REVIEW OF THE BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY'S CAPACITY
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REVIEW OF THE BUREAU OF
METEOROLOGY’S CAPACITY
September 2011
Contact: Andre Kaspura
Policy Analyst, International & National Policy, Engineers Australia
11 National Circuit Barton ACT 2600
Tel: 02 6270 6581 Fax: 02 6273 4200
Email: akaspura@engineersaustralia.org.au
www.engineersaustralia.org.auReview of the Bureau of Meteorology’s Capacity 1. Introduction Engineers Australia is the peak body for engineering practitioners in Australia, representing all disciplines and branches of engineering. Membership is now approximately 95,000 Australia wide and Engineers Australia is the largest and most diverse professional engineering association in Australia. All Engineers Australia members are bound by a common commitment to promote engineering and to facilitate its practice for the common good. Engineers Australia is organized on both geographic and professional lines. The professional dimension of Engineers Australia revolves around Colleges and National Committees that define the specialist areas within which engineering is practiced. The comments made in this submission reflect the views of the National Committee on Coastal and Ocean Engineering (NCCOE). Coastal and ocean engineering is a specialised branch of civil engineering that deals with the investigation, design, construction and maintenance of coastal and ocean related projects or facilities and the provision of technical advice for planning and management of natural processes in the near-shore and ocean zones. The coastal and ocean engineer must ensure that facilities in these regions assimilate to the influence of prevailing wind, waves, tides, currents and sediment movements, optimise the consequent adverse and beneficial environmental effects and minimise risks to life and property. The comments also reflect other engineering specialisations that are involved in aspects of flood mitigation and extreme rainfall and runoff. Dealing with the impacts of weather extremes is not just a matter of ensuring better and more accurate weather forecasting. It also involves how the impacts of anticipated extreme weather events are managed both in the time leading up to the event as well as during the event itself. In respect to coastal storms and storm surges, managing impacts may involve understanding how the surface and underwater topography of coastal areas determine influence where flood waters will go and what they may do. In the case of areas subject to the risk of flooding, it is vital that how projected infrequent but more extreme rainfall events will manifest as runoff. Here the issue is as much about capturing runoff for water storages as it is about flooding and the intensity of flood flows. Anticipating such impacts is essential in order to plan and construct mitigating structures and facilities. Engineers Australia’s main point is responding to extreme weather events and natural disasters is closely related to climate change adaptation. Climate change adaptation involves on-going assessment of how projections of future extreme weather events change the way human settlements are planned designed and managed. Although not all natural disasters can be characterised as the result of climate change, the systemic and planning issues involved are very similar as is the objective to minimise the adverse impacts on people and property. The stakeholder consultation mechanism proposed for this review seeks information from individual users of Bureau services. This approach is inappropriate for Engineers Australia which represents a wide range of forecast users who are concerned not just with extreme weather events and natural disasters as they occur, but with ensuring that over time the infrastructure and facilities used by people can deal with the consequences of these events so as to minimise them because they were designed to do so. Bureau of Meteorology services are critical to providing the on-going planning, analytical and design work necessary to achieve this. ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA September 2011 Page 1
Review of the Bureau of Meteorology’s Capacity
2. Specific Comments
a) How important are Bureau services to engineers?
Engineers involved in climate change mitigation and minimising the consequences of natural
disasters have an on-going requirement for long term measurements of winds, waves, currents
and tides. This information is used to construct, calibrate and verify complex ocean, estuary and
beach models to plan and design infrastructure and other facilities. Issues as diverse as assessing
storm surge and tsunami risks, designing offshore structures, breakwaters, port optimisation,
assessing the fate of dredged materials, enhancing water quality in harbours and marinas, beach
stability and amenity, and climate change impacts are the subject of modelling. The BOM has a
critical role in providing high quality and regular statistical data to enable this work to proceed so
that future impacts of extreme events can be anticipated and minimised.
b) Does the BOM currently meet the needs of engineers?
Ocean waves, both locally generated and those from remote storms are primary inputs to most
coastal engineering investigations and designs. Simulated data are not a substitute for historical
data providing a time history of wave parameters. At present wave data provision is fragmented
between the BOM, State agencies and private sector agencies. There are serious concerns about
the security of on-going resourcing for these fragmented arrangements, especially services
contracted to the private sector. Another concern is the geographic spread of wave recordings.
