Downscaled Climate Projections for Torres Strait and Papua New Guinea at 8 km Resolution

8 km resolution rasters represent downscaled climate change scenarios for the Torres Strait and Papua New Guinea regions for 1990, 2055, and 2090. The dataset includes estimated mean surface relative humidity, wind speed, rainfall rate, and surface temperature, with relative changes calculated against the 1990 baseline. It was produced by CSIRO under the NERP TE 11.1 project using the Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM) for the A2 emissions scenario.

Use Cases

• Modeling regional climate change impacts based on downscaled temperature and rainfall projections.
• Assessing future environmental risks for coastal communities based on projected wind speed and humidity changes.
• Comparing historical (1990) and future (2055, 2090) climate scenarios for the Torres Strait region.
• Analyzing relative changes in climate variables with respect to a 1990 baseline.

Strengths

• Provides high-resolution (8 km) climate projections for specific future years (2055, 2090).
• Includes multiple key climate variables: surface temperature, rainfall rate, wind speed, and relative humidity.
• Based on simulations from six global climate models deemed to have acceptable skill for the region.
• Uses a well-tested dynamical downscaling model (CCAM) with a comprehensive set of physical parameterizations.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Simulations are for the A2 (high) emissions scenario only, limiting scenario comparison.

Provenance

Source

CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) under NERP TE 11.1, hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Collection Method

Dynamical downscaling using the Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM) at 60 km global resolution, further downscaled to 8 km for the region.

Time Range

Historical period 1980–1999 and future projections for 2046–2065 and 2080–2099, represented by snapshots for 1990, 2055, and 2090.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-16 03:41:01.944080; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Torres Strait and Papua New Guinea regions.