Fran Bailey (McEwen, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The terms of reference for this report required the committee to examine the efficiency, innovation, impact and benefits of long-term meteorological forecasting in Australia and to assess how innovation in overseas research could benefit Australia. This is a comprehensive report and it is my pleasure to be able tonight to speak, albeit briefly, to this report and endorse the eight strong recommendations made unanimously by the committee. It is a very comprehensive report and it is dealing with the economic, environmental and social wellbeing benefits of weather forecasting from both short-term and long-range forecasting.

In Australia it is the Bureau of Meteorology that has the responsibility for the collection of meteorological data, the forecasting of weather and the state of the atmosphere, including the issuing of warnings for severe events that could endanger life and property. It is therefore of utmost importance that Australia has the very best equipment and personnel and research available to it because, as the chair has just previously indicated, of the range of industries that are so dependent on the accuracy of weather forecasting.

Until recent times weather forecasting has used what has been known as ‘statistical’ methods. This is being able to forecast based on historical data. As the Bureau of Meteorology said to us in the hearings:

A key assumption of statistical forecasting is that past weather and climate patterns are sound indicators of what we can expect in future.

But a major change has occurred in weather forecasting, which is now called ‘dynamic weather forecasting’, and this has come about with the introduction of the supercomputer. I would just like to refer very briefly to the report where it tells us that a key assumption of the statistical forecasting is that past weather and climate patterns are sound indicators of what can be expected in the future. However climate change challenges this assumption because it suggests that in the future the conditions that affect weather and climate increasingly will exceed the bounds of past experience, hence of course the importance of the supercomputer.

I would like the House to note that in July, earlier this year, I spent some time at the World Meteorological Organisation looking at their next generation of the supercomputer, which is known as the super-supercomputer. I draw the House’s attention in particular to recommendation 4 in this report because this is a very strong recommendation to the government to make sure our meteorological organisations are sufficiently funded to enable them to have this very latest equipment. It is absolutely vital that our weather scientists, who have exceptional international reputations, be given access to the equipment and the research that they so importantly need. In 1922, Lewis Fry Richardson said:

Perhaps some day in the dim future it will be possible to advance the computations faster than the weather advances and at a cost less than the saving to mankind due to the information gained.

In 1922 Mr Richardson, who was a mathematician, physicist and meteorologist, thought that was a dream. However, in 2009 we do have supercomputer technology in Australia. But, as this report points out, we really need the government to take note of this report and adequately fund our meteorological sciences so that they too can have access to the super-supercomputer. In closing, I thank the chair and the secretariat for all of their dedicated work in producing what I think is a very fine report.

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