Large areas of the coast and adjacent oceans have no continuous records of wave data with
intermittent and unreliable observations in many cases from passing ships. Engineers Australia
believes that more needs to be done along the lines of the UK and the US networks of ocean wave
recording buoys that underpin the same requirements as in Australia, especially to measure rather
than hindcast wave conditions in line with the priorities of the Commonwealth’s climate change
adaptation framework. Although the BOM is gradually accruing simulated wave data from its ocean
modelling systems, this data is not yet sufficiently reliable for engineering requirements.
The impact of wind on water is critical to understanding extreme events and present data are
significantly affected by the proximity of coastal wind recording stations to headlands or cliffs. This
is not only an issue for coastal engineers but is likely to adversely impacting on the BoM’s own
atmospheric models. The preferred situation is to record the wind at a site removed from the land
so that the true over-water wind is obtained. This may involve the use of offshore structures or
buoys or gradually relocating the affected wind recording stations.
Tides and sea level in Australian are recorded in ports and harbours by the local port authority or
State government agencies. For coastal settlements where there is no port, there are no long term
records of tides and sea levels. This is a serious concern for coastal engineers as extreme water-
levels are fundamental inputs to coastal engineering analyses and designs. In many cases
extensive lengths of coast line have no records increasing their vulnerability as the likelihood of
extreme weather events increases.
ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA September 2011 Page 2Review of the Bureau of Meteorology’s Capacity
The historical tropical cyclone database has been critical to all major engineering project designs
(ports, harbours, breakwaters, offshore developments, undersea pipelines) across northern
Australia. Engineers Australia believes that this example highlights the importance of BOM data
sets and the importance of procedures to ensure their quality and reliability.
Engineers Australia is presently working on a major revision of its long standing publication
“Rainfall and Runoff” with a particular emphasis on improving the methodologies for estimating the
runoffs associated with extreme rainfall events. This project is being funded by the Department of
Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Extreme rainfall events pose serious problems for
managing water supplies, for the construction of buildings and structures that may be impacted by
extreme rainfall and for existing settlements that may be impacted by large runoff volumes
associated with extreme rainfall. Rainfall and Runoff is intended for use by engineers directly
involved in dealing with extreme events and BOM involvement to provide current data is vital.
Water data is dependent upon the placement, location and continuity of river water gauges and
Engineers Australia believes that present arrangements are not consistent with the objective of
realising consistent and stable data over time. In particular, Engineers Australia questions funding
arrangements where following initial placement of water gauges by the Commonwealth, States or
Territories are expected to cover on-going funding. When resourcing becomes an issue for
State/Territory budgets, there is a serious risk of funding being withdrawn. A case in point is the
closing of the McKinley River gauges in the NT; these gauges are critical sources of water data
and the present situation is a serious blow to building necessary runoff estimates.
c) Additional needs that the BOM should fulfil
Engineers Australia offers the following suggestions for the development of BOM services:
• Deployment of an off-shore network of buoys to measure waves, wind, atmospheric
pressure, water temperature and current sea levels. Engineers Australia can provide
specialist advice on this suggestion as and when required.
• Development of data sets similar to the tropical cyclone data set for severe Southern
Ocean lows, frontal storm systems and east coast lows.
• Recognition by the BOM that forecasting and engineering ocean modelling are both
required when dealing with extreme weather events. Engineers Australia believes that
engineers have much to offer in this area and believes that significantly improved
cooperation could rapidly advance progress in this area.
• Aerial reconnaissance of cyclones using civil and military aircraft to develop data sets on
the structural characteristics of cyclones such as the radius of maximum winds. This
information would improve forecasts and would improve modelling of ocean waves and
storm surges where surface wind driven fetch is the principal driver.
c) Final comment
Engineers Australia believes that engineering applications that depend on BOM data are
sufficiently important to warrant significantly improved communications between the BOM and the
engineering profession. At present there are no formal lines of communication and this has led to
deterioration in the quality of some BoM services, data custodian arrangements, including
ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA September 2011 Page 3Review of the Bureau of Meteorology’s Capacity changing data collection standards that do not acknowledge engineering needs and failure to include the engineering viewpoint in a long list of significant National developments. The latter issue is particularly important in view of the BOM’s dependence on staff trained in the sciences rather than in engineering. ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA September 2011 Page 4
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