2020 VicWaCI findings

The four-year investment in the Victorian Water and Climate Initiative has continued to build on the scientific knowledge base formed since the publication of the Victorian Climate Initiative’s findings in 2017. This latest initiative focused on partnering with Victorian water sector stakeholders to share the knowledge for application across the sector.

These new and updated findings are listed here. Download Victoria’s Water in a Changing Climate (PDF, 10.5 MB) (accessible version (DOCX, 2.8 MB)) to learn more about all the findings or be transported to the relevant section of the PDF using the value at the end of each dot-point (functionality works best in Microsoft Edge).

VicWaCI research has:

• Identified the roles of natural variability and climate change in cool-season rainfall reductions experienced since 1997, and the prospects for future cool-season rainfall (Section 2.2).
• Improved our understanding of how changes in global circulation have increased the frequency of high-pressure systems and reduced the frequency of low-pressure systems across Victoria (Section 2.4 and Section 2.5).
• Identified the contribution of different weather systems to the amount of rainfall received across Victoria, how this changes seasonally and observed trends in these weather systems over time (Section 2.6).
• Quantified how much sub-daily rainfall intensities have increased across some parts of Victoria (Section 2.7).
• Identified the catchments across Victoria where a significant shift in rainfall – runoff response was observed during the Millennium Drought, and catchments where these reductions have continued since the end of the drought (Section 3.3).
• Classified catchment response to droughts, based on timing of the change in runoff response and recovery, which may be useful to predict future runoff response (Section 3.3.3).
• Assessed the possible causes of the change in runoff response to rainfall (Section 3.4) and the magnitude of reductions in runoff response during the Millennium Drought (Section 3.5).
• Identified that catchment runoff response can recover after drought prior to the cumulative rainfall deficit fully recovering (Section 3.4.4).
• Used high-resolution rainfall projections to project runoff, which highlighted the challenges in robustly bias correcting dynamically downscaled rainfall for hydrological application (Section 4.2.1 and Section 4.2.2).
• Improved understanding of how different climate and runoff projections compare, and methods for developing improved runoff projections (Section 4.2.3).