Dr Claire Spillman¹, Dr Grant Smith¹, Dr Alistair Hobday², Jason Hartog², Dr Wendy Sharples¹, Dr Kathleen McInnes³

¹Bureau Of Meteorology, Melbourne, Australia, ²CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, Australia, ³CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Aspendale, Australia

Extreme ocean events, including marine heatwaves and high sea level events, have implications for many marine systems, industries, and coastal communities. Seasonal forecasting has an important role to play in both predicting and understanding these extreme ocean events and providing advance warning for risk mitigation and operational decision support.

Operational sea surface temperature and thermal stress outlooks out to 6 months into the future have been publicly provided for Australian waters by the Bureau of Meteorology since 2018. These outlooks are used by a wide range of stakeholders including marine management agencies, fisheries and Defence. Building on this service to provide greater impact and value to marine users, experimental seasonal marine heatwave forecast products are currently in development. These forecasts can provide a ‘preparation window’ for marine stakeholders to implement proactive management strategies prior to a marine heatwave. Customer engagement with fisheries through the Agricultural Innovation Australia initiative has identified marine heatwaves prediction as a priority area.

Similarly, advance warning of extreme high coastal water levels on sub seasonal to seasonal timescales can inform strategic and operational responses to reduce the impacts of these events. Through the Australian Climate Service, work is underway to develop an operational seasonal sea level service to provide coastal sea level forecasts beyond a weather forecast (1-7 days) out to several months into the future for the Australian region. Future forecast products would combine seasonal forecast information with tidal predictions and global sea level rise estimates.

We discuss how forecasts can aid decision support, as well as potential operational pathways through initiatives such as Agricultural Innovation Australia and the Australian Climate Service. These new, world-leading products will be valuable tools to both assist stakeholders in managing climate risk and vulnerability in a warming climate.

Biography:

Dr Claire Spillman is a Principal Research Scientist and leads the Seasonal and Marine Applications Team in Research at the Bureau of Meteorology, Australia. Her current research is focused on seasonal forecasting for marine applications, particularly marine heatwave prediction and coral reef, aquaculture and fisheries management.