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A convolution based method of spectral nudging of atmospheric fields is developed in the Australian Community Climate and Earth Systems Simulator (ACCESS) version 1.3 which uses the UK Met Office Unified Model version 7.3 as its atmospheric component. The use of convolutions allow flexibility in application to different atmospheric grids. An approximation using one-dimensional convolutions is applied, improving the time taken by the nudging scheme by 10 to 30 times compared with a version using a twodimensional convolution, without measurably degrading its performance. Care needs to be taken in the order of the convolutions and the frequency of nudging to obtain the best outcome. The spectral nudging scheme is benchmarked against a Newtonian relaxation method, nudging winds and air temperature towards ERA-Interim reanalyses. We find that the convolution approach can produce results that are competitive with Newtonian relaxation in both the effectiveness and efficiency of the scheme, while giving the added flexibility of choosing which length scales to nudge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the North West Shelf region of Australia is a surface current (Holloway Current), which flows southwestward along the shelf break. This paper describes a seasonal undercurrent below the Holloway Current. A 5-day climatology is constructed from the output of an eddy-resolving oceanic general circulation model (OGCM). A seasonal northeastward-flowing undercurrent is found on the upper continental slope during the climatological April-May. This undercurrent reverses during February-March. During its annual cycle, the phase of the undercurrent tends to propagate southwestward and upward. The annual frequency dominates, but the positive and negative phases of the undercurrent are not symmetric in the yearly cycle because of the contributions from the semi-annual and 1/3-annual components. We propose a hypothesis that this undercurrent is a beam of coastal trapped wave (CTW). As an initial attempt to assess the plausibility of this hypothesis, we construct an idealized linear coastal-trapped wave (CTW) solution driven by an idealized harmonic meridional winds at the annual frequency. The solution takes the form of a beam originating from the forcing region on the continental shelf and propagating offshore and southward. When it emerges on to the continental slope, it takes the form of an undercurrent. This idealized solution shares several properties with the undercurrent in the OGCM despite several discrepancies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 2000km of Western Australian coastline experienced a significant marine heat wave in February and March 2011. Seawater temperature anomalies of +2-4 °C were recorded at a number of locations and satellite-derived SSTs were the highest on record. Here, we present seawater temperatures from southwestern Australia and describe, in detail, the marine climatology of Cockburn Sound; a large, multiple-use coastal embayment. We compared temperature and dissolved oxygen levels in 2011 with data from routine monitoring conducted from 2002-2010. A significant warming event, 2-4 °C in magnitude, persisted for >8 weeks, and seawater temperatures at 10 to 20m depth were significantly higher than those recorded in the previous 9 yr. Dissolved oxygen levels were depressed at most monitoring sites, being †2mgl-1 lower than usual in early March 2011. Ecological responses to short-term extreme events are poorly understood, but evidence from elsewhere along the Western Australian coastline suggests that the heat wave was associated with high rates of coral bleaching, fish, invertebrate and macroalgae mortalities, and algal blooms. However, more ecological information from Cockburn Sound and other multiple-use embayments is urgently needed. The 2011 heat wave provided insights into conditions that may become more prevalent in Cockburn Sound, and elsewhere, if the intensity and frequency of short-term extreme events increases as predicted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a research which investigates the proposed framework for downscaling coarse climate change projections for oceans in the Australian region. It explores significance of the downscaling model in projecting marine impacts of climate change. The restoration of the ocean feedback on the air-sea fluxes to surface temperature and salinity is explored. It notes that the framework offers an attractive way to explore the impact of climate change on mesoscale ocean environment.

Antarctica is a crucial regulator of the world's climate, and as environmental security permeates global security, using Antarctic science to better understand climate is becoming increasingly pressing. Although the Australian Government has recognised that climate change poses 'a current and existential national security' threat and has acknowledged Antarctica's importance regarding the earth's global climate system, the focus of Australia's intelligence community pertaining to Antarctica currently remains restricted to upholding the military-security and diplomatic goals of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). This current focus aims to hedge against the possibility of conflict on, or over, the frozen continent via 'working the ATS', however, this paper argues that Antarctic climate science holds a greater capacity to deliver security outcomes for Australia. Antarctic climate science offers opportunities regarding intelligence for Antarctica, that is, securing Australia's Antarctic interests, as well as regarding intelligence from Antarctica; by enhancing natural disaster preparedness, bolstering broader strategic planning, as well as furthering diplomacy and the legitimisation of Australia's leadership on, and over, the frozen continent. It is recommended that the Commonwealth Government establish a climate intelligence working group to ensure the utility of climate science to security and intelligence is realised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a global trend away from delivering 'climate information' towards producing 'climate services' for decision-makers. The rationale for this shift is said to be the demand for timely and actionable climate knowledge, whilst the means of its delivery involves a shift from public good to more privatised forms of climate science. This paper identifies important implications of this shift to climate services by examining the role of consultants, drawing on an in-depth study of adaptation consultants in Australia. The role of consultants is instructive, not just because these private sector experts are engaged in climate services, but also because publicly funded climate science agencies are increasingly encouraged to behave as consulting firms do. Four imperatives of knowledge businesses—to be client-focussed, solutions-oriented, resource-efficient and self-replicating—are described. The paper argues that an emphasis on climate services shifts the incentives for climate science away from the public interest towards the ongoing pursuit of profit. There is a subsequent diversion of effort away from publicly accessible and transparent climate information to private knowledge for discrete clients. Climate services also emphasise knowledge for climate solutions as opposed to the politically charged identification of climate risks. The paper concludes with a warning that the trend towards climate services undermines the knowledge required for societies to adequately respond to the scale, speed and severity of climate change. At the heart of this issue is a climate services paradox: how to achieve customisation without exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Against the backdrop of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Finance Services Industry in Australia, this study on ethical leadership is timely. The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effects of organisational identification, customer orientated behaviour, service climate and ethical climate on the relationship between ethical leadership and employee in-role performance. Design/methodology/approach: The hypotheses were tested using a two-wave survey study of 233 bank employees in Australia. Findings: Evidence from the study indicated that organisational identification, service climate and ethical climate mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and employee in-role performance. Surprisingly, the proposed mediation effect of customer orientation was not supported. However, ethical