Victorian Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs), funded through the Australian Government, developed regional climate change adaptation planning in collaboration with community and a range of stakeholders.
The aim of this website is to provide a common platform to access CMA climate change adaptation planning for natural resource management across Victoria. The adaptation plans were developed using the latest climate change projections by the CSIRO and in conjunction with key research organisations across Australia. Funding provided by the Australian Government was used to:
The Victorian CMAs collaborated on the development of adaptation plans and this website through the Victorian CMA Climate Change Forum, which is still in operation.
Through this forum, Victorian CMAs have developed a list of high priority adaptation options for natural resource management in Victoria.
The ten Victoria Catchment Management Authorities (CMA) who jointly invest in this website are:
Corangamite CMA, East Gippsland CMA, Glenelg Hopkins CMA, Goulburn Broken CMA, Mallee CMA, North Central CMA, North East CMA, Melbourne Water, West Gippsland CMA and Wimmera CMA.
Climate projection data and information was used in developing regional climate change adaptation plans.
Future global climate is influenced by both internal and external factors. Internal forces include naturally occurring oscillations of the weather through to seasonal changes such as El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or decadal changes such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). External forcing factors such as land use change, solar variation, aerosols, ozone and volcanic eruptions are also very influential on the future climate. However, these are harder to quantify than greenhouse gases, which are the major human-induced forcing factor contributing to future climate change.
There have been numerous reputable scientific studies of future global climate. Information presented on this website is based on CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology studies that utilise global climate models to investigate plausible future climates, sometimes supplemented with additional fine resolution modelling techniques. The investigation of these climate futures is primarily undertaken by simulating the future global climate under different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.
CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology scientific studies applied a regional approach (“clusters") for determining climate futures to provide support to the Australian natural resource management (NRM) sector. This was informed by logical groupings of recent past climatic conditions, biophysical factors and expected broad patterns of climate change. Where possible, NRM cluster boundaries were aligned with the 2013 boundaries of regional NRM organisations.
In Victoria, the 10 Catchment Management Authorities, were grouped into two clusters:
Climate projections and key messages specific to the Murray Basin and Southern Slopes clusters can be downloaded here:
