In The Conversation (9.4.15) John M Clarke, Penny Whetton and Tim Erwin, all from the CSIRO, describe the online Australian Climate Futures tool released this week by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology which is designed to show projections from up to 40 climate models for different regions, years and emission scenarios.
‘A projection from a single climate model will not represent the full range of possible futures and impacts. So we need to look at a range of data sets and models. This might seem a daunting task when confronted by up to 40 models, up to four emission scenarios, multiple years and multiple climate variables.
‘The Climate Futures web tool simplifies the process. It is underpinned by the Climate Futures Framework and the most extensive, independently peer-reviewed climate model evaluation ever undertaken in Australia.
‘The tool considers three cases: “best case”, “worst case” and “maximum consensus”. It also allows us to compare two different climate variables, such as temperature and rainfall, at the same time. We can further simplify these scenarios into “hotter and drier” or “warmer and wetter”.’