The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, which is a partnership between the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, has five research programs – the largest of which is the Climate Variability and Change Program (CVC). See http://www.cawcr.gov.au/

The CVC Program undertook a process to determine key challenges as follows:

Service through science
• Provide useful advice and be able to differentiate between climate variability and climate change by understanding and providing predictions from seasonal to century scales;
• Understand how climate may change regionally over the coming decades and determine what the best methods are for providing regional projection information;
• Improved adaptive responses to climate variability and change and better informed policy and decision making.
• Increases in computer speed, communications speed and decreases in the price enable dynamical models to supplant statistical models at ever greater spatial and temporal resolution.
• Greater integration of physical, biological, social and economic information.

Science through service
• Improved modelling results using the seasonal model POAMA, and the new Australian GCM ACCESS model for seamless prediction..
• New projection methods that better integrate all relevant climate knowledge.
• Expand research into climate change and extreme events.
• Expand research on coastal and marine applications including erosion and waves.
• Provide the fundamental science for the understanding of Australian climate, its variability, and the drivers of climate change.

In the light of these challenges we conclude that the ongoing work of the program will be that of dealing with climate risks – including extreme events and climate change – and dealing with the human response to these issues, which can be summarised by the word – Sustainability.