It keeps you up-to-date with our research, and how our research findings are being applied in agriculture and natural resource management.

CLIMAG 24:

• From big picture to regional relevance
• Your CliMate at your fingertips
• Project updates
• Western region: WA farmers battle complex seasonal variability
• Southern region: Soil, water and extreme events
• Northern region: The smell of rain—only a week or 100 kilometres away
• Evolutionary times for our farmers and science

Download CLIMAG 24 [PDF 1 MB].

Browse the CLIMAG archive.

Farmers can quickly interrogate the last 60 years of daily rainfall, temperature and radiation data for their location. Seasonal forecasts are provided based on current ENSO conditions.

The app also calculates heat sums and estimates soil water and soil nitrate accumulation.

We developed CliMate to help farmers make sense of past climate statistics and forecasts for their own location, to better manage their business.

Project Leader Dr David Freebairn, Principal Environmental Scientist with RPS, says that the app was accepted on first submission to iTunes and is available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. A web version will be available in March 2013.

“Since it was first loaded on iTunes in mid-December last year it has already been taken up by more than 1300 people with no publicity,” Dr Freebairn says. “And the news is spreading fast so hopefully it will go viral.

“With spare time on their hands, 300 people downloaded CliMate on Christmas and Boxing days – what a great present”.

Prototypes of the app were reviewed by farmers participating in the Climate Champion program and leading grain growers through the Grains Research & Development Corporation regional panels.

The question-based logic in CliMate is designed to suit anyone who uses probabilities of weather events in their decision making, whether they be a grain grower, a grazier or a grape grower.

Peter Holding, a Climate Champion farmer in south-east New South Wales, with winter crops and wool lambs, is already a fan of CliMate.

“I find it very good for clarifying my vision of what I think is happening,” he says.

“As I get closer to sowing I will definitely be running the how wet /nitrogen section to see if my estimates compare with the app and maybe refine my final decisions.

“The ability to try different scenarios very quickly and simply is a great way of improving my decision-making and my understanding of the climate in our area.”

Mathew Pitt, a Climate Champion farmer with mixed enterprises from Tasmania, says: “For me, it simplifies the ability to do ‘what-if scenarios’ when assessing options.

“It also has the ability to give you a look behind in the current season for things other than rainfall. Temperature variation is becoming crucial when deciding what crops to plant.”

The app was developed by David Freebairn and David McClymont and builds on Bureau of Meteorology data and the Silo database developed by the Queensland Government.

It borrows ideas from a range of climate tools developed by other government agencies, including decision-support tools recommended on Climate Kelpie.

7 key tools of CliMate

1. How often?

What is the chance of planting rain based on an amount of rainfall over so many days?

How often is a heat sum achieved in a period of time?

What is the probability of temperature being below a critical level for germination or flowering?

2. How hot-cold?

When determining an ideal sowing date, when are heat and cold stresses lowest for the optimum flowering time?

3. Season’s progress?

When adjusting inputs during a crop or pasture season, how does the current season compare with previous seasons in terms of rainfall, temperature, heat sum or radiation?

4. How wet? N?

How much water and nitrate have I stored over the fallow? This may help me adjust inputs to better match yield expectations.

5. How likely?

Based on current ENSO conditions, what is the probability that rainfall or temperature is greater than or less than key thresholds (e.g. terciles, median) and how reliable have these forecasts been in the past?

6. How’s El Nino?

What is the current ENSO status based on key atmospheric and oceanic indicators? What is the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s interpretation of this?

7. How’s the Past?

What have been the monthly and annual rainfall and temperature summaries in the past?

Download the CliMate app

Search for ‘Australian CliMate’ in the App Store.

Feedback

We welcome feedback about the CliMate app.

Please contact Dr David Freebairn direct:

Phone: 07 3237 8820

Mobile: 0408 876 904

Email: david.freebairn@rpsgroup.com.au

Deliver a set of next-generation user-friendly climate risk management tools that farmers can easily access to query weather data.

Project duration

2010 – 2012

Progress to date

A prototype smartphone app, CliMate, has been developed for iPhone and is being tested. An iPad version will then be developed. Some analyses will also be made available on the web. A version for Android may be developed.

Research contact

Dr David Freebairn

RPS

david.freebairn@rpsgroup.com.au

Phone: 07 3237 8820

It keeps you up-to-date with our research, and how our research findings are being applied in agriculture and natural resource management.

CLIMAG 23:

• The science of climate variability – a 10-year retrospective
• Project updates
• Farming through a decade of climate challenges – business as usual
• Computer grunt gives seasonal forecasting the edge
• WATL they think of next?
• Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get

Download CLIMAG 23 [PDF 2 MB].

Browse the CLIMAG archive.

Improve predictions of conditions in the Indian Ocean and, ultimately, predictions of regional climate for western, southern and eastern Australia.

Project duration

2010 – 2013

Progress to date

We have compiled deviations of Indian Ocean temperature to understand the performance of the Indian Ocean Dipole and its correlation with weather events.

To determine the next priority areas for model development, we have assessed the skill of POAMA II (Predictive Ocean Atmosphere Model for Australia) against the available climate record in the context of the Indian Ocean Dipole.

