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Climate research and development

Climate Risks and Opportunities Project

The Department of Agriculture and Food has established a core group of expertise addressing risks and opportunities associated with climate and weather. For further information go to publications.

The activities of CROP span climate change prediction, seasonal forecasting, yield forecasting, forecast training, forecast delivery, weather monitoring, tools for integrating climate into farm management decisions and development of alliances to support these activities. Current activities focus on:

  1. Industry access to seasonal forecasts and weather information to underpin management of seasonal variability
  2. Industry use of outputs from decision support tools to manage seasonal variability
  3. Industry access to climate change information including projections of impacts on agriculture

Specific projects that relate to these activities include:

  1. 'Climate change, wheat yield and cropping risks in Western Australia' in partnership with GRDC
  2. 'Better long-lead seasonal and crop forecasting for southern Australia' in partnership with GRDC
  3. 'Promoting tools for assessing and managing seasonal conditions in dryland crop production' in partnership with GRDC
  4. 'Building effective climate risk management for the WA grainbelt' in partnership with land and Water Australia as part of the Managing Climate Variability programme.
  5. Mapping the incidence of frost in the Wheatbelt, and assessing trends over time.
  6. The availability of daily weather data from 40 automatic weather stations on the DAFWA website. Of these, 16 report in real time to the web. Calculated evaporation from these stations is also used by irrigators and other industry.

The group's staff and competencies are nationally and internationally recognised and they have extensive experience in achieving useful, applied outcomes. Examples of national and international collaboration are:

  1. The South Australian research and development Institute (SARDI) uses several of CROP's decision support tools within a commercial climate risk management service

  2. The Queensland Department of Primary Industry (QDPI) base commodity forecasting on the STIN model developed by CROP

  3. The CROP project reports to the National Agricultural Monitoring System (NAMS) in Canberra

  4. The National Climate Centre (BoM, Melbourne), Farm 500 group and the Climate Prediction Centre (Maryland, USA) use CROP's seasonal climate outlooks and

  5. CROP's Potential Yield Calculator (PYCAL) has been used for teaching purposes at the University of Western Sydney.

Decision-support products

Decision support tools have been developed to improve crop management decision-making by:

  • Enabling conversion of climate forecasts to yield forecasts (STIN)
  • Providing a capacity to analyse the regional impact of climate index information on rainfall and yield (CLIMATE CALCULATOR, WA-WHEAT)
  • Estimating stored soil water at the start and during early months of the growing season (PYCAL, STIN, STIN-XL).
  • Tracking the progress of the season in respect of rainfall and temperature and comparing seasonal development against past years and distributions experienced in all years of record (PYCAL, CLIMATE CALCULATOR).
  • Providing regular upgrades of potential yield and yield forecasts as the season progresses (PYCAL, STIN, STIN-XL).
  • Estimating probabilities for occurrence of critical temperatures for pod set, frost and high temperatures at critical times (FLOWERING CALCULATOR).
  • Estimating flowering times of variety selections at any time of sowing to assist with crop/variety selection (FLOWERING CALCULATOR).
  • Providing information on crop needs for nitrogen and other nutrients at critical decision points (SYN, NP Decide, Lime and Nutrient calculator, N calculator, OPT LIME, N AVAIL)
  • Providing a comparative analysis of impact of management decisions on yield, protein and returns (WA WHEAT)

Page updated May 2006

Content ID 4111