A real options analysis of Australian wheat production under climate change

A significant portion of the world's agricultural systems currently operate at the extreme end of the climate conditions that are considered to be suitable for crop and livestock production. Under these conditions, even moderate climate changes are anticipated to drive substantial transformational changes to agricultural systems. Transformations require new investments and infrastructure and can leave some assets stranded. These transformations can be partially or wholly irreversible and hysteresis effects can make switching difficult and mistakes costly to reverse. This paper demonstrates how a real options decision framework, Real Options for Adaptive Decisions (ROADs), can be used to investigate how uncertainties about the climate affect the adaptation and transformation of agricultural systems. By building upon recent developments in the mathematics of stochastic optimization, we extend traditional economic analyses of agricultural investment decisions based on net present values to better represent incomplete knowledge and uncertainty. We report results from a case study in South Australia that describes the transition pathways farmers might follow as their industries are transformed in response to climate change.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-84892018-01-31hb201

A national assessment of the sensitivity of Australian runoff to climate change

The relationship between catchment rainfall, evapotranspiration and runoff can be exploited to assess climate risk to water resources. National data regarding climatology and runoff were used to estimate the sensitivity of regional runoff to projected changes in precipitation and evaporation. These sensitivity factors were integrated with patterns of climate change from 12 different global climate model (GCM) simulations to project future annual runoff sensitivity per degree of global mean temperature change. Divergent runoff sensitivities were identified depending upon the selected GCM. Averaging among GCMs resulted in a robust pattern of runoff sensitivity suitable for estimating future climate risk

Assessment of future climate change impacts on hydrological behavior of Richmond River Catchment

This study evaluated the impacts of future climate change on the hydrological response of the Richmond River Catchment in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, using the conceptual rainfall-runoff modeling approach (the Hydrologiska Byrans Vattenbalansavdelning (HBV) model). Daily observations of rainfall, temperature, and streamflow and long-term monthly mean potential evapotranspiration from the meteorological and hydrological stations within the catchment for the period of 1972–2014 were used to run, calibrate, and validate the HBV model prior to the streamflow prediction. Future climate signals of rainfall and temperature were extracted from a multi-model ensemble of seven global climate models (GCMs) of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (CMIP3) with three regional climate scenarios, A2, A1B, and B1. The calibrated HBV model was then forced with the ensemble mean of the downscaled daily rainfall and temperature to simulate daily future runoff at the catchment outlet for the early part (2016–2043), middle part (2044–2071), and late part (2072–2099) of the 21st century. All scenarios during the future periods present decreasing tendencies in the annual mean streamflow ranging between 1% and 24.3% as compared with the observed period. For the maximum and minimum flows, all scenarios during the early, middle, and late parts of the century revealed significant declining tendencies in the annual mean maximum and minimum streamflows, ranging between 30% and 44.4% relative to the observed period. These findings can assist the water managers and the community of the Richmond River Catchment in managing the usage of future water resources in a more sustainable way

Developing a holistic risk management plan in mitigating flooding risks for buildings adjacent to the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia

AbstractClimate change as a major issue in the 21st century has seen the rise of the sea level and worse storm surges. This has impacted on the further distribution of salinity and flooding of low laying areas even in further inland areas. As the consequence, buildings in the proximity of riverbanks are left susceptible to potential damages and shortened life cycles. Thus, there is a real need to change the way buildings in these areas to be designed and how risk of damages can be mitigated and managed. The city of Perth in Western Australia, like many other cities around the world, is laying on the riverbank of a large river, the Swan River. As the population of Perth increases dramatically, it will become important to ensure sustainability of its buildings to support the ever growing populations and hence its needs. There are myriads of approaches in mitigating and managing these risks. This research project aims to investigate the contemporary risk management practices in mitigating flooding risk in buildings adjacent to the Swan River and bring them together as a holistic risk management approach. The findings of this research can be proposed to the Western Australian government to assist them in developing further policies in ensuring sustainable buildings fit for the future. At this point of writing, the research project is on its early stage of conducting literature review and designing the research methodology. It is intended to conduct a pilot survey, followed by case study approach of contemporary buildings adjacent to the Swan River to contextualize the research. This paper presents the current progress of this research

Applying social resilience concepts and indicators to support climate adaptation in tropical North Queensland, Australia

Regional and remote communities in Tropical North Queensland (TNQ) are among Australia's most vulnerable in the face of climate change. They face sea-level rise, more intense dry spells, increasing temperatures, more extensive coral bleaching and the risk of more intense cyclones and floods. Consequently, sociologically and economically diverse subregions such as the Northern Gulf of Carpentaria, the Torres Strait, Cape York Peninsula and the Wet Tropics face an uncertain future. Together, these four subregions represent a social diversity typical across the tropics. With its cultural and social complexity, Queensland's tropics present an ideal case study for operationalising an indicators-based approach for building regional and subregional-scale resilience. The assessment of social resilience in the four TNQ subregions has reinforced the theoretical conclusion that a purist approach to measuring and monitoring social resilience, driven by defining and populating perfect sets of indicators, is neither practical nor feasible