What was it all about?

POAMA is the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology’s seasonal prediction system, and ACCESS is a new national modelling system, with applications ranging from weather forecasting to climate change projections.

This project evaluated improvements to the ACCESS model and allowed the vegetable industry to have input into its development. The overall aim was to provide improved spatial and temporal forecasting in regions of interest to vegetable growers in the next version of the modelling system, ACCESS-S1.

The work formed part of a range of projects that have been contributing to the development of the system for multi-week to seasonal climate predictions.

The project team report that ACCESS-S1 has a number of significant enhancements over POAMA, including increased spatial resolution, improved model physics and a better representation of the climate of Australia, including over the nine vegetable growing regions involved in the research.

ACCESS-S1 is significantly more accurate than POAMA for multi-week forecasts of rainfall and maximum and minimum temperatures over the regions, while for seasonal timescales the accuracy of the two systems is similar, although ACCESS-S1 outperforms POAMA for seasonal forecasts of minimum temperatures.

ACT NOW

Experimental forecast products based on ACCESS-S1 have been developed for the vegetable regions looked at in the project. The products are available to the vegetable industry via registered-user access on this Bureau of Meteorology research-based website.

Feedback on the products is encouraged, as this will help determine whether they will become fully operational Bureau products and available to all. The Bureau can also use suggestions to help tailor and guide its presentation.

In the meantime, the Bureau routinely issues operational seasonal forecasts and experimental multi-week products based on the POAMA seasonal forecast system here.