Wednesday 9 November, 2005

MEDIA RELEASE

Rescue mission for Pacific islands climate data

Scientists from the Bureau of Meteorology are helping Pacific nations save precious climate information threatened by decay and weather

Millions of historical weather records have been computerised and analysed by the Bureau of Meteorology as part of its effort to understand long-term climate change in Australia. Now the bureau is turning to its Pacific neighbours and their precious weather records that could help in the understanding of wider climate changes affecting the Asia-Pacific region. It's a race against time, as the condition of many paper records are deteriorating with age. It seems the weather is coming back to retrieve the data, and communities are at risk of losing this information forever.

Rod Hutchinson of the Bureau of Meteorology is the project manager for the Pacific islands climate data rescue project. "In the extremely humid conditions that islands near the equator tend to have, paper records deteriorate if they are not stored in optimum conditions. This problem has been experienced in Australia and we are aware that it is also common in the Pacific islands."

Neville Nicholls is a climate scientist with the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre who has studied climate change across East Asia and the West Pacific. "These are records of weather observations going back a generation or more. The information stored in countries in the Pacific Basin is vital to our global understanding of climate variability and climate change. And for the islands themselves, this is historical data that their meteorologists can use for forecasting weather trends and extremes for their country."

With funding from the Australian Greenhouse Office and in partnership with New Zealand, the bureau’s National Climate Centre will help the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Fiji rescue their climate records. Rod Hutchinson says that over the next 12 months the bureau will help take an inventory of the records and prepare recommendations for their long-term preservation. "Where needed, we will take immediate action to preserve these valuable records," Rod says.

Greenhouse2005 speaker: Neville Nicholls will make a presentation on the changes and variations in daily temperature extremes in East Asia and the West Pacific at the Greenhouse2005 conference in Melbourne on Wednesday 16 November, from 4.10pm to 4.30pm.

Australian perspective: Every day the weather is observed and recorded at nearly 6000 locations across Australia. Temperature and other surface meteorological values are recorded at about 850 sites, balloons are released to check moisture and wind at about 60 sites, and rainfall is recorded at almost all 6000 sites. The observations are transmitted via electronic and paper-based communication networks to the bureau’s head office and capital-city offices where they are collated, stored and prepared for use in computer models that predict the weather in the short term and the climate in the longer term.

Further information: Rod Hutchinson, Bureau of Meteorology, project manager for the Pacific islands climate data rescue project: tel (03) 9669 4062, mob 0419 360 352
and Neville Nicholls, Bureau of Meteorology, climate research scientist: tel (03) 9669 4407

For images of climate records in storage and researchers working with meteorology staff in Pacific islands, contact Rod Hutchinson.

Greenhouse2005 conference: http://www.greenhouse2005.com
Simon Torok mob: 0409 844 302, and Craig Macaulay mob: 0419 966 465

Ends