Chapter 3 Climate Applications and Services

Climate Services > Climate Information Services

The climate services provided by the Bureau of Meteorology, principally through the NCC, range from routine data extraction services and the provision of standard analyses and publications to more specialised services, including the generation of statistical analyses, involvement in more complex consultative climate related studies and the provision of tailored climate mapping services.

The data extraction service encompasses the retrieval and supply of historical and summary statistical information for a range of meteorological elements such as rainfall, temperature, evaporation and wind speed and direction. This information is provided on a free and unrestricted basis to a variety of users, including the general public, the education sector, the agricultural industry and commercial organisations, including insurance and energy related agencies.

Most requests for historical data are serviced by email or provided electronically on computer media. The Bureau of Meteorology also provides a suite of standard historical data on CD-ROMs, which contain:

• hourly wind data;
• daily wind data;
• daily rainfall;
• daily evaporation;
• daily maximum and minimum temperatures;
• monthly rainfall; and
• climate summaries.

As part of its routine output, the Bureau of Meteorology also provides a range of standard published climate analyses. These publications, which are produced by the NCC and the Bureau of Meteorology’s Regional Offices, include titles such as the Weekly Rainfall Bulletin, Monthly Rainfall Bulletin, Annual Rain Bulletin and Monthly Weather Review, as well as reference climatological products such as the Evapotranspiration Climatic Atlas of Australia and the Rainfall Climatic Atlas of Australia. Related publications under development include atlases for temperature and raindays.

Data and maps associated with atlas products are also being made available in a recently developed interactive map-based CD-ROM format. For example, climatological evapotranspiration and rainfall information, including high resolution images and gridded data, are now available.

As part of its commitment to providing up-to-date climate information to the community, the Bureau of Meteorology has continued to increase the number of products accessible through its website (http://www.bom.gov.au). The Bureau of Meteorology’s website, which is one of Australia’s most accessed internet sites, contains selected statistical, graphical and mapped (Figure 3.1) climatological information, including:

• maps showing rainfall and temperature information for weekly, monthly and multi-month timescales;
• climatological (average) maps of rainfall, temperature, relative humidity, sunshine duration and evapotranspiration;
• statistical information for selected observation sites throughout Australia and Antarctica; and
• graphical climatological information for selected Australian sites.

A selection of climate publications and other information available from the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre.

Technological advances in data visualisation and improvements in electronic information dissemination have resulted in a more informed and demanding climate information user community. In response to new user needs, the Bureau of Meteorology has continued to develop its database interrogation and retrieval systems and expand its specialised climate mapping service.

The climate mapping service, which has been operating since the mid-1990s, continues to provide users with standard and derived climate information in various spatial formats, including GIS (Geographic Information System) formats. This service has grown significantly over the last five years, and provides tailored spatial climate data and information to many Australian organisations in industry, education and within government.

Figure 3.1 An example of derived climate information available from the Bureau of Meteorology – the map shows seasonal rainfall zones and is available electronically in GIS format. View an enlarged version of Figure 3.1

Improvements in data accessibility have been made through the development of web-based software tools for data interrogation and retrieval. The focus of these developments, The Climate Zone, is an Intranet application widely used by the Bureau of Meteorology to service the climate data and information needs of Australian and international communities. Components of this system are currently being developed for public access to selected climate data.

As well as providing facilities for data interrogation and retrieval, The Climate Zone includes automated processes for generating summary statistical information, graphical data ouput and standard publication-ready reports. The Bureau of Meteorology will continue to improve these climate database access and information serving tools. Recent and future developments associated with The Climate Zone include:

• automated generation of wind frequency diagrams (wind roses);
• improved access to climate related metadata information;
• provision of summary information relating to wet, dry, cold and hot spells;
• access to automatic weather station (AWS) one minute data;
• improved access to, and retrieval of, upper air data;
• development of an enabling system for automated job scheduling routines for processing and delivering climate data to users; and
• development of an electronic report enabling tool for the generation of user specific tabular, graphical or diagrammatic information.