Over the past twenty years, CSIRO has had a leading role in providing national climate change projections designed to serve the needs of adaptation planning in Australia. In 2007 they released, with the Bureau of Meteorology(BoM), regional projections based on CMIP3 using a probabilistic approach. These projections have been widely cited and used in Australian adaptation work. Along with a broader team at CSIRO and BoM, the authors are using the CMIP5 ensemble (as well as downscaled data) to provide updated climate change projections for Australia to be completed in 2014.

The projections will be aimed specifically at supporting the needs of natural resource management as the work is being conducted as part of a larger government initiative in this sector. As a result of feedback and consultation since the 2007 release and as part of the current project, new methods of developing and presenting projection information are being developed for this project.

A key component of this is balancing scientific constraints with the demands of users for information that is easy for users to understand and relevant to their work. Extensive analysis of the CMIP5 has been completed and interim projections for the NRM regions have been developed on this basis for a range of variables, such as temperature, precipitation, humidity, and radiation including some aspects of extremes (e.g. hot days, extreme rainfall). The presentation will present the projections based on CMIP5 models and will include a comparison with the earlier CMIP3 ensemble.