Regionally averaged CMIP6 climate projections for Australia from the Queensland Future Climate Science Program

The effects of climate change will vary in both space and time across Australia’s regions. Understanding this variation is important for assessing climate change impacts and informing adaptation decisions. The regionalisation procedure used by the Queensland Future Climate Program transforms climate projections data into useful and operational insights at the regional level. The process is performed by spatially averaging Queensland’s latest Future Climate projections across selected Australian region types (LGAs, River Basins and NRM regions). The Queensland Future Climate projections are based on dynamically downscaled Global Climate Model (GCM) simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). The downscaled model simulations provide a continuous dataset from 1960 to 2100, capturing the historical baseline and the projected future under SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5 and SSP3-7.0 emissions scenarios. The resulting spatially averaged mean-climate and extreme indices projections have been released in three CSV data formats, each designed for specific applications. Indices cover extremes such as heatwaves, extreme temperatures, extreme rainfall, droughts, wetness, and fire weather (FFDI). Results are presented as average anomalies from baseline (1995-2014) values.