leadership was positively associated with customer orientated behaviour among employees. Research limitations/implications: Limitations of the study include collecting data at two time points, thereby rendering the study cross-sectional. Employee in-role performance was a self-rated measure. Practical implications: This study showed that ethical leadership is critical to improving employee perceptions and experience of an organisation's service climate, ethical climate, organisational identification, customer orientated behaviour and employee in-role performance. The authors raise a number of HRM implications for the development and enablement of ethical leaders in the banking context. Originality/value: The findings presented in this paper highlight that ethical leadership is critical to improving employee perceptions and experience of an organisation's service climate, ethical climate, organisational identification, customer orientated behaviour and employee in-role performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian media reporting of climate change and renewable energy, along with public perceptions of the science and solutions of climate change, have shifted in ways that have increased pressure on politicians and policy makers. With the promotion of renewable energy central to ending Australia's heavy reliance on fossil fuels, it is critical to understand how this complex intersection of media and politics is evolving with regard to Australia's renewable energy options. Therefore, this paper examines Australian newspaper reporting of a pivotal moment in Australia's renewable energy discourse: the Australian Government's announcement, in March 2017 to expand the seventy-year-old Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme (known as Snowy 2.0), which marked a turning point in conservative energy policy. Qualitative content analysis reveals that, while political discourse delimited newspaper narratives, the sentiment of the framing was most strongly associated with the partisan alignment of the publishing organization. Regional influences also had a minor association with the framing of renewable energy. Through close analysis of this decisive moment in Australian media's political representation of renewable energy, this paper offers insights that can be used to inform media strategies for renewable energy policy in Australia, and to track changes in framing over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change introduces greater complexity to water resources planning, requiring techniques suited to increased future uncertainties. In Australia's Murray Darling Basin, governments formally recognised climate risk in 2002 and legislated science-based climate risk assessment in 2007. Since then, research has helped clarify the significance of climate change impacts on catchments, riverine ecosystems and water resources. This paper offers a review of climate risk assessments undertaken over the past two decades and outlines research needs and policy options while noting there are no simple solutions given the systemic nature of climate risks. Water resource planning and climate risk assessment need to handle non-stationarity and post-natural Anthropocene conditions. These methods should integrate biophysical and socio-economic modelling, increase stakeholder participation in developing and testing policy options and codify standards and procedures for transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As carbon emissions continue to rise, the need to adapt to climate impacts has become increasingly urgent. Planning and implementing climate adaptation is often left to local authorities and is fraught with the challenge of negotiating with multiple stakeholders holding differing interpretations of climate change. In such a space, local media has a critical role in communicating these differing perspectives within communities. In this article we explore the central role of a local newspaper in shaping public debate over the implementation of a climate adaptation plan in a coastal region of Australia. Rather than providing an arena for public discussion and constructive debate, we find that the newspaper adopted a clear position rejecting the need for changes in planning for anticipated climate impacts. We use the case study to explore how media discourse contributes to (i) the construction of an antagonistic debate undermining climate science, and (ii) strengthening the hegemony of economic value and property rights. In response, we suggest shoring up political alliances for climate change, including in the local media, as a basis for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific warnings about impending climate disaster and experts' advocacy for more and better climate science have been largely unsuccessful for advancing evidence-based policy in Australia. Continuing expectations to the contrary stem from a reliance on the supposed ability of science to prime political understandings of climate change. This paper shows how scientists undermine this 'deficit model' ideal by conflating types and uses of evidence and expertise in policymaking. These tactics are unconvincing for conservative opponents, for whom climate science is far from the last word on what climate change means. This paper examines experts' rhetorical tactics through the eyes of conservative policymakers and, thereby, proposes a strategy more likely to effect resilient climate adaptation and mitigation policies in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to comparatively analyze how top corporations in New Zealand, Australia and the Global Fortune 500 group communicate about climate science. Design/methodology/approach: A combination of keyword count and quantitative content analysis is used to develop a reliable set of indicators to measure corporate communication about climate science. Findings: Just a few corporations mention or explicitly agree with scientific consensus on climate change and few report science-based targets. They report more frequently on societal risks of climate change, as well as business contribution and responsibility. New Zealand based corporations generally do poor reporting compared to Australian corporations, who do as well as the biggest corporations in the world. Research limitations/implications: There is a further need for cross-country research and for more longitudinal analysis to understand how organizations communicate about scientific issues to its stakeholders. Practical implications: This paper can inform communication managers about the need to pay attention to how their communication, individually and in comparison with their peers, is likely interpreted by the stakeholders. Managers may attend to scientific consensus messaging to gain stakeholder approval for ambitious business actions on climate change. Social implications: Organizations are powerful social and economic drivers. Understanding how they interpret and communicate a scientific issue has implications for public and policy discourses and outcomes. Originality/value: This is the first paper to comparatively identify common and contextual drivers of business communication of complex scientific issues. A reliable scale to measure climate science communication by corporations will be helpful for future researchers to replicate in other sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of research into the phenomenon of whether climatic factors, such as temperature and weather‐related disasters, affect the decision to migrate. As an example, we examine migration flows from 198 countries to Australia for the time span from 1980 to 2015. Our results show that temperature does not have a robust, significant effect on migration flows, while weather‐related disasters do significantly affect flows to Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compound extreme natural events cause a significantly larger impact than individual extreme events. Therefore, the urgency of exploring the climatology of compound events is growing. This paper is aimed to identify the current hotspots of compound heatwaves and droughts (CHD) and trends in their occurrence in southeast Australia. In this context, 61 weather stations were selected from the study area, and analyses were carried out over the extended summer season of the time period 1971–2021. The hotspots of CHDs in southeast Australia were identified considering both the total count of CHD days and 90th percentile of CHDs during the study period. The study period was divided into two periods 1971–2000 and 2001–2021, to assess the change