CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology are casting a weather eye over Northern Territory producers.
Next week, a Climate in the Top End of workshops will be run, to hear what climate information producers want, and to discuss how to best make that information available.
The workshops will be convened by Jaci Brown, a senior research scientist with the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, which is a partnership between CSIRO and the BoM.
“We want to know the climate stress points for producers, and the information they need to help their decision making,” she said.
“We’ll have a conversation about how that information can be delivered so ultimately, we can build tools that are as useful as possible.”
Ms Brown said one specific example of the sort of decision making tools which may be valuable is the Yield Profit app, which integrates inputs of soil moisture and climate forecasts, for a particular location and calculates potential yield based on the rate of nitrogen application.
“We need information from all industries. We’re going to write proposals for future development work, so we need to know what people want now,” she said.
To date, the Northern Territory climate has received less study than southern regions. Ms Brown said there is still much to learn about the unique combination of climate drivers at play, comprising the Indian Ocean, El Nino, the Monsoon and the Madden Julian Oscillation – which causes wet and dry phases every 30 to 60 days across the Territory.
“This makes it possible to predict with some accuracy, two to three weeks in advance, when there are going to be periods of dry weather and therefore good times to muster, move trucks or make deliveries,” Ms Brown said.
A range of other production issues should be considered, Ms Brown said, including potential for pasture growth, fire risk, plating windows, fertiliser management, pest risks, overnight minimum temperatures in the dry season, start date for the wet season, dry breaks in the monsoon, heat stress threshold for cattle and degree days for mangoes (which is the cumulative impact on growth from a run of hot days).
The Managing Climate Variability research initiative is funded by Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, Meat and Livestock Australia, Grains Research Development Corporation, Sugar Research Australia and Cotton Research and Development Corporation.
Top End Climate Workshops:
- Darwin April 6, Berrimah Farm, 9am-2pm
- Katherine April 7 April, Paterson Room, Katherine Research Station
- Douglas-Daly April 8, Douglas Daly Research Station