About the QCCCE
Solutions for Queensland’s changing climate
The Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence (QCCCE) is a specialist whole-of-government unit based within the Office of Climate Change, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Launched in March 2007 by the Premier of Queensland, the Honourable Peter Beattie, this new unit provides decision makers throughout Queensland with information and scientific data on climate change and its impact on the community, the economy and the environment.
What the QCCCE does
To ensure that it is relevant and responsive, the QCCCE is embarking on a range of projects and working collaboratively with Australian and international research agencies, industry and all levels of government.
- Climate systems research
- Impacts of climate change and applications
- Information and knowledge systems
- Special projects
Climate systems research
Research into climate systems is critical in determining how and why the climate is changing and identifying what the drivers of this change are. Projects in this area will address:
- climate system modelling. Using global and regional climate models the QCCCE aims to produce seasonal climate forecasts, simulate historical climate in the Australian region, and produce projections of climate change relevant to Queensland
- attribution of regional climate change. The QCCCE will identify the factors contributing to the variability in the state’s climate and their relative contributions
- downscaling of general climate circulation models. The QCCCE is constructing future climate change scenarios and downscaling these to produce regional and local climate change projections.
The QCCCE is working collaboratively with national and international organisations to improve climate change projections and has formal agreements with the UK Met Office Hadley Centre, Walker Institute at Reading University and the The United States International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) New York.
Impacts of climate change and applications
One of the QCCCE’s priorities is to analyse the output from climate change models and examine the effects of climate change on the economy, the community and the following priority sectors:
- water planning and services
- agriculture and rural production
- human settlements, including urban and regional planning
- natural environment and landscapes (including impacts on the Great Barrier Reef and the marine environment)
- emergency services and human health
tourism, business and industry - insurance and finance.
The QCCCE will develop approaches to assessing climate risk, provide businesses and communities with the tools to make assessments, and model the impacts of climate change. Proposed activities include:
- working with CSIRO to develop up-to-date projections of Queensland climate for the next century
- assessing how vulnerable Queensland’s regions and sectors are to the impacts of climate change
- preparing ‘downscaled’ climate projections at a suitable scale for supporting education, communication and research on climate change, and planning to deal with its impacts on Queensland.
Information and knowledge systems
Information will be a key requirement for navigating through the uncertainty of climate change. The QCCCE will develop information products and synthesis documents to help the community, industry and government better understand climate change impacts and scenarios by maintaining appropriate information management systems, information infrastructure, and data security protocols.
Activities in this area include:
- delivering temporal and spatial climate data, and disseminating effective information products and outputs
- providing information on rainfall risk and long-lead climate forecasts to help priority sectors and resource managers manage for climate variability
- maintaining web-based information systems
- maintaining information infrastructure systems and networks, including a high performance computing capacity
- developing tools to support those making planning and policy decisions.
Current systems available to the QCCCE include:
- climate—agricultural production modelling systems such as Whopper Cropper, the Regional Commodity Forecast System, SCOPIC, Flowcast, and associated irrigation forecast systems
- the AussieGRASS spatial water balance and pasture growth model—to analyse and advise on historical, current and future impacts of climate variability, climate trends and extremes on natural resources and grazing systems
- an enhanced climate database, SILO, which includes data from 1890 to the present.
Special projects
The QCCCE will respond to emerging trends and will carry out specific projects and new climate change science initiatives. For example, it is currently conducting a collaborative four-year cloud-seeding research project to appraise the potential of cloud-seeding technology in sub-tropical Queensland. The project will include developing an understanding of cloud microphysics and conditions that are conducive to enhancing precipitation, and carrying out a detailed analysis of the cloud-seeding and rainmaking literature.
Last updated 12 June 2008.