POAMA uses sophisticated assimilation techniques to ingest oceanic observations to initialise model forecasts and create analysis estimates of the ocean state at each point in time.

POAMA now uses new ocean observations (sea-surface temperature and altimeter) and takes account of ocean–atmosphere coupling during the process that ingests ocean observations.

The improvements on forecasts of the Indian Ocean Dipole and regional climate are being evaluated.

We expect that these improvements will advance the initialisation in data-sparse regions, such as the Indian Ocean, which in turn should improve forecast skill.

Research contact

Dr Oscar Alves

Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research

O.Alves@bom.gov.au

Phone: 03 9669 4835

Improve Australia’s dynamical forecasting by investigating the connection between several weather systems, including:

• the Southern Oscillation Index
• the Indian Ocean Dipole
• the Madden-Julian Oscillation
• the subtropical ridge
• the Southern Annular Mode

Project duration

2010 – 2013

Progress to date

Recent work has identified the cutoff low as the most important weather system for growing-season rainfall in south-east Australia. Diagnostic software has been developed that can automatically recognise cutoff lows in data and models, thus permitting a comparison of observed and modelled cutoff lows.

Cold fronts are also an important source of rainfall, and an automatic recognition system for these weather systems is being developed and tested.

A comparison of observed and modelled synoptic weather system behaviour can help indicate areas for dynamical model improvement in the way remote drivers influence local weather.

Rossby waves play a key role in the atmospheric teleconnection between climate drivers and local weather systems. However, calculations of the Rossby wave ray path indicate that these waves, generated by convection in the Indian Ocean, cannot propagate into the Great Australian Bight to influence weather systems.

It now appears that Rossby waves carry the signal as far as the southern flank of the subtropical jet, and a different mechanism (based on eddy/mean-flow interaction) is required to get the Indian Ocean signal further south.

Research contact

Dr Peter McIntosh

Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research

Peter.Mcintosh@csiro.au

Phone: 03 6232 5390

Improve understanding of the variability and changing nature of frost risk at both seasonal and decadal scales for the southern regions of Australia, and implications for the wine and grain industries.

Project duration

2010 – 2012

Progress to date

We have completed a spatial analysis of frost trends and have observed trends in minimum temperatures, number of frosts, cold-wave duration, and frost-season length.

An analysis of the major synoptic drivers of frost is under way. We are examining data from 6 climate stations in north-west Victoria for the period 1956–2010 along with preliminary analyses forlocations in New South Wales and Western Australia.

We have assessed the interaction between changing frost risk and changing responses in grain phenology for 17 sites across the Victorian region. For each site, we have calculated the probabilities of frost occurrence.

Research contact

Dr Steven Crimp

CSIRO

Steven.Crimp@csiro.au

Phone: 02 6242 1649

Quantify the extremes and impact of frost and heat stress on the Western Australia wheat belt.

Link with the frost and heat-stress projects underway in South Australia and Victoria to improve understanding of frost and heat stress across southern Australia.

Project duration

2010 – 2013

Progress to date

We have examined trends in springtime temperatures for the Western Australian wheat belt.

The past 50 years has seen a general warming in spring across the wheat belt, but the changes have been mixed.

Locations with stronger warming show a decline in frost risk, while risk has increased where warming has been smaller.

We have designed experiments for grain areas of Western Australia, and set up an APSIM model to study temperature extremes and analyse the risk associated with its occurrence.

We will also test options for avoiding frost and heat risk.

Research contact

Dr Ian Foster

Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia

ifoster@agric.wa.gov.au

Phone: 08 9368 3333

Investigate the meteorology and climatology of spring heat events on the southern grains wheat belt.

Develop a risk-management package for growers.

Project duration

2008 – 2013

Progress to date

During 2010, heat chambers were used to heat wheat at 6 different growth stages from stem elongation, through flowering and grain fill to early grain ripening.

The aim was to explore the impact of heat events at different times of the year.

A single day where wheat was exposed to 35 degrees reduced yields by about 25% or 1 t/ha compared to untreated controls.

In the final stage of the project, researchers are examining the likelihood of heat events occurring at different locations and different crop stages to estimate the likely damage under current and future climates.

An experiment is also underway to further understand the interaction between heat and moisture stress.

Research contact

Dr Peter Hayman

South Australian R&D Institute

peter.hayman@sa.gov.au

Phone: 08 8303 9729

Using multi-week forecasts identified under the Improving multi-week predictions project, develop new multi-week rainfall forecasting tools and make them available on the Bureau of Meteorology’s Water and The Land website.

Project duration

2010 – 2013 (Phase 1, Phase 2)

Progress to date

Phase 1 produced prototype tools for multi-week forecasting using raw experimental data from POAMA 1.5. The forecast period was from 7 days to 3 months.

Farmers participating in the Climate Champion program trialled the prototypes.

In Phase 2, which is underway, the prototypes are being improved and the web interface is being developed.

Research contact

Dr Andrew Watkins

Bureau of Meteorology

A.Watkins@bom.gov.au

Phone: 03 9669 4360