Potential impacts of climate change present significant challenges for land use planning, emergency management and risk mitigation across Australia. Even in current climate conditions, the Rockhampton Regional Council area is subject to the impacts of natural hazards, such as bushfires, floods, and tropical cyclones (extreme winds and storm surge). All of these hazards may worsen with climate change. To consider future climate hazard within council practices, the Rockhampton Regional Council received funding from the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Grants Program Project for a project under the Settlements and Infrastructure theme. This funding was provided to evaluate the ability of urban planning principles and practices to accommodate climate change and the uncertainty of climate change impacts. Within this project, the Rockhampton Regional Council engaged Geoscience Australia to undertake the modelling of natural hazards under current and future climate conditions. Geoscience Australia's work, within the broader project, has utilised natural hazard modelling techniques to develop a series of spatial datasets describing hazards under current climate conditions and a future climate scenario. The following natural hazards were considered: tropical cyclone wind, bushfire, storm tide, coastal erosion and sea-level rise. Outputs of this project include a report, hazard maps and digital spatial data.

Geoscience Australia, in collaboration with the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (DCCEE), has conducted a preliminary study to investigate the risk posed to Australian communities by severe winds, both in the current climate and under a range of future climate scenarios. This National Wind Risk Assessment (NWRA) represents the first national-scale assessment of severe wind risk, using consistent information on residential buildings and severe wind hazard. The NWRA has produced an understanding of severe wind hazard for the whole Australian continent, including extreme winds caused by tropical cyclones, thunderstorm downbursts and synoptic storms. New modelling and analysis techniques have been applied to the results of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate modelling efforts to enable assessment of regional wind hazard to the end of the 21st century for four case study regions: Cairns, southeast Queensland, Hobart and Perth. In developing adaptation options, it is essential to have an understanding of the existing risk, and the risk at future times if no action is taken. Adaptation options can then be assessed on their cost versus benefit (i.e. reduction in risk). The NWRA presents methods by which the effectiveness of adaptation to improve residential building resilience may be assessed in economic terms. The study also recognises it is important that the outcomes of the risk analysis are communicated in such a way that the results are easily understood and utilised to support evidence-based policy.

The report presents a framework for assessng in quantitative terms the cost of the weather related hazards of severe wind, flood inundation, storm surge, bushfire and hail. It has been developed with reference to the risk assessment approaches used by the insurance and catastrophic loss modelling industry. For each hazard the specific data inputs to each component of the impacts framework are summarised as a list of implementation needs. Finally, the report identifies areas where impact models are immature or not readily available in the public domain.

Full Version - shows orthographic and fly-through sequence for each of 5 scenarios with a combined max. inundation outline fly-through at end. Description. - Tropical Cyclone Alby passed close to the southwest corner of West Australia on April 4th 1978. Large waves and a storm surge generated by the northerly winds caused substantial coastal erosion along the Lower West coast particularly in the Geographe Bay area. Low-lying areas at Bunbury and Busselton were flooded, forcing the evacuation of many homes including the Bunbury Nursing Home. An approximate 1.1 m storm surge at Busselton caused the tide to peak at 2.5 m about 1 m above the highest astronomical tide. The Busselton Jetty was severely damaged. At Fremantle the surge was about 0.6 m causing a high tide of 1.8 m, about 0.5 m above the highest astronomical tide. [From BOM - http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/wa/cyclone/about/perth/alby.shtml - Retrieved 21/01/2010] This movie displays the results of a number of simulated storm surge events caused by an equivalent storm to Tropical Cyclone Alby on the current built terrain of Mandurah, and projected 2100 coastline with 0.5, 0.8 and 1.1m rises in sea level. Scenario A TC Alby equivalent at current sea level Scenario B Worst case TC Alby equivalent with current sea level Scenario C Worst case TC Alby equivalent in 2100 with 0.5m sea level rise Scenario D Worst case TC Alby equivalent in 2100 with 0.8m sea level rise Scenario E Worst case TC Alby equivalent in 2100 with 1.1m sea level rise

These data have been generated by a high resolution climate Model using 6 drivers as specified in the file name. The model simulations cover the period 1960-2100. The data contains a large number of variables, for wind hazard studies the wind-related variables should be extracted. Author: CSIRO's CCAM high resolution model team Geographic extend: The simulations focus on Australia's climate Conditions using a cubic-conformal grid, the coarse part is used In places other than Australia (World).