in hotspots spatially and temporally. Four different attributes of CHDs based on the number, duration, severity and amplitude of CHDs were also calculated, and Mann–Kendall (MK) test followed by Sen's slope was adopted to detect the trends in all these four attributes of CHDs. Trends in CHD indices were also calculated for the two periods of 1971–2000 and 2001–2021. For calculating the CHD, excess heat factor (EHF) was used to identify the heatwaves. In the case of drought identification, SPEI and SPI drought indices were adopted with aggregation of 3 and 126 antecedent months, and three different threshold values were selected to consider three levels of dry conditions, e.g. 0, − 0.5 and − 1.0. It has been found that more CHDs occurred on the eastern side of NSW and Queensland states. Furthermore, the total count of CHD days increased notably during the last two decades. The trends in CHD indices were found to be significant in the recent period (2001–2021), and there was no trend in the earlier period (1971–2000). The findings of this study will help to plan heat and drought-related emergency management in the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper presents a study of atmospheric climate impacts on community-level sports clubs' (CLSC) in Australia and Canada, their vulnerability and resilience, and organisational responses. Design/Methods: A qualitative methodology was used with a multiple case research design. Data (interviews, documents) was collected from a sample of 23 CLSC organisations managing grass turf sport fields exposed to climatic extremes in temperate regions of both countries. Findings: CLSCs in both nations experienced vulnerability to climate impacts. Direct damage to playing fields resulted from extreme climate events. Indirect impacts include higher injury risks, interrupted and/or cancelled competitions, insurance risks, plus higher operating and capital costs. Adapted management was evident for water resources, playing turf, and organisational policies. Practical Implications: Provides insights into the changing practice of sport management at the community-level. Research Contribution: The results challenge the assumption that climate is a static and benign resource for sport. This study demonstrates impacts of climate extremes on sport in the northern and southern hemispheres, the potential for adapting sport management practices, and developing resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the response by the Australian political–military establishment to climate change through the lens of securitization theory. The research used mixed content analysis techniques to systematically examine more than 1500 speech-acts, policies and doctrinal articles between 2003 and 2013. It argues that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) was not a climate securitizing actor and that its response to climate change was mediated by the political partisanship surrounding broader national policy debates on climate change. The politicization of climate change made it increasingly difficult for the ADF to publicly adopt meaningful climate policies. It subsequently crafted a strategy that minimized any investment (resource or reputational) lest a change of government rendered them invalid or it drew unwanted criticism. At the very heart of this finding exists the challenge of an avowedlyapoliticalinstitution responding to what emerged in the Australian context as a politically partisan security issue. The more serious indictment concerned how national security policy (in the context of climate change as a security issue) became hostage to the politics of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Tourism is widely acknowledged as a key contributor to climate change, but it remains unclear how the tourism industry has been planning for climate change in practice. This paper conducts the most comprehensive critical review of Australia's tourism policy and planning documents to date. The paper explores the complex challenges posed by climate change to tourism and how tourism policy has been adapting over a 15-year period. Drawing on a longitudinal data-set of 477 Australian tourism policy and planning documents at the national, state, regional and local level, this research analyses the strategic discourse on climate change using content analysis and bibliometrics. The findings reveal opportunities, challenges and strategies for the tourism industry to contribute to the sustainable management of climate change. Opportunities include developing more “green” products, while strategies include establishing and/or participating in collaborative climate change schemes and strengthening dialogue surrounding climate change to aid the implementation of sustainable practices. Future research should consider the broader policy-making environment, such as the stakeholders, power and interest dynamics when analysing tourism strategies in relation to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early adolescence (12–13 years old) is a critical but under-researched demographic for the formation of attitudes related to climate change. We address this important area by exploring adolescent views about climate change. This paper presents opinions collected from surveys of 463 1st-year secondary school students (12–13 years old) in public secondary schools in inner-urban centres in Austria and Australia on whether climate change is (1) something about which to worry, (2) caused by humans and (3) happening now. Eligible respondents in both countries showed similar levels of agreement that climate change was probably or definitely something we should (1) worry about (84.6% Austria, 89.1% Australia), which is significantly higher than either country's adult population. Eligible respondents agreed that climate change probably or definitely is (2) caused by humans (75.6% Austria, 83.6% Australia) and that climate change is probably or definitely something that is (3) happening now (73.1% Austria, 87.5% Australia). Their response differed from the respective adult populations, but in opposite directions. Our results suggest that socio-cultural worldview may not have as much influence on this age group as it does on the respective adult populations and suggests that this age group would be receptive and ready for climate science education and engagement initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a growing focus on uncertainty as a distinct concept in the risk literature. This paper is concerned with how those involved in the design and implementation of climate change policy conceptualize risk and uncertainty. Based on interviews with policy and industry elites in Australia, China and the UK, it finds that participants did not distinguish between "risk" and "uncertainty" in their conceptualization of climate threats. For the majority of them, politics was the most significant source of risk and uncertainty in climate policy, but delegation of otherwise political decisions to the market was seen as the best solution. The conclusion suggests that the conceptual distinction between risk and uncertainty is less important, for policy and industry elites, than the need to develop mechanisms that account for both persistent scientific uncertainties as well as interpretive and moral ambiguities in climate policy design and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Climate adaptation policy in a large river basin is explored. • Empirical study of science and policy interactions during actual reforms. • Interviews with senior research policy professionals reveal dynamics of policy formulation. • Proposes legally prescribed procedures for utilising science in environmental policy formulation. Climate change has many disruptive consequences, particularly in large river basins experiencing drying trends and declining water availability. With pressure for more adaptive policies, understanding how institutions governing water are adapting to climate risks has broad international relevance. This paper examines the challenges of climate risk assessments in Australia's Murray Darling Basin, an economically and culturally important basin where national legislation mandates a Basin Plan based on the best available science. However, despite repeated scientific warnings about a drying climate, the current Basin Plan does not reduce estimates of water resources available, and its climate risk management relies on a bricolage of policy mechanisms, which appear insufficient for the magnitude of predicted changes. This paper outlines the findings of original research