PROJECT 5.4: Water futures under climate change
Water resource management in Australia will be affected by future changes in rainfall, temperature, evaporation and runoff. Robust projections of water futures are therefore important for impact assessments and developing adaptation options to climate change impacts in the water sector, as well as sectors which heavily rely on water such as agriculture and ecosystem management.
We’re developing a framework that will integrate climate and hydrological science and modelling to deliver next generation national projections of key surface water metrics. We’re also partnering with state government and government authority agencies to assess the resilience of water systems and adaptation options, and to ensure the framework and knowledge produced under this project is directly adopted by end-users.
This will increase the ability of water resource managers and industry across Australia to routinely access and incorporate the best available hydroclimate projections to inform water resource planning, management and investment.
For more information
Dr Dewi Kirono, CSIRO; Dr Francis Chiew, CSIRO
This project is contributing to meeting the following climate challenges:
Improved modelling developed in this project will enhance the quality of projections that are available to water managers and planners.
Agricultural and environmental system managers and planners will be able to use projections developed from work in this project to make more effective management and investment decisions.
Our research will allow for better simulation of extreme events in climate change projections, making them a more useful tool for agencies responsible for preparing for an managing the response to natural disasters.
Publications and papers
- Chiew FHS, Zheng H and Potter JP. 2018. Rainfall-Runoff Modelling Considerations to Predict Streamflow Characteristics in Ungauged Catchments and under Climate Change. Water, 10, 1319, doi: 10.3390/w10101319 | Full paper
- Zheng H, Chiew FHS, Potter NJ, Kirono DGC, 2019a. Projections of water futures for Australia: an update, Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM 2019), Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand, December 2019, pp. 1181–1187, doi:10.36334/modsim.2019.K7.zhengH | Full paper