Review of climate impact change work undertaken, research gaps and opportunities in the Tasmanian context

Tasmania draws strongly on the natural environment for many sectors of its economy, including agriculture, energy and tourism. Climate change affects the risks of natural disasters such as bushfire, drought and energy security. Research has already shown that Tasmania has already been affected by climate change and has economic impacts. Relative to Australia and many other areas of the world, climate change impacts are likely to be milder in Tasmania and could present both adverse and beneficial economic outcomes. There has been a broad range of climate related projects carried out for the state of Tasmania. Along with the relatively well known Climate Futures for Tasmania Project, this review has identified 27 major projects and a further 50 complementary projects related to climate change in Tasmania. These projects include studies of general changes to climate, climate extremes, water supply and resources, agriculture, biosecurity, effects of fire, and the incidence of Ross river virus. These research activities have resulted in a suite of comprehensive reports that have informed Tasmanian communities, industry, and state government. Economic analysis, due to be released in early 2018, shows that the state has already benefited from this information. There are 12 climate change research projects currently underway that are using the latest generation of climate models, which will be completed in the next 12 months. These are significant investments that can be used as the basis of the new research and information on climate change in Tasmania. Tasmania experienced an extra-ordinary dry spring in 2015 and wet autumn in 2016. The dry spring directly led to significant bushfires and low water-yields. Emergency service responses to the bushfires cost $55m. The dry spring had a significant impact on Hydro Tasmania. The wet autumn of 2016 resulted in extensive, devastating flooding that cost 3 lives and $180m in damages. Together these three events (i.e. bushfire, drought and flood) cost the state about $300 million, or 1% of gross state product. Evidence shows that the dry spring was more intense through rising greenhouses gases in the atmosphere and indicates that climate change is already adding to the costs of natural disasters in Tasmania. Over the last ten years there have been a significant number of developments in the analysis of climate model simulations and also in the availability of new simulations for Tasmania. There is a new recognition that natural disasters magnify the consequences of climate change. There are also new methods and approaches for examining various questions, including climate impacts on human health (e.g. heat stress, mortality), agricultural supply chains and the financial costs of climate change impacts. The gaps identified in this review are derived from: recent consulting reports to Hydro Tasmania; stakeholder engagements; surveys carried out by the Department of Premier and Cabinet’s Tasmanian Climate Change Office; Tasmanian State Natural Disaster Risk Assessment workshops; and a meta-analysis of the climate change reports, research papers already completed and listed in Tables A1 to A5 in Appendix A. Water underpins many of the activities in the state and is critical to energy security and the future of agriculture. Tasmania is still vulnerable to seasonal variations, with significant interannual variability in rainfall and temperature. Due to the topographic relief, floods can (and do) cause major damage to private and public infrastructure. Since the last climate impacts assessments, new water infrastructure (namely the Tasmanian Irrigation scheme) has been put in place. The sensitivity of this infrastructure to certain types of climate extremes could be assessed. Coincident and compounding extreme events have not been considered in any of the earlier work. How the frequency of coincidence will be affected by climate change has led to new questions about their relationships and impacts. Questions arising around the coincidence of bushfire with either flood, drought, or heatwave are a few examples. Agriculture is currently growing at 8% per annum, faster than the other sectors of the state economy. The Climate Futures for Tasmania Project only covered dairy and wine grapes in detail (about $415 million of the state farm gate value for 2015-2016 year), thus the remaining 80% of this sector is effectively un-assessed and could be expanded. Biosecurity and invasive pests are a concern for Tasmanian agriculture and also the state’s natural assets. The potential for damaging agriculture pests to establish in Tasmania as a result of climate change has not been adequately assessed. New analytical methods for pest detection, a better understanding of pest life cycles and new, more reliable projections could all be combined to estimate the emergence of viable populations in the different regions of the state. Such information is crucial for policy dev