ON FARM NATIONAL CLIMATE MANAGEMENT5 Forecasting improved climate information MLA is investing in three major collaborative research initiatives to provide better weather and climate information to the agricultural industry and bolster extension services. Australia’s red meat and livestock of climate events. Despite this, there is industry needs the best weather and virtually no information available on the climate information possible to inform probability of extreme climate events, day-to-day decision making and future including high or low rainfall, heat, risk management. cold and frost in the weeks or seasons “Forecasting rainfall amount, timing and ahead. This is the focus of ‘Forewarned frequency, and temperature, humidity is Forearmed’. and wind direction in the days, weeks The project is supported with funding or seasons ahead is vital to decision from the Federal Department of making on-farm and through the Agriculture and Water Resources supply chain,” said Doug McNicholl, as part of its Rural R&D for Profit MLA Supply Chain Sustainability program. The new forecast tools are in Innovation Manager. development and are expected to be MLA is responding to these needs made available over the next few years. by investing in major research, The Northern Australian Climate development and extension (RD&E) Program (NACP) is a partnership initiatives: between the University of Southern • Managing Climate Variability (MCV) Queensland, the Queensland • Forewarned is Forearmed project Government and MLA to better • Northern Australian Climate Program. manage drought and climate risks in northern Australia. Still in its early “The MCV program drives RD&E stages, the NACP has already trained coordination across many of the eight Climate Mates – producer primary industry research and advisors from across the region who development corporations,” Doug said. will work with other producers to “Outputs include the CliMate app improve understanding and adoption and website and the Climate Kelpie of forecasting tools. ■ website. Both are easily accessible and are great repositories of weather managingclimate.gov.au and climate data and tools to inform sustainable.unimelb.edu.au decision making.” bom.gov.au MCV identified that the need for climatekelpie.com.au forecasting extreme events will grow longpaddock.qld.gov.au/dcap/ with increasing frequency and severity 29