This database contains the monthly mean and montly long term mean fields from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis 1960-2000. Files contain the following data: airsfc.mon.mean.nc - surface air temperature land.nc - land/sea mask slp.mon.mean.nc - sea level pressure sst.mnmean.nc - sea surface temperature (see SST_README for more details) uwnd.mon.mean.nc - U (eastward) component of wind vwnd.mon.mean.nc - V (northward) component of wind shum.mon.mean.nc - specific humidity (this file does not contain all vertical levels, unlike the other 3-d variables) For all the above, files with 'ltm' instead of 'mean' contain the long-term monthly mean data. Data were downloaded on 25/11/2009 from the Earth System Reseach Laboratory (ESRL) Physical Sciences Division (PSD) website. (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/reanalysis/)

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.

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.

Results from the first pass application of the tomography technique using low accuracy sensors is presented and limitations of the sensors and technique discussed. BUll. Seismol. Soc. AM.

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.

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.

The National Hazard Impact Risk Service for Tropical Cyclone Event Impact provides information on the potential impact to residential separate houses due to severe winds. The information is derived from Bureau of Meteorology tropical cyclone forecast tracks, in combination with building location and attributes from the National Exposure Information System and vulnerability models to define the level of impact. Impact data is aggregated to Statistical Area Level 1, categorised into five qualitative levels of impact.

Here we demonstrate a workflow for the development of a local, corrected wind field for severe Tropical Cyclone (TC) Debbie. We combine modelling with corrections based on observations, and local wind effects including topography, land cover, shielding and direction to provide the best estimate of actual wind speeds. This is important, as wind speed observations are sparse, and do not necessarily provide even coverage of the TC landfall region. The final corrected wind field records the maximum 0.2 second wind gust, at 10 metres above ground, throughout the lifetime of TC Debbie, and provides a best estimate of maximum wind gust speeds associated with TC Debbie. Through the development of this workflow we will demonstrate the importance of observational data for validating wind field modelling outputs, and highlight the usefulness of James Cook University’s mobile anemometers for collecting wind speed data where gaps exist in the Bureau of Meteorology’s automatic weather station network. We identify the limitations in the availability of national land cover datasets at high resolution, and demonstrate the development of a fit-for-purpose land cover dataset using GA’s Digital Earth Australia Landsat archives (Lewis et al. 2017). This report and the accompanying datasets have been released with the aim of showcasing a method, which can be refined by others to develop a standard methodology for the production of local TC wind fields. This workflow can be applied in the same way following future TC events to support the post-disaster field surveys that are routinely carried out by a range of parties following a severe TC making landfall. The local wind fields, combined with the damage surveys ultimately help to refine our vulnerability models of housing stock in Australia.

In late 2012, Cyclone Evan swept across Samoa and Fiji, wreaking a path of destruction. Losses in Samoa were estimated at A$200 million - somewhere around 30% of Samoa's GDP. The capacity of small island states in the Pacific to recover from such large impacts is hampered by their small economies and comparatively high vulnerability to the impacts of natural hazards. What are the chances of an impact the size of Evan? And will the magnitude of those losses change under future climate scenarios due to changes in tropical cyclone activity? The Tropical Cyclone Risk Assessment in the Pacific Region project delivered information and methods for evaluating vulnerability and risks from tropical cyclones. This project was supported under the Pacific-Australia Climate Change Science and Adaptation Planning Program with co-financing from the Global Fund for Disaster Risk Reduction. A collaboration between the Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, Geoscience Australia and AIR Worldwide, the project drew together complementary skills to deliver an integrated and consistent risk assessment of likely damages to key infrastructure and assets in the Pacific from future tropical cyclones arising from severe winds and other hazards. This risk information will allow partner country governments to better integrate climate risk considerations into infrastructure development and ex-ante disaster planning. The presentation will detail the methods used in the analysis, and present outcomes of the risk assessment for current and future climate scenarios.

The Bushfire Attack Level Toolbox provides access to ArcGIS geoprocessing scripts that calculate the Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) as per Method 1 in AS-3959 (2009). BAL is a measure of the severity of a building's potential exposure to ember attack, radiant heat and direct flame contact in the event of a bushfire. It serves as a basis for establishing the requirements for construction to improve protection of building elements from attack by bushfire. The BAL Maps and Exposure report provide maps of three communities in Western Australia, with indicative BAL levels, and the aggregate inventory of assets and population exposed to the different levels of BAL.