Factsheet 5: Using the Regional Explorer

The Queensland Future Climate Dashboard presents information from high-resolution climate simulations based on a number of climate models until the end of the current century (see Factsheet #4 for a full list of the models available). The Dashboard, while powerful and flexible, presents outputs for just one variable at a time. This approach is very useful for exploring future climate change with a focus on particular hazards at different regional scales.

The Regional Explorer tool makes it easier to view summary information for all climate variables for a defined region which may be very useful in early explorations of potential climate hazards for a defined area (Figure 1).

• summary tables of projected changes in all available climate metrics, presented using the mean and model spread
• timeseries charts of model absolute change over time.

To investigate the influence of climate change, the user can select their preferred region, emissions scenario, season and year ‘slice’ (20-year time period).

The projections data can be defined by several different regional categories. The spatial information for regional projections was spatially aggregated from 10km pixel-size grids to specific regions. The following seven specific regional categories for which regional projections are presented are: Local Government Areas, Regional Plan Areas, Natural Resource Management Areas, Bioregions, Major River Basins, Disaster Districts and point Locations.

The climate variables available are arranged into several themes to help manage the volume of information available:

• Mean Climate: Mean, minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation, pan evaporation, relative humidity, surface wind and solar radiation.
• Heatwaves: Peak temperature (or Peak heat index for the CMIP6 version), frequency, duration and maximum heatwave duration.
• Extreme temperature indices: Hot days, hot nights, very hot days, warm spell duration, cold spell duration and cold nights.
• Extreme precipitation indices: Maximum 1-day precipitation, maximum 5-day precipitation, extreme wet day precipitation, simple daily intensity, consecutive dry days and consecutive wet days.
• SPI- or SPEI-drought indices: Duration of droughts (percent time), frequency of droughts (number of events), percent time in drought (months) and extent of territory in drought (for timeseries only).
• SPI- or SPEI-wetness indices: Duration of wetness (percent time), frequency of wetness (number of events), percent time in wetness (months) and extent of territory in wetness (for timeseries only).
• FFDI: Severe fire risk days, very high fire risk days, high fire risk days, moderate fire risk days, low fire risk days, 95th percentile fire risk days, 99.7th percentile fire risk days.

In addition to providing projections data on an annual basis, aggregated data is available for calendar seasons:

• Summer (December, January and February)
• Autumn (March, April and May)
• Winter (June, July and August)
• Spring (September, October and November).

We also provide aggregated information for wet (November to March) and dry (May to September) periods for most climate themes.

Due to the likelihood of individual heatwave events persisting across calendar seasons, heatwave metrics are only presented for the hydrologic year (1 July to 30 June) and wet season (November to April). These periods have been chosen to capture summer heatwave events that stretch across the change in calendar year.

In contrast to other climate themes, the drought and wetness metrics are only presented at the annual scale. These metrics are based on either the Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI; CMIP5 version) or the Standardised Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI; CMIP6 version). Given the continuous nature of these indices and the time-series continuity dependence of the methodology, splitting the time-series into calendar seasons could impact the robustness of the methods. Therefore, instead of presenting variation across seasons, we offer three categories of drought and wetness severity for users to choose from: Moderate, Severe and Extreme.

Data available via the Regional Explorer is provided for four 20-year time slices in which averaged information is presented as:

• 2030 (2020-2039)
• 2050 (2040-2059)
• 2070 (2060-2079)
• 2090 (2080-2099).

The amount of future climate change will be highly dependent on the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere, including future emissions and sequestration.

The Queensland Future Climate resources present downscaled data and information for different greenhouse gas scenarios, but these are described in different ways for the two versions available.

The CMIP5 (original) version of the Regional Explorer used 2 scenarios described using RCPs:

• RCP4.5 - moderate emissions
• RCP8.5 - very high emissions.

The new CMIP6 version uses 3 scenarios described using SSPs:

• SSP1-2.6 - low emissions
• SSP2-4.5 - moderate emissions
• SSP3-7.0 - high emissions.

Please see factsheets #6 for more information on the RCPs and SSPs

The map section of the Regional Explorer allows users to pan and zoom to a region of interest. The summary tables and timeseries charts display the result of the map selection for the currently selected region and climate theme.

By selecting the 'Summary tables' tab, the desired region and climate theme, users will access a summary table (Figure 2) that provides information for all of the climate variables related to the selected climate theme. Values are presented as the mean change values for the ensemble of models. The change values from the reference period (1986-2005 for CMIP5 and 1995-2014 for CMIP6). The range across the multiple regional climate models (also known as model spread) is shown in brackets below the multi-model averages. Values are displayed for a range of seasons and categories which vary depending on the climate theme chosen. The table also includes the reference period values.

Users can download the tables in multiple formats, including PDF, image (PNG), Excel spreadsheet (xlsx), and text (CSV and JSON).

The Timeseries charts provide customised visualisations of projected changes in the climate variables for the period 1981 to 2099. Users can select the region, theme, variable, season and emissions scenario to display on the chart via the drop-down menus.

For most climate themes, results are presented as changes in variable relative to the reference period (CMIP5:1986-2005 or CMIP6:1995-2010). However, for the drought and wetness themes, the 'Extent of territory' in drought or wetness are presented as absolute percent of territory in drought or wetness.

The chart is highly customisable - users can select to display just the ensemble mean and range, the mean and range for all the individual models or a comparison of results for all emission scenarios. For the SPI-drought and SPI-wetness climate themes there is also the opportunity to compare results for the three severity categories. In this case, the timeseries is a stacked chart showing only the mean ensemble results for the three categories (not the range).

A table with summary statistics for the model values in specific years can be observed by hovering over the year of interest. When the 'All Models (individual)' button is selected, users can highlight particular models by hovering over the model name in the legend. The selected model will remain highlighted until the user hovers over a different model. Users can hover over the 'Mean' option in the legend to return the chart to the original setting. Models can also be removed from (or added to) the timeseries by clicking on the model name in the legend.

Similar to the summary tables, users can download the plots in multiple formats depending on how the information will be used.