The delivery of Australia’s new climate change projections by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology is designed to support medium-term planning within Australia’s natural resource management (NRM) regions. This planning will determine how Australia’s land, biodiversity and coastal assets are managed under future climate change. Research suggests that the provision of decision-relevant climate change projection information should be geographically and temporally specific to the decision making community who will access the information and data (Street, 2011).

An extensive engagement program has been established to gather a wide range of views on the communication and presentation of projection information. Engagement with natural resource managers, NRM planners, impacts and adaptation researchers and regional communities will ensure that the nature of the regional planning adaptation measures being considered is well understood. It will also ensure that the delivery of climate projection information and data is suited to supporting a range of NRM applications and can be continuously improved to meet stakeholder needs.

A Climate Projections User Panel has been established, recognising that the inclusion of regional community decision makers and adaptation researchers can increase the relevance of projections products and ensures needs are met (Metcalfe, 2010). The diversity of perspectives, skills and geographies represented by the panel will assist the projections team in understanding user needs and capacities, and the level at which to pitch communication, guidance materials and training services.

The main delivery mechanism for the new climate change projections will be climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au, which will undergo significant user led redevelopment, with an expected launch in the second half of 2014. An experienced science communication and web development company is leading engagement activities which will inform the basis of the final website delivery.

This presentation will describe the processes of user interaction that have been put in place to maximize participation and input from users, whilst being sensitive to user availability and competing needs. The implementation of an online portal for open, transparent and two-way interaction with users will be discussed, with reflections on processes currently being used in the project.

The role of listening and engagement in delivering highly useful and decision-relevant climate information and data will be discussed, including the results from user feedback and integration of user needs with the development of advanced visualization tools. Draft website designs and web component developments for the new site will be shared with the broader community for the first time.