Bureau of Meteorology submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

    Bureau of Meteorology submission to the
    Senate Standing Committee on Rural and
    Regional Affairs and Transport
    References Committee

Inquiry into the Federal Government's response to the drought,
and the adequacy and appropriateness of policies and measures
to support farmers, regional communities and the Australian
economy
May 2020

                          FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

-------------------------------------------

 Bureau of Meteorology Submission to the inquiry into the Federal Government's response to the
  drought, and the adequacy and appropriateness of policies and measures to support farmers,
                      regional communities and the Australian Economy

Introduction

The Bureau of Meteorology (Bureau) contributes to the Federal Government's response to drought
by providing Commonwealth agencies with information, analysis and advice to support policy
development and execution. Additionally, the Bureau provides a range of publicly available,
subscription and bespoke services to support state and local government agencies, and weather-
impacted industries. In addition to monitoring, collating, assessing and reporting on rainfall,
temperature, water storage and soil moisture across Australia, the Bureau issues short to long-term
forecasts and outlooks that materially assist planning for and response to Australia's variable and
changing climate.
While drought is contributed to by variables of the type monitored, forecast and reported by the
Bureau, declaration of drought itself is the remit of state governments.

The Bureau of Meteorology

The Bureau of Meteorology is Australia’s national weather, climate and water information agency. It
operates under the authority of the Meteorology Act 1955 and the Water Act 2007, which together
identify a range of functions that underpin delivery of information, advice, forecasts, warnings and
associated services to meet Australia’s needs.

The Bureau is an Executive Agency under the Public Service Act 1999, and a non-corporate
Commonwealth entity under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013. The
Bureau operates under the Agriculture, Water and Environment Portfolio and reports to the Minister
for the Environment generally, and to the Minister for Resources, Water and Northern Australia on
water matters. The Bureau also provides advice on specific matters, such as drought, to the Minister
for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management

The Bureau's role in water management is described in response to Terms of Reference 1.

Response to the terms of reference

The Bureau of Meteorology aims to increase the value it delivers to the Australian economy by $2
billion between 2017 and 2022, while contributing to zero lives lost from natural hazards. As drought
significantly impacts both the economy and community health, the Bureau provides comprehensive
public information as well as tailored support to Commonwealth Government, state governments
and private enterprises to reduce risk and increase opportunities in preparation for, and during, dry
conditions.

a) loans and financial support:

The Bureau monitors, collates, assesses and reports rainfall, temperature, water storage and soil
moisture across Australia. These data, especially when expressed on a Local Government Area basis,
are relevant to the assessment of drought by Commonwealth and state agencies and inform their
decisions on eligibility for loans and other support measures.

b) water availability, infrastructure, agreement and supply measures:

Under the Commonwealth Water Act 2007 (Part 7), the Bureau has responsibility for gathering and
managing Australia's water data, and for compiling and delivering comprehensive water information
to the nation. In discharging this responsibility, the Bureau collates and analyses water data to
deliver reports on the availability (e.g. storage volume and trends), condition (suitability for a range
of uses) and use (e.g. agriculture, mining, domestic) of water resources in Australia. This creates a
publicly available, consistent and national coverage of water resources used to understand historical
water use, the current availability of water and, when combined with climate and demand analyses,
the likely future state of water security. This informs public policy, programs and practices for better
management of the nation’s water resources. Surveys and ongoing customer feedback have
confirmed the high usage and value of these water products and services.

In addition to these core public services, the Bureau supports federal, state and local water agencies
with bespoke services to support decision making. This includes:
    •   automated subscription-based data services that allow the ingestion of Bureau observations,
        nowcasts and forecasts into operation and decision-support systems,
    •   regular in-person and written briefs on current and forecast climatic conditions to decision-
        makers in federal and state agencies, including to support the Commonwealth
        Environmental Water Office manage Commonwealth-owned water entitlements,
    •   structured relationship management that allows frontline agencies and key industries to
        efficiently access Bureau expertise,
    •   consultancy services to contribute to business cases and strategic plans for water supply
        augmentation, and
    •   participation in science programs that support long-term policy and infrastructure planning
        such as the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the work of the National Water Grid Authority.
The Bureau continually improves the accuracy and geographic and temporal reach of seasonal
streamflow forecasts. These are currently issued for the coming six months for over 200 sites
nationally, prioritised to support water agencies make planning decisions. The opportunity exists to
further integrate climate and water modelling capabilities to provide insights into water resource
availability at multi-year to decadal scales.

