Macquarie Region Stochastic Palaeo-Climate Data for Water Modelling

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water provides a stochastic climate dataset for the Macquarie region. It contains 10,000-year daily simulations of rainfall and potential evapotranspiration, generated using observed data from 1889–2018/2024 combined with palaeo-climatic data. The dataset is structured as ZIP files containing CSV data, metadata PDFs, and quality assurance documents.

Use Cases

• Generate long-term stochastic climate scenarios for valley-wide water modelling based on 10,000-year daily rainfall and evapotranspiration data.
• Calibrate hydrological models for the Upper Macquarie region based on the subset dataset calibrated with data up to 2024.
• Assess climate variability and drought risk for the Murray–Darling Basin using the full-valley dataset designed for integrated basin modelling.
• Validate Morton's and FAO56 evapotranspiration models using the provided climate variables (Mwet, Mlake, Mpot, FAO56).

Strengths

• Provides 10,000-year daily climate sequences, enabling analysis of extreme, low-probability events.
• Includes two geographic components (full Macquarie valley and Upper Macquarie subset) calibrated with different time ranges (1889–2018 and 1889–2024).
• Each data file is accompanied by a metadata PDF and a quality assurance PDF.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the Macquarie region.

Provenance

Source

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Collection Method

Generated by researchers at the University of Adelaide and the University of Newcastle using observed datasets combined with palaeo-climatic data.

Time Range

Stochastic simulations cover 10,000 years; calibration uses observed data from 1889–2018 (full valley) and 1889–2024 (Upper Macquarie).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-18 03:54:02.100678; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Macquarie region (full valley and Upper Macquarie subset) in Australia.