exploring why this occurred. It draws on interviews with 30 senior public policy professionals and researchers with deep experience in climate and water policy. The interview data indicate that minimising political risks were the principal reasons for abandoning proposed reductions in entitlements and for relying on historical averages for estimating water availability. As the reform process evolved, decisions about water-planning techniques became increasingly politicised, and the adoption of explicit climate adaptation measures became problematic. As a result, the Basin Plan neither reflects the broad scientific consensus about climate change nor makes specific allowances for declining water availability. Climate risks are downplayed while concerns about levels of scientific uncertainties appear overstated. Importantly, lessons emerge from this examination that could contribute to the revisions of the Plan, scheduled for 2026. More generally, the research finds that proactive climate adaptation policies for large river basins require sustained and well-designed institutional reforms, particularly the adoption of legally prescribed procedures for utilising science - and accounting for its use - in controversial environmental reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change awareness has taken a dramatic turn in Australia, intensifying debate over the meaning of prolonged drought for rural futures, with critical implications for rural mental health. This paper is drawn from research on perceptions of Australian climate during a period of marked shift in public awareness of climate change (2004–2007). It utilises oral histories gathered in dryland farm communities of the semiarid Victorian Mallee at the edge of the nation's commercial cropping zone—in particular, the stories of women's health workers—to highlight the interdependency of environmental, economic, political and mental health concerns in rural and remote communities. Focusing on lived experience, the paper explores the narratives through which people have apprehended drought and climate change—in discourse of endurance, uncertainty and putative adaptation—revealing advocacy and local resolve in the provision of rural mental health services, and, fundamentally, a paradigm of embodiment in rural social work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are numerous studies that have estimated the number of deaths attributable to heat and cold using city-level or provincial-level data. However, none of these studies have assessed temperature-mortality relationships using meteorological climate zones and data that covers an entire population/country. This analysis uses a national data set of death records to create time-series data for different regional aggregations. Temperature-mortality relationships are estimated using this data set of 1,717,224 deaths, which covers the whole of Australia between 2006 and 2017. This paper finds that the majority of deaths related to temperature in Australia are caused by heat. It also finds that the reference temperature used to separate impacts into heat-/cold-related mortality has a notable impact on the magnitude of these estimates. Previous studies (using the same methodology) found that most of the temperature-related mortality burden in Australia was attributed to cold temperatures. This led to studies that associated this with a net benefit from climate change. This analysis indicates that studies that found net benefits from climate change need to be re-assessed, especially for Australia and warmer climate zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anticyclones are one of the main synoptic features of the global midlatitudes, where they are associated with dry, settled conditions. Previous studies have identified southern Australia as a region where significant long-term changes have occurred in recent decades, including a decline in cool season rainfall and an increase in the frequency of anticyclones. This paper uses several reanalyses to assess the climatology, variability, trends and impacts of anticyclones in southern Australia and several subregions. A robust increase in the frequency of anticyclones in southern Australia is demonstrated between 1960–1979 and 1997–2014, particularly in southeast Australia and the Tasman Sea during the cool months of the year. At least 30% of the recent cool season rainfall decline in southeast Australia can be associated with an increased frequency of anticyclones in this region. However, there are no clear trends in anticyclone frequency near southwestern Western Australia, where long-term rainfall declines are due to changes in other weather systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a water management project in the remote Aboriginal community of Milingimbi, Northern Australia. Drawing on materials and experiences from two distinct stages of this project, we revisit a policy report and engage in ethnographic storytelling in order to highlight a series of sensing practices associated with water management. In the former, a working symmetry between Yolngu and Western water knowledges is actively sought through the practices of the project. However, in the latter, recurrent asymmetries in the research work continue to appear: a bilingual diagram of water usage is displayed but produces confusion; measuring a water hole for salinity, a member of the scientific team throws in a water meter, while a Yolngu elder prefers the telling of an ancestral story; a collaborative 3-D mapping exercise invites participation from community members but struggles to develop an outcome that differs from existing maps used by scientists and government staff. Focusing on these moments as subtle points of rupture, we suggest that attending to "seeing," "telling," and "mapping" in both stages of this water management project offers a way to explore the political work of crafting climate futures and beginning to interrogate differing means for "doing difference" within them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Qualitative outcomes of energy poverty across Australian climate zones are compared. • Outcomes influenced by energy costs and local energy, housing and welfare policies. • Measures of energy poverty and policy responses need to reflect local contexts. Academic interests into energy poverty have been growing since the 1990s. These have ranged from quantitative measures and qualitative reflections, as well as ones that aimed to provide more nuanced definitions. These studies have, however, typically focused on single jurisdictions or across national borders, with very few examining the issue across different climatic and policy contexts within the same nation. This paper aims to address this gap by focussing on differences in climate conditions, local policies and quality of the housing stock across Australia and reflects on how these factors each played a role, to varying degrees, in the prevalence of energy poverty amongst lower-income households across eight metropolitan and regional settings conducted as part of a recent study in Australia. Through a review of focus group, interview and workshop data, it especially highlights the more qualitative impacts of energy poverty, and how each of these factors come to influence the extent to which lower-income households experience energy poverty and the support they were able to access. Additional to the need for more contextualised measures of energy poverty, this paper calls for localised responses to alleviate the negative outcomes reflected by our participants in regard to both energy and housing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to report an investigation of the effect of location on refurbishment strategies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using the temperate and sub-tropical urban locations in Australia. This occurred within a larger research project that investigated methods for sustainable refurbishments to office buildings and their optimized timing from an investment perspective. Design/methodology/approach -- An office building in Melbourne was used to develop seven sets of improvements using an integrated approach to upgrade mechanical services and the building envelope. Using asset management trigger points the impact on net present value and internal rate of return were calculated, taking into account the capital expenditure required, the energy savings due to the refurbishment, as well as a possible rental increase due to the upgrade and lesser operational energy bills for the tenants. To investigate the importance of the