Regionally averaged CMIP6 climate projections for Australia from the Queensland Future Climate Science Program 

The effects of climate change will vary in both space and time across Australia’s regions. Understanding this variation is important for assessing climate change impacts and informing adaptation decisions. The regionalisation procedure used by the Queensland Future Climate Program transforms climate projections data into useful and operational insights at the regional level. The process is performed by spatially averaging Queensland’s latest Future Climate projections across selected Australian region types (LGAs, River Basins and NRM regions). The Queensland Future Climate projections are based on dynamically downscaled Global Climate Model (GCM) simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). The downscaled model simulations provide a continuous dataset from 1960 to 2100, capturing the historical baseline and the projected future under SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5 and SSP3-7.0 emissions scenarios. The resulting spatially averaged mean-climate and extreme indices projections have been released in three CSV data formats, each designed for specific applications. Indices cover extremes such as heatwaves, extreme temperatures, extreme rainfall, droughts, wetness, and fire weather (FFDI). Results are presented as average anomalies from baseline (1995-2014) values. 

We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. 

Regionally averaged climate projections dataset for Australia regions (LGAs, River Basins and NRM regions) (CSV files) have improved spatial resolution and an expanded range of indices to better capture the complexities of regional climate change. The available indices cover hazards such as heatwaves, extreme temperatures, extreme rainfall, droughts, wetness, and fire weather. Climate and extreme indices change values relevant to specific regions, making the data more useful for local planning and decision-making. 

The Queensland Future Climate projections (QldFCP-2) are based on Global Climate Model (GCM) simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). The global projections are then dynamically downscaled with the Conformal-Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM) to generate finer-scale 10 km resolution projections. The downscaled outputs are used to calculate mean climate and climate extreme metrics, with bias correction applied to the extreme metrics using available gridded observational datasets. The regionalisation methodology involves calculating a weighted average of the downscaled values that fall within the area bounded by a selected polygon representing a region, with greater weighting for grid cells that are wholly located within a given region compared to cells that only partially overlap the region boundaries. For each combination of region, variable, model and scenario, the area-weighted average change value (relative to the 1995-2014 baseline) is calculated.