An Australian climate tool identifies the end of winter by 2050

Academics from the School of Art & Design have teamed up with colleagues from the UNA Climate Change Institute for a design project that harnesses existing data and communicates the impacts of climate change in a way that people can understand and understand better.

The resulting new climate tool visualizes data showing that by 2050 Australians will no longer enjoy winter as they know it today and will experience a new season that designers call "New summer".

The new summer is a time of year when in many cases temperatures will rise well above 40 ° C for a prolonged period.

With this tool, internet users can click on thousands of locations in Australia to see how the weather in their hometown will change by 2050.

"We have examined the historical average temperatures of each season and compared them to the projected data.We find everywhere that there is no period of a sustained or lasting winter," said the Dr. Geoff Hinchliffe, Senior Lecturer (SOA & D).

"In 30 years, we know that there will be no winter, and in winter there will be more everywhere except Tasmania," he said.

This tool, which uses data from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and Landowners Scientific Information (OLIS), indicates the number of degrees of temperature rise at each location and the number of additional days at 30 or 40 degrees. to have in 2050 compared to today.

"In addition to the data, we have also focused on developing the most effective visual forms to explain how climate change will affect specific sites," said Dr. Hinchliffe.

"It meant using the color, shape and size around a dial composition indicating the temperature values ​​of an entire year in a single snapshot.

"It makes the site visually rich and interesting and gives a lot of details in order to create an emotional connection with people by locating it in their own city," he said.

"We focus on visualization and narration, we do not want to distort the data or suggest things that are not true, so visualization has been instrumental in transmitting the data so that it can be interrogated." as a graphic, but more poetic., "said Associate Professor Mitchell Whitelaw.

"Research and innovation can be found here in the visualization and compilation of all this data.Our innovation lies in the way in which existing data is communicated and presented – hopefully in a memorable and engaging way", a- he declared.

The visual climate tool has been prepared for the Australian Conservation Foundation and can be viewed here: https: //myclimate.acf.org.a

About the data:

Data extracted from the Queensland LongPaddock Project, which uses the SILO database (www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/silo) and is managed by the Science Division of the Ministry of Environment and Science. Queensland with the support of the Queensland Department. of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF).

The "climate change factors" used to compute consistent climate scenario data were estimated using the following data: Hadley Center / Coupled Model Intercomparison Research Program 3 (CMIP3); and the temperature response curve data for AR4 SRES (Projected Global Warming) provided by CSIRO.

These data sources are available at the following locations:

Data Modeling

• Disturbance method: linear mixed effects state space (LMESS) – Q5
• Sensitivity to global warming: high
• IPCC Assessment Report: AR5
• Scripting Scenario: RCP8.5

Climate model: ACCESS 1.3

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