location attribute the upgraded building's performance was modelled in a different climate by using a Brisbane weather file. Findings -- A number of unexpected results were found, including that the same sets of improvements had similar reductions in GHG emissions in the two locations, they had similar impacts on the investment criteria and when using the National Australian Building Energy Rating System it was shown that it was easier and cheaper to get an uplift in stars in Melbourne than Brisbane. Research limitations/implications -- This location-specific analysis is the result of using a more sophisticated and holistic methodology to analyse sustainable refurbishments that more closely resembles the complexity of the decision making required to make buildings more sustainable. Practical implications -- This paper provides a basis for property investors to make decisions about sustainable investments when location is important. This can occur when a portfolio is distributed across various climate zones. Originality/value -- The research project that the paper reports addresses the complexity of building attributes, possible sets of improvements to reduce GHG emissions and their investment decisions, within a life cycle view of assets. It is rare that this complexity is addressed as a whole, and rarer that locational climatic differences are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pride in Australia's extreme climate has long been a part of Australia's national identity. Today, climate continues to be enrolled in a range of nationalistic projects, including the (re)development of climate science and other responses to climate change. In this paper, we outline some of the contours of the 'Australian national climate', claims to know it, and four idealised responses to it: bounce back, dismissal, endurance, and migration. We argue that the deeply cultural framing of climate in Australia-in particular, Australians' emphasis on the climate's inherent variability and unknowability, and their own historical adaptability-is being exploited by the federal government and hampering climate change mitigation nationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposure to weather extremes, such as heatwaves, can cause discomfort, harm, or death in grazing cattle in pastures. While the Australian Bureau of Meteorology issues sheep graziers alerts when there is an exposure risk to chill for livestock, there is no equivalent alert for heat stress for Australian cattle. Before any such alert system can be developed, a robust assessment and comparison of relevant cattle thermal stress indices is required. This study evaluates and compares the multiyear climatology of three cattle thermal heat stress indices across Australia in the warm season months (October–March). The same indices are then used to assess historical Australian heat events where cattle died from heat exposure. These events are based off official records and survey responses from northern Australian graziers. In the seven historical heat events studied, high relative humidity combined with low wind speeds, or high solar exposure combined with high surface temperatures, exacerbated the impact of heat stress on cattle. In the two historic events where multiple compounding weather factors combined (e.g., high humidity, low winds, and high solar exposure), the cattle mortality levels were significantly high. These events were characterized by rainy conditions followed by a rapid warming, meaning cattle were likely unable to acclimatize to such dramatic temperature changes. This study highlights the need for using more than one thermal stress index when verifying cattle heat stress events and, importantly, calls for further research on standardizing the risk classifications of these thermal indices for cattle in Australia's variable climate. Significance Statement: Cattle across Australia's northern tropical and semiarid regions often experience extreme hot and humid conditions in the summer months, which increases the risk of heat stress. This is the first study of its kind to evaluate observations of cattle heat stress across Australia using indices that describe the combined effects of solar exposure, wind speed, relative humidity, and surface temperatures. These cattle heat stress indices can be used to evaluate historical cattle mortality events in feedlots and in grazed pastures. This study lays the groundwork for the development of Australian-wide cattle heat stress forecast products on the 7-day to multiweek time scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Historical records of fire weather phenomena provide valuable insights into spatial and temporal trends which can inform further research and are important tools for planning. Aims: We outline a 19-year climatology of a Research Prototype (AFDRSRP), of the new Australian Fire Danger Rating System, documenting its spatial and temporal characteristics. Methods: The analysis utilises the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's high-resolution reanalysis suite (BARRA), together with fuel data provided by Australian fire agencies. We examine the spatial and temporal distribution of the AFDRSRP. Distributions are categorised by fuel type, analysing relative variability across time and space. Key results: The results validate the broad behaviour of the new system and provide insight into the variation of fire danger throughout Australia, adding detail to the understanding of timing of peak fire danger both diurnally and annually. Conclusions: While the AFDRSRP differs from the operational system in its fire danger rating categories and tuning of algorithms, it nonetheless provides useful insights into the operational implementation. Implications: These results will be essential for planning during fire seasons. We present a 19-year climatology of the Australian Fire Danger Rating System: Research Prototype (AFDRSRP), recently implemented operationally throughout Australia. The climatology describes the typical spatial and temporal behaviour of the AFDRSRP. It is important for users to improve familiarity with the new system, and to ensure it performs as expected. This article belongs to the Collection Australian Fire Danger Rating System. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anticipatory governance is emerging in the literature and practice as a form of decision-making which attempts to deal with climate change complexities and uncertainties. Underpinning the anticipatory governance approach to decision-making is a three-step process which includes future analysis, flexibility of strategies and monitoring and action. This paper adopts the anticipatory governance and its three-step approach as a framework to investigate two Australian local government adaptation initiatives. It discusses the challenges local governments face in taking the lead through anticipatory governance to address climate change adaptation in their planning efforts. The paper aims to contribute analytical insights into adaptation planning at the local scale through anticipatory governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This paper explores women's experiences of drought in Australia. Despite the significance of drought for rural life in Australia, there is little research seeking to understand its psychological consequences. There is also a need to recognise gendered experiences of drought and for research that addresses its long-term effects as people age in prolonged drought-affected areas. Design: The study explores longitudinal qualitative data collected by the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health. Free-text comments ( n = 217), collected via mailed survey at five time points (1996, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007) from the same 77 women, were subjected to a narrative analysis. Participants: Participants from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health who were aged 45-50 when the study began in 1996. Results: Findings indicate that drought has an impact on women as they age, particularly in reference to menopause, access to support systems and retirement. Conclusion: This study concludes that the experience of drought cannot be disentangled from the realities of gender and ageing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecology and climate of South East Queensland has inspired the development of innovative building design and construction practices for well over a century. A modern regional architecture has evolved since the 1970s where the building form and fabric embrace a climate