In the summer of 2019-20 the Bureau commenced producing fortnightly reports on water
availability in major catchments in the Murray-Darling Basin. These reports provide information on
how much water in available, to what purpose is it allocated, what recent allocation trade prices
have been, and how the recent climatic conditions have impacted water availability. This is the first
phase of a three year project that aims to provide more timely and accessible information to water
users and communities in the Basin.

c) various market impacts of the measures:

The Bureau collates and publishes national water trade data, including volume, location and price of
water allocation trades and water entitlement sales. It also publishes the annual Australian Water
Markets Report, which provides a comprehensive review of water markets across the
country. Together, these products provide a central location for price discovery, a precondition for
efficient and effective water market function.

d) interaction with existing legislative and regulatory instruments across jurisdictions:

The Bureau is the primary source of rainfall and related environmental data used across Australia to
understand the likelihood, duration and potential severity of drought. Under s120(a) of the Water
Act 2007 the Bureau is responsible for gathering, holding, managing, interpreting and disseminating
Australia’s water information. The Bureau collects around 15,000 data files a day from nearly 200
providers, which enables it to collate and publish national datasets on past, current and potential
future water availability, providing analysis and assessment that crosses business, catchments and
jurisdictions.

Over the last 12 years the Bureau has invested in processes to automate data transfer and ease
regulatory burden on providers, developed standards to ensure information is communicated in
common units and language, and built portals to disseminate this data to the public.

In line with the 2018 National Drought Agreement, the Bureau draws on data from its own
observation network and the observation networks of many partner agencies to provide a range of
real time datasets that are used to derive drought indicators. In addition, the Bureau provides a
climate outlook service, which forecast whether conditions are likely to be wetter or drier over the
next four months. Commonwealth and state government agencies use these observations and
forecasts to inform drought policy decisions.

e) the response to the Drought Coordinator’s report;

Section 5 of Drought in Australia: The Coordinator-General for Drought’s advice on a Strategy for
Drought Preparedness and Resilience (the report), notes the importance of information accuracy,
availability and accessibility in addressing every drought issue. The Bureau provides national
datasets that can be used to determine meteorological and hydrological trends and deficiencies but
does not define and declare drought, which is a policy matter.
The report notes the complexity in developing drought indicators and Recommendation 5.1
advocates a non-public set of indicators that the Australia Government can use internally to flag
changing conditions and emerging impacts. While there is no single or simple definition of drought,
there are potential advantages from the use of common metrics to describe it. The Bureau supports
consideration of the use of rainfall deficiency data as a common basis for assessing drought by
Government agencies.

The report also advocates that such a set of internal indicators could then be used to develop sets of
indicators to inform farmers, industry, not for profit organisations and the community to manage
and prepare for drought. Indicators could be developed such that they provide a common picture of
emerging trends and assist with decision making. These indicators could be developed in partnership
with and disseminated by:
        •        farmer organisations (e.g. through FarmHub),
        •        commodity and grower groups,
        •        rural research and development organisations,
        •        rural media,
        •        agribusinesses, and
        •        state Government extension agencies.

f)   preparedness for the current drought and the capacity of the Australian Government to
     prepare for future drought

As outlined above, the Bureau has for many years provided a wide range of products and services
that describe the physical dimensions of drought so that the frequency, duration, intensity and
geographic scale of drought can be understood in historical, current and forecast future timeframes.
The Bureau continually improves its capacity to assist the Australian Government, community and
industry to prepare for and respond to drought. For example:

     •   The Australian Government committed $77.2 million to enable the Bureau to install four
         new radars in Queensland that will fill significant coverage gaps and provide the agriculture
         and related industries with improved access to real-time weather information. They are
         scheduled to be operational between 2021-23 and will assist in drought preparation and
         response by enabling more effective tactical responses to forecast rainfall and more
         accurate estimation of accumulated rainfall and stored soil moisture.

