Extended Abstract

Deltares’ Flood Early Warning System (FEWS) and WIRADA’s Short-term WaterInformation Forecasting Tools (SWIFT, Pagano et al., 2010). FEWS is a completeforecast production system and may ease some of the operational challenges ofingesting, preparing and using NWP output. SWIFT is a semi-distributed rainfallrunoffand river-routing modelling application that can be used by FEWS. Thecombined system is currently being run in an experimental pilot on the Ovenscatchment in Victoria. The rainfall-runoff models are being forced by observedrainfall data and raw Australian NWP output (described in the following section).3. Australian weather guidanceKuzmin et al. (2007) provide a more detailed inventory of NWP products available forhydrological forecasting over Australia. The Bureau of Meteorology recentlyimplemented the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator(ACCESS) model for its weather forecasting. It is based on the UnifiedModel/Variational Assimilation (UM/VAR) system developed by the UK Met Office,and has been tested by research staff in the Centre for Australian Weather andClimate Research (CAWCR). The system recently underwent operational trials andconfiguration in the National Meteorological & Oceanographic Centre (NMOC).Parallel tests showed that ACCESS outperformed, by a significant margin, theprevious generation of Australian NWP models.NWP System Domain Type Resolution Duration Runs (UTC)(hours)ACCESS-G Global A+F* N144 (80 km) +240 00,12ACCESS-R Regional A+F 0.375˚ (37.5 km) +72 00,12ACCESS-T Tropical A+F 0.375˚ (37.5 km) +72 00,12ACCESS-A Australia A+F 0.11˚ (12 km) +48 00,06,12,18Brisbane Forc 0.05˚ (5 km)Perth Forc 0.05˚ (5 km)Adelaide Forc 0.05˚ (5 km)ACCESS-C VICTAS Forc 0.05˚ (5 km) +36 00,12Sydney Forc 0.05˚ (5 km)ACCESS-TC Tropical A+F 0.11˚ (12 km) +72 00,12cycloneTable 1. Resolutions/domains of Australian NWP models. Type “A+F” indicatesassimilation and forecasting (“Forc”). Adapted from NMOC (2010).The ACCESS-Australia model (ACCESS-A) is run continent-wide at 12 km resolutionwhile the City model (ACCESS-C) is run at 5 km over a limited domain (Table 1).WIRADA researchers will produce forecasts at a finer spatial scale (2-5 km) forselected study catchments to test the potential benefits of higher resolution runs.Until recently, the Bureau used its now-defunct NWP models to generate 85-kmresolution ensemble rainfall forecasts. These results were combined with modeloutputs from six other operational weather forecasting centers to form a 100 km“Poor Man’s Ensemble” with leadtimes up to 7 days (Ebert, 2001). A similar multimodelconsensus product is going to serve as the base layer for the GraphicalForecast Editor (GFE, a full graphical forecast that includes adjustments by human-163-