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BAMOS October 2021
Article
Lessons learned in outback Western Australia
Andrew Marshall , Bureau of Meteorology
Outback WA . Photo by Andrew Marshall .
The Northern Australia Climate Program ( NACP ) is a partnership between the Queensland Government ( with funding from the Drought and Climate Adaptation Program ), Meat and Livestock Australia , and the University of Southern Queensland ( USQ ) to bring together expert climate scientists , advisors , and regional producers to deliver innovative research , development , and extension outcomes for helping the grazing industry manage drought and climate risk across northern Australia .
In the last week of May 2021 , I was fortunate to represent the Bureau ' s involvement in the research component of the project with a climate roadshow to the Gascoyne and Pilbara shires of outback Western Australia ( Figure 1 ). The focus of the trip was to help producers find , understand , and use forecasting information through the dissemination of weather and climate knowledge relevant to their specific region .
My role was to discuss important climate drivers and their impacts through a series of workshops held at outback stations , to enable producers to make more informed assessments of seasonal climate forecasts . Reciprocally , participants provided practical advice and feedback for improving the Bureau ' s delivery of forecast information for these arid regions .
Alongside me were Dr Chelsea Jarvis from USQ , and two ' Climate Mates ' employed by the program to liaise with pastoralists – Alys McKeough for the first half of the trip to Wyloo , and Jardine Macdonald for the second half . They organised a detailed and
Figure 1 : The Gascoyne ( left ) and Pilbara ( right ) regions of Western Australia . Source :
en . wikipedia . org exciting roadshow comprising ten station visits over eight days , totalling more than 2,000 km and 27 hours of driving ( Figure 2 ).
THE GASCOYNE , 24 – 25 May : Carnarvon – Wahroonga – Bidgemia – Eudamullah
I departed from Hobart on Sunday 23 May and flew into Carnarvon the following morning after an overnight stay near Perth Airport . Alys , Chelsea and I promptly took to the road , passing fields of bananas , avocado , pumpkins , mango , and asparagus on our way out of town , all of which grow year-round due to Carnarvon ' s two peaks in annual plant growth — one in summer and one in winter .
A couple of hours later we arrived at our first station , Wahroonga , where we learnt that the impacts of our climate ' s warming trend are being noticed on the ground . The effects of the southward expansion of the tropics ( e . g ., Lucas et al . 2014 ) are apparent to producers here , having noticed an increase in summer rain and a decrease in winter rain over the last few decades . We would learn over the next few days that this long-term reduction in winter rain is a common concern throughout these arid regions , which sit under the influence of the subtropical ridge and its poleward trend of around 0.2 degrees ( about 20 km ) per decade ( Hu et al ., 2011 ).
We drove into Bidgemia Station around 4 pm and met our friendly hosts Jodie and Hamish , and half a dozen local producers , for our first workshop . Our meet-and-greet soon morphed into a feedback session on the utility of the Bureau ' s seasonal forecasts : While they find the forecasts generally useful , the probabilistic rainfall forecast is often misunderstood . For example , deep blue shading on the rainfall outlook map can create a visual impression of heavy rain , when in fact it represents a high likelihood of above average rainfall – which does not necessarily translate to heavy rain . This became an important distinction to highlight throughout the roadshow .
The folks at Bidgemia Station , and at Eudamullah on the following day , most valued learning about the key drivers of weather and climate and how they shift the odds in favour of rainfall . In preparing for this trip , I discovered that individual