High-quality spatial climate data-sets for Australia

Recent years have seen much of Australia suffer from severe meteorological drought and a series of climatic extremes (e.g. Bureau of Meteorology 2008a, 2008b). As a result, water resources have widely fallen to record lows, and agricultural production in southern and eastern parts of Australia has been poor with a series of crop failures (e.g. Murray-Darling Basin Commission 2007; Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics 2007). High-quality national climate information is clearly needed to place these climatedriven events in a proper historical perspective and to provide a context for understanding the associated impacts on humans and the environment. A key to better management of Australia’s physical resources is ensuring that expectation and demand match the long-term supply. Matching a demand to the available resource is clearly required in the case of water, where the idea of sustainable yields is fairly well developed (e.g. Chiew et al. 2008). However, it is also clear that other climate variables such as temperature can be considered as a resource, with agricultural productivity (for example) being closely tied to temperature in much the same way as it is to rainfall (Cline 2007). A better characterisation of Australia’s climate and associated variability should lead to better risk management and improved decision-making processes. High-quality spatial climate data-sets for Australia