     •   The Bureau, in collaboration with FarmLink and CSIRO, supported the Government's Drought
         Assistance Package by creating Regional Weather and Climate Guides that provide farmers
         with information that improves decision making as they manage and adapt to weather and
         climate variability. Fifty-eight guides, covering all of Australia’s Natural Resource
         Management regions, were released in October 2019. More than 12,000 copies have been
         downloaded from the National Farmers' Federation FarmHub website, the Bureau’s
         website, and the Managing Climate Variability ‘Climate Kelpie’ website.

     •   Through the Australian Government's Disaster Preparedness fund, the Bureau received $3
         million to complete a project that will quality-assure data from thousands of privately-
         owned automatic weather stations, enabling them to support development of cost-efficient
         (parametric) agricultural insurance products and a wide range of digital agriculture services.
         This is designed to improve the capacity of farmers and other business owners to self-
         manage the financial impacts of drought and other weather-based threats and
         opportunities.
     •   The Bureau's improved long-range temperature and rainfall forecasting services were
         publicly released in August 2019, made possible by $3.3m in funding through the Australian
         Government's 2015 Agriculture Competitiveness White Paper. They provide users with
             o more accurate seasonal forecasts that give users more confidence in making climate
                  and weather sensitive decisions;
             o more localised seasonal forecasts through an improvement in modelling resolution
                  over Australia to 60 km, from the previous 250 km;
             o more frequently updated outlooks that enable users to monitor progress of weather
                  and climate events as they approach decision-making horizons; and
             o access to information on likely conditions in the coming 2-4 weeks, enabling more
                  informed decision making and planning.

The opportunity exists for the Bureau, possibly in partnership with other agencies such as the CSIRO,
to enhance climate modelling, and integrate it with hydrological and economic factors, to provide
insights on how impacts of future droughts may vary from droughts of the past.

g) any related matters

It is important that drought is understood objectively, to ensure that decisions at all levels are based
on facts rather than perception or hope. To hope for good conditions, rather than effectively
planning for drought, may lead to unnecessary risk exposure, and indecision during drought which
can exacerbate losses.

Drought is a normal occurrence in Australia; the average rainfall arises from extremes of above and
below average rainfall (see New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory example in Figure 1).
These extremes do not conform to a pattern of timing, duration and intensity that is simple to
forecast precisely in the longer term. Sound planning for future drought can proceed on the basis of
this challenge (the predictable unpredictability), assisted by observations and medium-term
forecasts (out to six months) that provide strong guidance on seasonal trajectories.

Against this background of variability is a strong trend for elevated temperature averages and
extremes of temperature that are increasing in frequency and intensity, and which amplify the
impacts of drought (Figure 2). The predictability of this trend can be used to inform plans for future
drought.

Figure 1 - Annual rainfall totals, averaged over NSW and ACT, displayed as variation compared to the 1961 – 1990 NSW &
ACT average. Source:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/#tabs=Tracker&tracker=timeseries&tQ=graph%3Drranom%26area%3Dnsw%26se
ason%3D0112%26ave_yr%3D0

Figure 1 shows the amount by which the rainfall received in a given year differs from the median for
NSW/ACT. Blue bars indicate above average rainfall, red bars below average rainfall. Note the
relative scarcity of years in which rainfall is within 50 mm (approximately 10%) of the average.
Further, consecutive 'wet' or 'dry' years occur in the 40-60th percentiles occur only twice in the 119-
year record.

Number of days of extreme heat

Figure 2 - Number of days each year where the Australian area-averaged daily mean temperature is in the top 1% of
historical records for national average temperatures. Source: Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, State of the Climate 2018
(http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/australias-changing-climate.shtml).

Figure 2 shows that the number of extremely hot days (hottest 1% of days) occurring each year is
increasing. The incidence of extreme heat days each year is increasing at a rate of approximately one
extreme heat day every four years.