The cyclonic wind hazard over the Australian region is determined using synthetic tropical cyclone event sets derived from general circulation models (GCMs) to provide guidance on the potential impacts of climate change. Cyclonic wind hazard is influenced by the frequency, intensity and spatial distribution of tropical cyclones, all of which may change under future climate regimes due to influences such as warmer sea surface temperatures and changes in the global circulation. We evaluate the tropical cyclonic wind hazard using a statisticalparametric model of tropical cyclones - the Tropical Cyclone Risk Model (TCRM) - which can be used to simulate many thousands of years of tropical cyclone activity. TCRM is used to generate synthetic tracks which are statistically similar to the input event set, which can be either an historical record of tropical cyclone activity or a record of tropical cyclone-like vortices identified in general circulation models. A parametric wind field is used to estimate the swath of winds associated with the simulated tracks. The resulting wind fields are then used to evaluate the average recurrence interval wind speeds using extreme value statistics. We present the average recurrence interval wind speeds based on three IPCC AR4 scenarios and draw comparisons with current climate simulations and the historical record.

This black and white 64 page education resource examines the dynamic nature of Earth's climate (past and present) and its many influencing factors. Includes student activities. Suitable for secondary Years 7-12.

A review commissioned by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in June 2001 entitled 'Natural Disasters in Australia: reforming mitigation, relief and recovery arrangements' concluded that a new approach to natural disasters in Australia was needed. While disaster response and reaction plans remain important, there is now a greater focus towards anticipation of mitigation against natural hazards, involving a fundamental shift in focus beyond relief and recovery towards cost-effective, evidence-based disaster mitigation. This new approach now includes an assessment of the changes in frequency and intensity of natural hazard events that are influenced by climate change, and aims to achieve safer, more sustainable Australian communities in addition to a reduction in risk, damage and losses from future natural disasters. Geoscience Australia (GA) is developing risk models and innovative approaches to assess the potential losses to Australian communities from a range of sudden impact natural hazards. GA aims to define the economic and social threat posed by a range of rapid onset hazards through a combined study of natural hazard research methods and risk assessment models. These hazards include earthquakes, cyclones, floods, landslides, severe winds and storm surge/tsunami. This presentation provides an overview of the risk that peak wind gusts pose to a number of Australian communities (major capital cities), and for some cities examines how climate change may affect the risk (utilising modelling underpinned by a small subset of the IPCC greenhouse gas emission scenarios).

This report, 'Pacific Climate Change Science Program: Evaluation of severe wind hazard from tropical cyclones', will be delivered to CSIRO to form a subsection of the 'Climate Change in the Pacific' report. The latter will be launched in November 2011 and will constitute one of the main deliverables for the Pacific Climate Change Science Program (PCCSP). The PCCSP is part of the Australian Government's commitment through the International Climate Change Adaptation Initiative (ICCAI) to meet high priority climate change adaptation needs in vulnerable countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This report provides an evaluation of cyclonic wind hazard for the fifteen PCCSP partner countries located in the western Pacific with the one exception of East Timor. The wind hazard is estimated for both the current climate and for the future climate under an A2 emissions scenario. The current climate wind hazard is estimated by applying GA's Tropical Cyclone Risk Model (TCRM) to the historical track record. TCRM is a statistical-parametric model of tropical cyclone behaviour, enabling users to generate synthetic records of tropical cyclones representing many thousands of years of activity. TCRM is then applied to tracks of tropical cyclone-like vortices (TCLVs) detected in downscaled global climate models to determine how the cyclonic wind hazard may change in the future. The results indicated that the wind loading design standard in this region may significantly underestimate the wind hazard for the current climate. For the future climate projections, the analysis suggests that the wind hazard may decrease for countries close to the equator and near the Australian coastline but could increase for countries greater than 20 degrees poleward from the equator.

The OzCoasts web-based database and information system draws together a diverse range of data and information on Australia's coasts and its estuaries. Maps, images, reports and data can be downloaded and there are tools to assist with coastal science, monitoring, management and policy. The content is arranged into seven inter-linked modules: Search Data, Conceptual Models, Coastal Indicators, Habitat Mapping, Natural Resource Management, Landform and Stability Maps and Climate Change. The Climate Change module is the newest feature of the website and was developed in partnership with the Australian Government Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. The module provides information and tools to help communicate the risks of sea-level rise and other potential impacts of climate change on coastal areas. It includes an elevation data and a modelling portal for access to existing and new elevation data and derived products, including sea level inundation maps for Perth to Mandurah, Melbourne, Sydney, Hunter and Central Coast & Brisbane and Gold Coast. The inundation footprints illustrate three sea level rise scenarios: a low (0.5m), medium (0.8m) and high (1.1m) scenario for a 2100 time period, with values based on IPCC projections (B1 and A1FI scenarios) and more recent science. OzCoasts will also soon deliver the Coastal Eutrophication Risk Assessment Tool (CERAT) for the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water, and the Australian Riverscape Classification Service (AURICL) for the Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge (TRaCK) consortium. CERAT will help identify and prioritise land use planning decisions to protect and preserve the health of NSW estuaries. AURICL has a northern tropical focus, and is a dynamic and flexible system for classifying catchments and their rivers based on the similarity, or dissimilarity, of a wide range of parameters.