Agricultural climate metrics for the National Climate Risk Assessment

Agricultural climate metrics were derived for the National Climate Risk Assessment.

This data collection describes the agricultural climate metrics derived from projections of climate variables across Australia from 8 CMIP6 global climate models, as well as a historical baseline from the Bureau of Meteorology’s Atmospheric high-Resolution Reanalysis for Australia (BARRA-R2) data. Agricultural climate metrics focus on climate conditions that are important to Australian agricultural productivity, for example the annual number of heat stress days for livestock or total growing season rainfall for grain cropping. The metrics are evaluated for a historical baseline (2001-2020) and global warming levels (GWLs) 1.5, 2.0 and 3.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Data are provided in netCDF format, and each grid location gives the minimum, median, and maximum metric values across the ensemble of global climate models climate models for each GWL, as well as the mean of the historical period. Projection data are provided for values (e.g. total rainfall in mm) as well as change from the mean historical baseline (e.g. % change in rainfall from historical baseline).

More information can be found in the technical report¹.

1. Darbyshire R, Blamey L, Bolt A, Brodie S, Buhagiar L, Bustamante RH, Greenwood S, Holzworth D, Hopper M, Huth N, Keogh T, Mayberry D, Nidumolu U, Paroz A, Rich J, Rosauer D, Roxburgh S, Thomas I and van Herwaarden A (2025). Primary Industries Technical Report. A technical report prepared for the Australian Climate Service as part of the National Climate Risk Assessment. CSIRO, Australia. https://doi.org/10.25919/g1b2-fj19.