Australia Weather News

The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) is currently developing a new climate model to improve seasonal forecasts for agriculturalists.

The four-year project, launched in June last year aims to help landholders make better decisions — based on more accurate forecasting.

BoM's manager of climate monitoring and prediction services, Dr David Jones said the improved forecast services would be rolled out in 2017.

"Next year we will be putting out the first version of this new model," he said.

"[It will be] more accurate, have more detail and there will be more frequent forecast updates.

"Subsequently in the two years after that, [we will be] refining it and improving the service."

Dr Jones said the focus for the improved service was on agriculture.

"We know there are billions of dollars of decisions [in agriculture] that are dependent on climate variability," he said.

"What we are trying to do is inform those decisions better, reduce the cost of the adverse climatic conditions, like the droughts and so on.

"But, also enable people to grab those opportunities when seasonal conditions are better."

He said consultation with landholders was helping BoM construct and target the service.

"If it is a farmer with a cropping system or livestock, [we want them to] get the forecast information which matches [the farmers'] decisions," he said.

"As forecasts become more accurate they get easier for people to use.

"When we have low accuracy people can use that material to inform decisions.

"But when you get high accuracy it is much easier, your decisions become much more clear-cut."

Seasonal forecasts updated in 'real time'

Dr Jones said part of improving the seasonal forecasts was updating them more frequently.

"At the moment when we look at seasonal forecasts typically people get a forecast every month, so it a forecast of the next three months and then we wait another month for it to be updated," he said.

"We actually run our models much more frequently, at the moment we run our forecast twice a week.

"So what we will end up doing is updating the forecast at least twice a month, perhaps even four times a month.

"Lots of time it doesn't really matter much, we might have an El Nino, things are dry unfortunately and there is not much change in the information.

"But other times when we have the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) you know these tropical disturbances, the forecast can be quite volatile and being able to capture that with regular updates can be useful.

"We know the most up-to-date information is the most accurate.

"More accurate information updated in real time is where we are headed."

Part of BoM's improved services also included the roll-out of fortnightly forecasts.

Currently BoM has a one-week forecast, a one-month forecast, and a three-month forecast.

"We have definitely got plans in the next couple of years to roll out what we call multi-week forecasts, so forecasts for the next two and even three weeks, so that is certainly coming," Dr Jones said.