The Department of Environment, Science and Innovation (DESI) provides a comprehensive suite of downscaled, high-resolution climate projection data that can be used in climate risk assessments, available on the Queensland Future Climate web platform.
This data has been produced through the Queensland Future Climate Science Program, a partnership between the Queensland Government Department of Environment, Science and Innovation (DESI) and The University of Queensland that supports the delivery of the Queensland Climate Action Plan (2020-2030) and the Queensland Climate Adaptation Strategy. The projections data for Queensland were generated through dynamical downscaling of 11 different global climate models. Factsheet #1 provides more detail on the process to generate these projections and Factsheet #4 provides more detail on the individual models used.
While climate projection data are also available from other sources, DESI recommends that Queensland Government agencies, Queensland local governments and all Queensland-based projects use the high-resolution projections available via Queensland Future Climate.
Using the data available via the Queensland Future Climate platform has many advantages over other sources of climate data:
The Queensland Future Climate Dashboard (Dashboard) provides an easy-to-use, online, map-based interface for Queensland’s climate projections. The Dashboard includes a wide range of climate parameters for two different emissions scenarios and multiple time horizons. The Dashboard allows users to explore, visualise and download the latest high-resolution climate modelling data for specific regions, such as catchments, Queensland’s disaster districts, and local government areas
The Dashboard provides access to climate projections in a variety of formats to suit different purposes, including simple data summaries, maps, charts and shapefiles to overlay with other spatial datasets in a Geographic Information System (GIS).
The Climate theme tabs provide the first level of customisation where users can select from seven major climate themes. Each theme presents a selection of related climate variables and metrics. The climate theme tabs are located on top of the Dashboard.
The climate themes that can be selected via the tabs on the Dashboard include:
The drop-down menus towards the top left of the window allow you to select the variable of interest, region, emissions scenario, season and year (20-year time period). The blue information dots link to pop-ups with definitions of the key terms and further explanations.
You can select regions using a number of different categories depending on your scale of interest: local government areas, bio-regions, regional plan areas, major river basins and disaster districts.
For emissions scenario, you can select between two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). RCP8.5 is a high emissions scenario while RCP4.5 is a moderate emissions scenario. CoastAdapt provides a useful explainer for the RCPs. Using RCP4.5 and 8.5 together provides realistic lower and upper bounds to use for climate risk assessments.
Four future time periods are available:
Using a combination of the tabs and drop-downs, you can select from 49 different climate variables listed below. Full descriptions of these variables are provided in a separate factsheet.
Mean climate
Heatwaves
Extreme temperature indices
Extreme precipitation indices
SPI-drought indices
SPI-wetness indices
Fire weather indices
The map section of the Dashboard allows you to pan and zoom to a region of interest. It displays the result of the customisations undertaken via climate theme tabs and drop-down menus, one climate variable at a time, with a legend to help interpret the data displayed. Importantly, the map displays the result for the model ensemble average only – that is the averaged future scenario from the 11 different downscaled climate models. When a region is selected, users can hover a mouse over an individual 10x10km grid cell to trigger a popup with data for that grid cell.
The map display is useful for gaining a quick understanding of regional variation.
The output charts on the right of the Dashboard window display data for the selected region, variable, scenario, and future time periods relative to the reference period (1986 – 2005).
These charts and data are useful for building regional summaries, for providing information to include in reports, and for ‘first pass’ or ‘scan’ climate risk assessments. As you select different options via the menu, you will see these charts update in response to your selections. When clicking over the plot elements, a pop up is shown with the statistics for individual models, as well as the model average and percentiles.
There are three different switch or slider controls for changing the chart appearance; Mean, Range and Models. These sliders can be toggled on or off using the buttons at the top of the output chart. Switching 'Mean' to 'On' will show the multi-model ensemble mean as a thick bar (this is the default option). Turning on 'Range' will show the range in the ensemble as a green bar. Switching 'Model' to 'On" will show thin bars for individual models.
The ability to download the ensemble averages of the simulations for each variable in shapefile format allows users to easily combine it with other spatial data of interest using a Geographic Information System (GIS). The shapefile button will download the currently selected variable in the popular shapefile format that can be read by any GIS application.
The attribute table for the shapefile provided for each climate variable includes data for each combination of the four time slices (2030, 2050, 2070 and 2090) and for all seasons, including:
The Regional Explorer tool on Queensland Future Climate provides a quick and easy way to access summary information based on the climate projections for a specific region. The Regional Explorer tool provides different options for accessing regional summary data, including user-interactive summary tables and plots that show the change in a selected climate variable over time to 2100.
