Five forecast tools to help you make better decisions
05 October 2023
Understanding the likelihood of an extreme weather event can assist producers to plan, prepare and respond through better decision making on-farm.
As part of the MLA-supported Forewarned is Forearmed project, the Bureau of Meteorology has launched five seasonal climate forecasting tools to provide more insight into the possibility of extreme weather events:
- Chance of extremes maps for rainfall and temperature
- Chance of 3-day totals maps
- Decile bar charts for rainfall and temperature
- Timeline graphs for rainfall and temperature
- Probability of exceedance graphs for rainfall.
Here, we look into each tool and how producers can use them to plan operations past the seven-day weather forecast.
Tactical decisions ahead of extreme weather events
Long-term or strategic decision making can be the most cost-effective way to manage extreme events. Strategies to mitigate the risk of extreme weather include planting wind breaks and constructing shade structures for heat events, destocking early ahead of drought, or fencing off flood-prone areas.
Determining the costs and benefits of these decisions requires historical climate data and climate change projections on the frequency and severity of rare events, hence the importance of accessing resources such as the five Forewarned is Forearmed forecasting tools.
The tool descriptions above were sourced from the Forewarned is Forearmed and Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s publication Southern Australian Red Meat Industry Workbook: Making better tactical decisions using the climate forecast tools. For more information on tactical responses to extreme weather events such as floods, drought or heatwaves, turn to Chapter 3 (Tactical decision making in the southern Australian red meat industry) of the full workbook.
