Neil Plummer

Extended Hydrological Prediction Section

Water Division, Bureau of Meteorology

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The Water Act 2007 has provided the Bureau of Meteorology with unprecedented opportunities to improve water information services throughout Australia. These services include an Australian Water Resources Information System (AWRIS), national water resources assessments, national water accounts, improved flood warnings, short-term flow forecasts and extended hydrological predictions.

The Extended Hydrological Prediction section came together as a team in late 2008 and its efforts are focused on:

• Matching the information needs of water managers and users to the Bureau’s prediction capability;
• Seasonal hydrological prediction services from a statistical Bayesian Joint Probability model;
• Seasonal hydrological prediction services from downscaling global climate model outputs into hydrological models;
• Long-term prediction services of water availability for decades into the future; and
• Progressing an Australian Hydrological Modelling System to underpin all of the Bureau’s water information services.

In delivering on its new responsibilities, the Bureau will rely on considerable research, particularly through CAWCR and the Water Information Research and Development Alliance (WIRADA) agreement between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO.

The development of these prediction services must be user driven - it must ultimately lead to changes in decisions that result in improved outcomes in water resource management. Critical to the development of this service will be a modelling infrastructure that will gradually build in complexity. Investment in research and modelling efforts will, to a large degree, be driven by scientific and technological capability, cost-benefit considerations, and most importantly, the likely incremental benefits of improved predictions and outcomes for water managers and users.