The Northern Australian Climate Program (NACP) is an initiative led by the University of Southern Queensland that will deliver innovative research, development and extension outcomes, through a number of partners, to improve the capacity of the red meat industry to manage drought and climate risk across northern Australia. The Bureau is involved in the research component of the project.

The Bureau's involved is in three components of the research project:

• investigate the potential for multi-year drought prediction in northern Australia to meet user need for multi-year forecasts.
• increase the accuracy of the Bureau's ACCESS-S model predictions for northern Australia by improving the model physics to meet the user need for increased forecast accuracy (in collaboration with the UK Met Office).
• conduct R&D on product development to establish a set of experimental products and skill levels to meet user needs in northern Australia and Queensland to enable forecast systems in these regions to be upgraded to be based on the Bureau's ACCESS-S system to meet user need for new products not currently available.

• Forecast Visualisation Tool


STATION LOCATIONS

Click on the map to view the station locations being used for forecast product development, or download the spreadsheet with station details.



• Northern Rainfall Onset:

  • Definition, observed median onset, anomalies, trends
  • ACCESS-S2 skill maps

• Rainfall bursts:

  • Observed potential climatologies
  • ACCESS-S2 skill maps

• Flash Drought:

  • Flash Drought

• Access to hindcast data
• Access to real-time data
• Publications

The products are EXPERIMENTAL ONLY and do NOT currently form part of the Bureau's standard services in any way. Access to the products is made available for trial purposes only and on the basis that users are fully aware that these products are being tested and that users will not issue these products as real-time forecasts in any way. The forecast products are subject to the Bureau's copyright and disclaimer.

The following conditions apply:

• Products are not official Bureau products, they are prototype products
• Products are only to be used for trial purposes to assess their usefulness and not as an ongoing service
• Products are not operationally supported, they may occasionally be unavailable for periods of up to 2 weeks e.g., due to system upgrades
• The look and feel of products may change at any stage without notice
• Products may be added and removed at any stage without notice