responsive approach to design. This is becoming an increasingly important part of creating ecologically sustainable buildings and development. A core philosophy is to harmonise the building form and fabric with the site and climate thereby reducing ecological impacts and achieving energy efficiency whilst providing human health and comfort and creating opportunities for social interaction and a productive learning environment. The University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, has embraced an ecological vision from its inception. From the first steps of its master planning through to its newest building, the Chancellery, the University demonstrates an evolution of innovation that embodies the principles of climate responsive ecological design. This paper first discusses some of the initial steps in this evolution, the University's vision, and master planning. Second, it presents the climatic data that forms the basis of the passive design strategies. The third section discusses the innovative design strategies and attributes of the Chancellery followed by outcomes from initial research on how these strategies have enabled it to meet its environmental objectives. The paper is intended to provide building design professionals and contractors with a new model for university buildings and campuses and to provide a case study for climate responsive design in warm temperate climates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now broadly acknowledged that climate change due to an enhanced Greenhouse Effect is underway and such change will have major implications for our societies and environments. This paper outlines a pedagogical approach devised to encourage learning and critical thinking about climate change. A constructivist approach to teaching and learning is applied to stimulate analysis of potential impacts of climate change on systems familiar to secondary school students in South Australia. The problem-based method guides students through a conceptualisation of the implications of environmental change. Students at Woodcroft College, when given the opportunity to examine the potential climate change impacts on a local coastal ecosystem, found the method to be both challenging and engaging. The exercise concluded with students discussing possible personal behavioural and broader societal responses to reduce the impacts of future climate change. The paper contends that such teaching to support students to become resilient young adults will be vital in a future world of environmental risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely accepted that water resource management demands an integrated assessment of resource use options, including local and regional impacts on the environment and stakeholders. Multiple issues, stakeholders and scales of system behaviour must be considered, as well as the key disciplines within and between the human and natural sciences. Modelling is a critical tool in integrated assessment. It enables effects of policy interventions, climate forcing and demographics to be predicted (although with some uncertainty), and provides a means of expanding understanding of river basin behaviour. It also acts as a vehicle for social learning among various interest groups. This paper discusses the various frameworks and methods being used for integrated modelling, and their suitability and unfulfilled potential for these purposes. The frameworks include coupled component models, systems dynamics models, metamodels, risk-assessment approaches, Bayesian decision networks, agent-based methods, expert systems and other heuristic knowledge-based techniques. Specific software platforms are not considered but the lessons from software development and implementation are clearly spelt out. The paper presents three Australian case studies in integrated assessment. They vary in their range of catchment/watershed sizes, hydroclimatology, issues of concern and stakeholders engaged. Two of them utilise a coupled component modelling framework and the third a Bayesian decision network approach. The paper illustrates the value, problems and lessons of integrated assessment and modelling. In particular it proposes some ways to address the challenges of assessing options to obtain more sustainable basin-wide outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential role of the impacts of land-cover changes (LCCs) in the Australian climate is investigated within the context of increasing CO2 concentrations and temperature. Specifically, it is explored if possible scenarios for LCC can moderate or amplify CO2-induced changes in climate over Australia. The January climate of Australia is simulated under three different land-cover-change scenarios using a high-resolution regional climate model. The land-cover-change scenarios include a steady-state land cover that is equivalent to current land cover, a low-reforestation scenario that recovers approximately 25% of the trees replaced by grasslands within the last 200 yr, and a high-reforestation scenario that recovers at least 75% of the deforested regions. The model was driven by boundary conditions taken from transitory climate simulations from a general circulation model that included two climate scenarios based on two projected scenarios of CO2 concentration increase. The results show that reforestation has the potential to reduce the projected increase in Australian temperatures in 2050 and 2100 by as much as 40% and 20%, respectively. This cooling effect, however, is highly localized and occurs only in regions of reforestation. The results therefore hint that the potential of reforestation to moderate the impact of global warming may be significantly limited by the spatial scale of reforestation. In terms of deforestation, results show that any future land clearing can exacerbate the projected warming in certain regions of Australia. Carbon-related variables are also analyzed and results show that changes in net CO2 flux may be influenced more by soil respiration than by photosynthesis. The results herein encourage studies on the inclusion of land-cover-change scenarios in future climate change projection simulations of the Australian climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inter-dataset agreement of trends in subweekly near-surface (850 hPa) temperature variability over Southern Hemisphere midlatitude land masses is assessed among 12 global atmospheric reanalysis datasets. A comparison of the climatological temperature variance and dominant sources and sinks of the variance reveals that, except for NCEP-NCAR (R1) and NCEP-DOE (R2), there is a relatively good agreement for their magnitudes and spatial distributions during the satellite era (1980–2022), which indicates that the key features of subweekly variability are sufficiently well represented. A good agreement is noted for the positive trends found in subweekly variability over the satellite era affecting South Africa in September–October–November (SON) and South America in December–January–February (DJF). Although there is agreement in most of the reanalyses concerning the positive trend affecting Australia in SON, this has not yet emerged from the noise associated with interannual variability when considering only the satellite era. It is significant, however, when the period is extended (1954–2022) or limited to the most recent decades (1990–2022). The trends are explained primarily by a more efficient generation of subweekly temperature variance by horizontal temperature advection. This generation is also identified as a source of biases among the datasets. The trends are found to be reproduced even in those reanalyses that do not assimilate satellite data (JRA-55C) or that assimilate surface observations only (ERA-20C, 20CRv2c, and 20CRv3). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While evidencemounts that indigenous burninghas a significant role in shaping pyrodiversity, theprocesses explainingits variationacross local andexternalbiophysical systems remain limited. This is especially the case with studies of climate-fire interactions, which only recognize an effect of humans on the fire regimewhen theyact independentlyof climate. