous and integrate emissions from a number of potential point and diffuse sources that may vary in time. Geoscience Australia and CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research have collected three years of continuous methane and carbon dioxide measurements at their atmospheric composition monitoring station ('Arcturus') in the Bowen Basin, Australia. Methane signals in the Bowen Basin are likely to be influenced by cattle production, landfill, coal production, and conventional and coal seam gas (CSG) production. Australian CSG is typically 'dry' and is characterised by a mixed thermogenic-biogenic methane source with an absence of C3-C6+ alkanes. The range of '13C isotopic signatures of the CSG is similar to methane from landfill gas and cattle emissions. The absence of standard in-situ tracers for CSG fugitive emissions suggests that having a comprehensive baseline will be critical for successful measurement of fugitive emissions using atmospheric techniques. In this paper we report on the sensitivity of atmospheric techniques for the detection of fugitive emissions from a simulated new CSG field against a three year baseline signal. Simulation of emissions was performed for a 1-year period using the coupled prognostic meteorological and air pollution model TAPM at different fugitive emission rates (i.e. estimates of <1% to up to 10% of production lost) and distances (i.e. 10 - 50 km) from the station. Emissions from the simulated CSG field are based on well density, production volumes, and field size typical of CSG fields in Australia. The distributions of the perturbed and baseline signals were evaluated and statistically compared to test for the presence of fugitive methane emissions. In addition, a time series model of the methane baseline was developed in order to generate alternative realizations of the baseline signal. These were used to provide measures of both the likelihood of detecting fugitive emissions at various emission levels and of the false alarm rate. Results of the statistical analysis and an indicative minimum fugitive methane emission rate that can be detected using a single monitoring station are presented. Poster presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting, December 2013, San Francisco

Source The data was sourced from CSIRO (Victoria) in 2012 by Bob Cechet. It is not known specifically which division of CSIRO, although it is likely to have been the Marine and Atmospheric Research Division (Aspendale), nor the contact details of the person who provided the data to Bob. The data was originally produced by CSIRO for their input into the South-East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative (SEQCARI). Reference, from an email of 16 March 2012 sent from Bob Cechet to Chris Thomas (Appendix 1 of the README doc stored at the parent folder level with the data), is made to 'download NCEP AVN/GFS files' or to source them from the CSIRO archive. Content The data is compressed into 'tar' files. The name content is separated by a dot where the first section is the climatic variable as outlined in the table format below: Name Translation rain 24 hr accumulated precipitation rh1_3PM Relative humidity at 3pm local time tmax Maximum temperature tmin Minimum temperature tscr_3PM Screen temperature (2 m above ground) at 3pm local time u10_3PM 10-metre above ground eastward wind speed at 3pm local time v10_3PM 10-metre above ground northward wind speed at 3pm local time The second part of the name is the General Circulation Model (GCM) applied: Name Translation gfdlcm21 GFDL CM2.1 miroc3_2_medres MIROC 3.2 (medres) mpi_echam5 MPI ECHAM5 ncep NCEP The third, and final, part of the tarball name is the year range that the results relate to: 1961-2000, 1971-2000, 2001-2040 and 2041-2099 Data format and extent Inside each of the tarball files is a collection of NetCDF files covering each simulation that constitutes the year range (12 simulations for each year). A similar naming protocol is used for the NetCDF files with a two digit extension added to the year for each of the simulations for that year (e.g 01-12). The spatial coverage of the NetCDF files is shown in the bounding box extents as shown below. Max X: -9.92459297180176 Min X: -50.0749073028564 Max Y: 155.149784088135 Min Y: 134.924812316895 The cell size is 0.15 degrees by 0.15 degrees (approximately 17 km square at the equator) The data is stored relative to the WGS 1984 Geographic Coordinate System. The GCMs were forced with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A2 emission scenario as described in the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) inputs for the future climate. The GCM results were then downscaled from a 2 degree cell resolution by CSIRO using their Cubic Conformal Atmospheric Model (CCAM) to the 0.15 degree cell resolution. Use This data was used within the Rockhampton Project to identify the future climate changes based on the IPCC A2 SRES emissions scenario. The relative difference of the current climate GCM results to the future climate results was applied to the results of higher resolution current climate natural hazard modelling. Refer to GeoCat # 75085 for the details relating to the report and the 59 attached ANZLIC metadata entries for data outputs.

Australian Community Climate and Earth-System (ACCESS) Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) data is made available by the Bureau of Meteorology for registered subscribers such as GA. ACCESS-C3 (City) model is a forecast-only model performed every 6 hours and consists of grid coordinates covering domains around Sydney, Victoria and Tasmania, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Darwin. ACCESS Impact Modelling (ACCESS-IM) System utilise information from ACCESS-NWP on the forecast wind gust speeds ground surface (single-level) at 10 metres, simulated by the ACCESS-C3 model, for the time period of 0-12, 12-24, 24-36, 0-36.

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

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.