Climate Change in Australia
Climate information, projections, tools and data
ESCI Webinars
As the ESCI Project progressed, targeted sector-specific webinars were delivered by the Project team as part of the ESCI Webinar Series.
Learning & Support / Webinars
Modelling the future climate (28/05/2020)
The ESCI project was born out of the Finkel Review of 2016 which identified the need to ‘develop a strategy to improve the integrity of energy infrastructure and the accuracy of supply and demand forecasting’ for the electricity sector in the context of climate change. So, a key requirement for the project is the ability to provide quantitative projections of the future climate. This is done using climate models. This webinar provided a brief introduction to climate change science, including basic concepts around climate modelling, an introduction to downscaling and a discussion of the limitations of climate projections for extreme climate change.
Watch on YouTubeLearning & Support / Webinars
ESCI case study: Heat impacts on variable renewable generators (18/06/2020)
This webinar explored a heat impacts case study, which demonstrates the ESCI Risk Assessment Framework by exploring the vulnerability of variable renewable energy (VRE) generators to increases in extreme heat arising from projected climate change. VRE generation sources like wind and solar are making an increasing contribution to the supply of energy in the National Electricity Market (NEM). Extreme heat routinely ranks as the highest climate hazard and is a major driver of customer demand. Outages during high demand periods leave consumers vulnerable and incur large societal impacts.
Watch on YouTubeLearning & Support / Webinars
The influence of climate change on the Australian bushfire season(16/07/2020)
his webinar explored the influence of climate variability and change on the 2019–2020 Australian bushfire season. The content of the webinar is based on information presented to the 2019 Royal Commission on National Natural Disaster Arrangements, also known as the Bushfire Royal Commission. The presentation provides context into bushfire risk for the electricity sector.
Watch on YouTubeLearning & Support / Webinars
Scenario analysis, confidence and uncertainty (25/08/2020)
This webinar covers sources of uncertainty in electricity system planning with an emphasis on how the climate is introducing additional uncertainty. The electricity sector has a well-defined approach to understanding and accounting for uncertainties as part of planning. Sources of uncertainty include changes in the economy, population, technology use and policy. Climate has an impact on parts of the system and the ability of extreme weather events to have an impact on the whole system was seen in last summer's bushfires and in the 'islanding' of South Australia after a series of tornadoes in January 2020. However, future climate projections also have a number of different sources of uncertainty embedded in them.
Watch on YouTubeLearning & Support / Webinars
Scenarios, pathways, projections and stress tests: some key concepts of future climate analysis (24/09/2020)
The future is partly predictable, partly unknowable, and partly there for us to create. When it comes to looking at the future climate and what it means for us, we need to employ some key concepts and terms to lay out what we can predict, the range of possibilities in the longer term, and what difference our actions make. There is sometimes confusion about terms like ‘scenarios’ and ‘projections’, and the names of the new global ‘pathways’ used to examine future climate (the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs)). Here we look at the terms, how they are used, lay out the existing sets of global pathways, and suggest some common standard language we can all use to help in our communication.
Watch on YouTube