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that an anthropogenic fire regime (fire incidence, size and extent) does not covary with climate. In the lightning regime, positive El Nin˜ o southern oscillation (ENSO) values increase lightning fire incidence, whereas La Nin˜ a (and associated increases in prior rainfall) increase fire size. ENSO has the opposite effect in the Martu regime, decreasing ignitions in El Nin˜ o conditions without affecting fire size. An thropogenic ignition rates covary positively with high antecedent rainfall, whereas fire size varies only with high temperatures and unpredictable winds, which may reduce control over fire spread. However, total area burned is similarly predicted by antecedent rainfall in both regimes, but is driven by increases in fire size in the lightning regime, and fire number in the anthropogenic regime. We conclude that anthropogenic regimes covary with climatic variation, but detecting the human-climate-fire interaction requires multiple measures of both fire regime and climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Species distribution models (SDMs) are an effective way of predicting the potential distribution of species and their response to environmental change. Most SDMs apply presence data to a relatively generic set of predictive variables such as climate. However, this weakens the modelling process by overlooking the responses to more cryptic predictive variables. In this paper we demonstrate a means by which data gathered from an intensive animal trapping study can be used to enhance SDMs by combining field data with bioclimatic modelling techniques to determine the future potential distribution for the koomal (Trichosurus vulpecula hypoleucus). The koomal is a geographically isolated subspecies of the common brushtail possum, endemic to south-western Australia. Since European settlement this taxon has undergone a significant reduction in distribution due to its vulnerability to habitat fragmentation, introduced predators and tree/shrub dieback caused by a virulent group of plant pathogens of the genus Phytophthora. An intensive field study found: 1) the home range for the koomal rarely exceeded 1 km in in length at its widest point; 2) areas heavily infested with dieback were not occupied; 3) gap crossing between patches (>400 m) was common behaviour; 4) koomal presence was linked to the extent of suitable vegetation; and 5) where the needs of koomal were met, populations in fragments were demographically similar to those found in contiguous landscapes. We used this information to resolve a more accurate SDM for the koomal than that created from bioclimatic data alone. Specifically, we refined spatial coverages of remnant vegetation and dieback, to develop a set of variables that we combined with selected bioclimatic variables to construct models. We conclude that the utility value of an SDM can be enhanced and given greater resolution by identifying variables that reflect observed, species-specific responses to landscape parameters and incorporating these responses into the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We present a multi-disciplinary collaborative approach for developing a regional scale climate adaptation plan with the health and wellbeing sector. • This includes an innovative engagement and policy mapping strategy. • We demonstrate the application of this approach for developing climate change adaptation plan for health and wellbeing sector in Queensland, Australia. • We find that direct engagement between various key stakeholders is a critical element of translating scientific evidence of climate change impacts on human health into a regional adaptation policy for the health and wellbeing sector. The science of climate change and its impacts on health makes it clear that human health and wellbeing will be increasingly negatively impacted as a result of climate change. The health and wellbeing sector must respond to these growing pressures in order to continue to provide safe, quality care. Adaptation and mitigation policies need to be developed at different scales, including at a regional government level. Numerous challenges exist; for example, the necessity for collaboration between multiple agencies across scales, the tailoring of policies to the health issues specific to regions, and constraints on existing regional and local resources and adaptive capacities, to name a few. This paper presents a multi-disciplinary collaborative approach used to develop a regional scale climate adaptation plan with the health sector. Starting from a scientific understanding of climate change impact on the health sector in Queensland, Australia, the approach used an innovative engagement strategy to a) better understand awareness of relevant stakeholders about current and future climate change impact on the health of the population and on service provision, b) identify on-ground barriers to effective adaptation faced by the sector stakeholders, c) identify opportunities and benefits which would arise from adaptation, and d) identify what conditions or support stakeholders required to overcome those barriers, take advantage of opportunities, and achieve benefits from adaptation. Analysis of these findings guided the development of specific policy directions for the sector. We found direct engagement between various key stakeholders such as health service providers (e.g. hospitals), critical infrastructure providers, academics, local government authorities, and sub-sectors such as aged care and early childhood care facilities, was a critical element of translating scientific evidence of climate change impacts on human health into a regional adaptation policy for the health and wellbeing sector. The resulting policy, grounded in the reality and experience of health and wellbeing sector stakeholders, reflects their insights and concerns, and served to develop a level of sectoral 'ownership' (not 'top-down' imposition) which will be important for its successful ongoing development and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Collaboratively written article with a decolonising approach to climate and weather. • Acknowledges more-than-human agency by recognising Country as lead author. • Offers alternatives to Western-scientific constructions of time, climate and weather. • Adds new Indigenous-led dimension to academic/policy discourse on climate change. • Calls for 'response-ability as' rather than 'responsibility for' weather. New engagements between humans and with the environment are vitally necessary in this perilous period of intensified environmental change. Climate change policy interventions and public discourses persistently frame climate as outside human experience, something to be controlled and understood within a strict, linear, universalist and ultimately colonising understanding of time. Yet constructions that suggest that humans are separate from, act upon or may manage or control a passive environment may be offensive to a sentient world, while relegation of the past to 'the past' ignores the many enduring violences of colonialism and multiple sustained efforts to nurture multi-temporal relationships of belonging and care. In this paper, our more-than-human Indigenous and non-Indigenous research collective share understandings of time led by the Yolŋu songspiral, Wuku n or Gathering of the Clouds, from northern Australia. Wuku n challenges many orders and disciplines of colonial structures, including those associated with time and climate change. In place of an abstract, distant and unbound climate, locked into a linear, passive timescape, Wuku n suggests time as multiple, agential, and a manifestation of co-becoming. Rather than being responsible to or responsible for climate as something passive and separate from humans, Wuku n signals a need to cultivate abilities to attend deeply to place's agency and act through co-becoming. In this way, we may understand and respond to climate change as relational and patterned, embodied and affective, and co-constituted through more-than-human placed and multi-temporal relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Murray dairy region produces approximately 1.85 billion litres of milk each year, representing about 20 % of Australia's total annual milk production. An ongoing production challenge in this region is the management of the impacts of heat stress during spring and summer. An increase in the frequency and severity of extreme temperature events due to climate change may result in additional heat stress and production losses. This paper assesses the changing nature of heat stress now, and into the future, using historical data and climate change projections for the region using the temperature humidity index (THI). Projected temperature and relative humidity changes from two global climate models (GCMs), CSIRO MK3.5 and CCR-MIROC-H, have been used to calculate THI values for 2025 and 2050, and summarized as mean occurrence of, and mean