Users can control the Regional Explorer using a map and drop-down menus, similar to the main Dashboard described above.
By selecting the 'Summary tables' tab, the desired region and the climate theme, users will see a summary table (example below) that provides information for all available climate variables for that region and theme. This table includes values for the baseline period (1986-2005), and the means and ranges for all four time periods and both emissions scenarios.
Users can download and save the tables in multiple formats that provide options for further analysis, including PDF, image (PNG), Excel spreadsheet (XLSX), text (CSV and JSON).
After selecting the 'Timeseries charts' tab, users can use the drop-down menus to select the region, climate theme, climate variable of interest, season and emissions scenario. The resulting plot will show the results of the projections for the chosen criteria out to 2100. There are options to show the level of detail displayed on the plots, including a range and mean, comparing the two emissions scenarios on the one plot, or displaying the projections for all individual models. As users move the mouse over the chart, a popup will appear showing summary data for any given year (example below).
Similar to the summary tables, users can download the plots in multiple formats depending on how the information will be used.
For more advanced applications such as detailed climate risk assessments, Queensland Future Climate also provides access to gridded datasets for the 11 individual climate models, all climate variables, and additional time periods (daily, monthly, seasonal), including the bias-corrected daily simulations. These datasets are hosted by the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) but links are provided on Queensland Future Climate.
These datasets are more appropriate for users with programming skills but can also be visualised using GIS platforms. They are available for the individual ensembles and are useful for more specialised analyses or where data will be used in further modelling. The data are provided in netCDF format (for storing multidimensional scientific data). Most major GIS applications (such as ArcGIS or QGIS) can render these directly as grids.
The Tropical Cyclone Hazard Dashboard (TC Dashboard) presents information on severe wind hazards associated with tropical cyclones for Queensland' regions out to 2090, expressed as both Average Recurrence Intervals (ARI) and Annual Exceedance Probabilities (AEP).
This presents the data component of the Severe Wind Hazard Assessment for Queensland (SWHA-Q) delivered in partnership with the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) and Geoscience Australia. The SWHA-Q aims to better understand the potential impacts of modelled current and future tropical cyclones for Queensland' regions, population centres and critical infrastructure, and to better communicate the projected changes in cyclone behaviour across Queensland.
The interface of the TC Dashboard is similar to that of the Queensland Future Climate Dashboard. It is composed of drop-down menus, maps, plots, and tables that allow users to customise, visualise, and download current and future wind hazard information summarised across Queensland' regions.
For detailed information on the methods used to produce the data presented on the TC Dashboard, please refer to the Tropical Cyclone information page on Queensland Future Climate. The main difference is that the information is presented as hazard profiles for regions and locations accounting for Average Recurrence Intervals and Annual Exceedance Probabilities for historical and future simulations.
The Queensland Future Climate web portal includes case studies that explore selected climate hazards in more detail, including how they can be considered in risk assessments and adaptation decision-making. The existing case studies for heatwaves and water security will be joined by additional case studies in the future.
The Heatwaves case study summarises the expected effects of climate change on the frequency and intensity of heatwaves, and the implications these changes may have on our health, lifestyles, infrastructure, services and industries.
For example, the figure shown above is a chart featured in the case study that integrates historical observations and projections for the South East Queensland region. This work suggests that the mean number of heatwave days (expressed as a percentage of the year) will increase from less than two over the reference period to about 17 in 2070 and about 25 in 2090. There is a similar trend for heatwave duration which may increase from four days during the reference period to about 20 days in 2070 and over 30 days in 2090 (depending on future greenhouse gases emissions).
The heatwave case study also includes an interactive map allowing users to view projection information for heatwave frequency and duration for each local government area.
The Water security case study explores the potential effects of climate change on our water supply and water security, and how these effects can be managed.
The figure above provides an example of the information available from the water security case study. For the Burnett River catchment, the timeseries shows a clear increase in the aridity index. While the streamflow trend shows a decline in the average level, there is some volatility in the range and projected maximum values.
The data provided on Queensland Future Climate is free to access and use. However, we ask that any reports, papers, websites or other documents that apply the data include an appropriate reference or acknowledgement of the source.
For example, a suggested citation for the use of data and information from the Dashboard would be:
The citation for the collection of high-resolution projection data on the TERN portal should be: