Climate change in New South Wales - NARCliM2.0

Do you want to know more about how climate change may impact New South Wales?

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water has undertaken research to develop climate change information for the NSW public using climate projections from the NSW and Australian Regional Climate Modelling initiative ('NARCliM2.0'). This climate change information is available on the AdaptNSW Interactive climate change projections map (https://www.climatechange.environment.nsw.gov.au/projections-map) as maps and GIS-ready raster data. The Interactive map currently displays data for changes in mean, maximum and minimum temperature, precipitation, hot days, cold nights, and severe fire weather days. This geospatial data available on the Interactive map are accessible below as links to the downloadable data packs. These data packs and the Interactive map have been designed to enhance awareness of climate change in NSW and provide climate change data and information for decision making to support climate risk assessment and adaptation planning.

What is included in these data packs?

Data packs provide users with 145 GIS-ready raster datasets in GeoTIFF format and layer files (map symbology). The GeoTIFFs display data at 4 km resolution for the entire New South Wales (NSW) region for seven climate variables: • minimum, mean and maximum temperature • rainfall (precipitation) • hot days (35ºC or over) • cold nights (below 2ºC) • severe fire weather days (FFDI over 50)

The list of GeoTIFFs include historical baseline and future projections under two emission scenarios, providing modelled outputs on a range of plausible climates: Low emissions scenario (SSP1-2.6) and High emissions scenario (SSP3-7.0)

The GeoTIFFs are raster (spatially referenced gridded) data. The data at each 4 km grid cell is calculated as an average from the results of 10 NARCliM2.0 climate models.

Temporally, the GeoTIFFs are 20-year climatologies, defined as the "Historical baseline" (the 1990-2009 period represents a ‘2000’ climatology, serving as a reference period for future projections to be compared with), and "Future projections" (seven future periods or climatologies including 2020-2039, 2030-2049, 2040-2059, 2050-2069, 2060-2089, 2070-2089, and 2080-2099). This is an appropriate temporal resolution for understanding plausible climate change trends in the future.

The GeoTiFFs are also arranged to provide statistics, including: • Annual means: calculated from 1 January to 31 December for each 20-year period • Seasonal means: calculated for each 20-year period for Summer (December, January, February), Autumn (March, April, May), Winter (Jun, July, August), Spring (September, October, November)

Data provided in two ways or flavours: • Absolute values: the projected values for the variable for each period (i.e., degrees Celsius, number of days, mm of rainfall) • Percent change: the difference between the future climatology and the historical baseline, presented as a percentage of the historical baseline

Note that a continuous time series of the daily and monthly modelled output can be accessed from the Climate Data Portal https://climatedata.environment.nsw.gov.au/

The data packs also provide, map symbology files (ArcGIS layer files and QGIS layer files) and a “READ ME” file in each data package for more information on the GeoTIFFs.

What is NARCliM?

The New South Wales (NSW) and Australian Regional Climate Modelling ("NARCliM") is a project that was established by the NSW Government to address the need for high-resolution climate change projections for regional decision-making and impact assessments. The NSW Government has released climate projections for over a decade, with latest release (known as NARCliM2.0), being a public commitment under the Climate Change Adaptation Strategy (https://climatechange.environment.nsw.gov.au/about-adaptnsw/nsw-climate-change-adaptation-strategy) and the NSW Climate Change Fund (https://www.energy.nsw.gov.au/nsw-plans-and-progress/government-strategies-and-frameworks/taking-action-climate-change/nsw). See the resource link below to learn more about NARCliM.

What else do I need to know?

For more information, please review the linked resources below. If you have more questions, please contact us at narclim@environment.nsw.gov.au.