length of consecutive high heat stress periods. The future climate scenarios explored show that by 2025 an additional 12-15 days (compared to 1971 to 2000 baseline data) of moderate to severe heat stress are likely across much of the study region. By 2050, larger increases in severity and occurrence of heat stress are likely (i.e. an additional 31-42 moderate to severe heat stress days compared with baseline data). This increasing trend will have a negative impact on milk production among dairy cattle in the region. The results from this study provide useful insights on the trends in THI in the region. Dairy farmers and the dairy industry could use these results to devise and prioritise adaptation options to deal with projected increases in heat stress frequency and severity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of houses to suit the Australian environment has been a preoccupation from the first day that Europeans set foot on the shores of Port Jackson. Following WWII, a scientific approach to researching the relationship between building design and the climate commenced. From then and up to the present three periods of research can be identified. This paper concentrates on the first formative period between 1945 and 1972 when the thermal performance research work in Australia was dominated by two organizations, the Department of Works, Commonwealth Experimental Building Station (CEBS) located in Ryde, Sydney, and CSIRO, Division of Building Research (DBR) situated in Highett, Melbourne. During this period, thermal performance research conducted by these organizations was recognized throughout the world for its innovation. The paper summarizes the major work undertaken and how many of the concepts that informed this work are still with us today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the research which investigates the thermal performance of Earthship, an autonomous, earth-sheltered housing concept that claims to require no active heating or cooling systems despite extreme climatic conditions. This research aims to test these claims through monitoring and thermal simulations. The study involves monitoring the indoor conditions in an Earthship home in New Mexico, USA and uses the measured data to calibrate a computer model used to simulate the thermal performance of the home for further analyses. The second part of the study compares Earthship thermal performance located in a temperate climate in Australia with that of buildings incorporating different wall construction materials such as strawbale, rammed earth, and brick veneer. Results from both these studies substantiate the claims. The effect of including a greenhouse, earth berm, and internal wall material is also explored and quantified. The paper concludes with a discussion of the scope for reducing home energy use through the use of Earthship design principles and construction methods and the viability for building these houses in the Australian suburbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Building adaptive reuse plays a critical role in emissions reduction and supports global climate protection. Thus, the designing of future buildings with embedded adaptive reuse potential is a useful criterion for sustainability. This paper describes the development of a new rating tool known as adaptSTAR, which offers holistic and unified design criteria suitable for assessing the adaptive reuse potential of future buildings. The findings show that criteria can be identified and weighted according to physical, economic, functional, technological, social, legal and political categories to calculate an adaptive reuse star rating. In addition, this paper reports on the first stage of the research methodology used in the initial development of the rating tool and concludes with some preliminary observations from 12 selected successful case studies in New South Wales (NSW) and Melbourne, Australia. The use of adaptSTAR in designing future buildings will lead and help promote low carbon built environments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Surface ultraviolet (UV) radiation plays an important role in human health. Increased exposure to UV radiation increases the risk of skin cancer. In Australia, public campaigns to prevent skin cancer include the promotion of daily UV forecasts. If all other atmospheric factors are equal, stratospheric ozone decreases result in UV increases. Given that Australia still has the highest skin cancer rates in the world, it is important to monitor Australia's stratospheric ozone and UV radiation levels over time because of the effects cumulative exposure can have on humans. In this paper, two long-term ozone datasets derived from surface and satellite measurements, a radiation code and atmospheric meteorological fields are used to calculate clear-sky UV radiation over a 50-year period (1959-2009) for Australia. The deviations from 1970-1980 levels show that clear-sky UV is on the rise. After the 1990s, an overall annual increase from 2 to 6% above the 1970-1980 levels was observed at all latitudes. Examining the summer and winter deviations from 1970-1980 showed that the winter signal dominated the annual changes, with winter increases almost twice those in summer. With ozone levels not expected to recover to pre-depletion levels until the middle of this century, UV levels are expected to continue to rise. Combined with Australians favoring an outdoor life-style, when temperatures are warmer, under high levels of UV, the associated risk of skin cancer will increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Machine learning algorithms have been applied to estimate wheat yield for Australia. • Combining climate and satellite data achieves high performance for yield prediction. • The unique and overlapping information of climate and satellite data is quantified. • Optimal prediction performance can be achieved two-month lead time before maturity. Wheat is the most important staple crop grown in Australia, and Australia is one of the top wheat exporting countries globally. Timely and reliable wheat yield prediction in Australia is important for regional and global food security. Prior studies use either climate data, or satellite data, or a combination of these two to build empirical models to predict crop yield. However, though the performance of yield prediction using empirical methods is improved by combining the use of climate and satellite data, the contributions from different data sources are still not clear. In addition, how the regression-based methods compare with various machine-learning based methods in their performance in yield prediction is also not well understood and needs in-depth investigation. This work integrated various sources of data to predict wheat yield across Australia from 2000 to 2014 at the statistical division (SD) level. We adopted a well-known regression method (LASSO, as a benchmark) and three mainstream machine learning methods (support vector machine, random forest, and neural network) to build various empirical models for yield prediction. For satellite data, we used the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) from MODIS and solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) from GOME-2 and SCIAMACHY as metrics to approximate crop productivity. The machine-learning based methods outperform the regression method in modeling crop yield. Our results confirm that combining climate and satellite data can achieve high performance of yield prediction at the SD level (R2 ˜ 0.75). The satellite data track crop growth condition and gradually capture the variability of yield evolving with the growing season, and their contributions to yield prediction usually saturate at the peak of the growing season. Climate data provide extra and unique information beyond what the satellite data have offered for yield prediction, and our empirical modeling work shows the added values of climate variables exist across the whole season, not only at some certain stages. We also find that using EVI as an input can achieve better performance in yield prediction than SIF, primarily due to the large noise in the satellite-based SIF data (i.e. coarse resolution in both space and time). In addition, we also explored the potential for timely wheat yield prediction in Australia, and we can achieve the optimal prediction performance with approximately two-month lead time before wheat maturity. The proposed methodology in this paper can be extended to different crops and different regions for crop yield prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]