Climate Change in Australia

Please follow the instrcution to finish this assignment! Answer the following 4 questions.

Summary:
This assignment requires exploration of the Climate Change in Australia (CCIA) website and use of several projections tools to find relevant climate projection information.
Start by looking around the CCIA website – https://www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au/en/

To do this assignment you need to use several projections tools (https://www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au/en/projections-tools/) to obtain the information required to answer each question.

Use figures and tables from the projections tools as appropriate in your answers. Based on these make your own assessment of the level of confidence in the changes shown, and report this when you discuss the changes.

Q1 (50%): The Murray River Basin produces a significant part of Australia’s agricultural produce. Summarise (with appropriate figures) the projected climate change for this area. Use the “Summary Data Explorer”. Differences between seasons are important for agriculture so be sure to include this. Be sure to include any variables that may be important to agriculture, as well as indicating the level of confidence in any reported change. How does emission scenario and future time frame affect the projected changes?

(Max 500 words not including figures and figure captions.)

Q2 (20%): Use the “Extremes Data Explorer” to examine projected changes in some extremes for the Murray Basin. How might these extremes impact agriculture? How much confidence do you have in these projected changes? Highlight those changes which have the highest confidence.

(Max 250 words not including figures and figure captions.)

Q3 (15%): Use the “Thresholds Calculator” to answer this question.

Stone fruit requires a minimum length of time spent at low temperature for the flowers to bud. This is refered to as a chilling requirement. While there are a numbers of ways to measure this we will use the number of nights where temperatures fall below 6oC. A peach grower near Shepparton Victoria needs at least 70 chilling nights per year for his fruit to grow. Under RCP8.5, when will this variety of peach no longer fruit? Under RCP4.5, when will this variety of peach no longer fruit? How important is the emission scenario to this farmer? Remember to assess your confidence in each of these changes.

(Max 150 words not including figures and figure captions.)

Q4 (15%): Use the “Thresholds Calculator” to answer this question.

Very high temperatures can dramatically reduce wheat growth and grain production. A farmer near Wagga Wagga NSW is growing a winter (May-October) wheat variety that is strongly impacted once temperatures exceed 35oC. Under RCP8.5, when does this happen more than one day per year on average? And when does this happen with high confidence (even the minimum estimate is more than one day per year)? How does this change under RCP4.5?

(Max 150 words not including figures and figure captions.)

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