Climate change in New South Wales - NARCliM2.0

<strong>Do you want to know more about how climate change may impact New South Wales?</strong>

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water undertakes research to develop climate change information for the NSW public using climate projections from the NSW and Australian Regional Climate Modelling initiative ('NARCliM2.0'). One place to view and discover climate change information is the AdaptNSW Interactive climate change projections map (https://www.climatechange.environment.nsw.gov.au/projections-map) as maps and GIS-ready raster data. The Interactive map currently displays data for changes in mean, maximum and minimum temperature, precipitation, hot days, cold nights, and severe fire weather days.  This geospatial data available on the Interactive map are accessible below as links to the downloadable data packs. 
These data packs and the Interactive map have been designed to enhance public awareness of climate change in NSW and the ACT and provide climate change data and information for decision making to support climate risk assessment and adaptation planning. 

<strong>What is included in these data packs?</strong>

Each data pack provides users with 215 GIS-ready raster datasets in GeoTIFF format, layer files for map symbology and a read me file. 
The GeoTIFFs display data at 4 km resolution for the entire New South Wales (NSW) and ACT for seven climate variables - average (mean) minimum, and maximum temperature; rainfall (precipitation); number of hot days (35ºC or over); number of cold nights (below 2ºC); number severe fire weather days (FFDI over 50).

The set of GeoTIFFs include historical baseline and future projections under three emission scenarios, providing modelled outputs on a range of plausible climates: low emissions scenario (SSP1-2.6), medium emissions scenario (SSP2-4.5) and high emissions scenario (SSP3-7.0)

The GeoTIFFs are raster (spatially referenced gridded) data. The data at each 4 km grid cell are calculated as the average from the results of 10 NARCliM2.0 climate models. 

Temporally, the GeoTIFFs are 20-year climatologies, defined as the "historical baseline" (the 1990-2009 period represents a ‘2000’ climatology, serving as a reference period for future projections to be compared with), and "Future projections" (seven future periods or climatologies including 2020-2039, 2030-2049, 2040-2059, 2050-2069, 2060-2089, 2070-2089, and 2080-2099). This is an appropriate temporal resolution for understanding plausible climate change trends in the future.  

The set of GeoTiFFs includes ones for both annual means (calculated from 1 January to 31 December for each 20-year period) and seasonal means (calculated for each 20-year period for Summer (December, January, February), Autumn (March, April, May), Winter (Jun, July, August), Spring (September, October, November)). 

Two types of data are provided as GeoTIFFs - absolute values (the projected values for the variable for each period (i.e., degrees Celsius, number of days, mm of rainfall)) and relative change: the difference between the future climatology and the historical baseline, presented as a change from the historical baseline. Note for rainfall, the change is a percentage).

The data packs also provide, map symbology files (layer files) and a “READ ME” file in each data package for more information on the GeoTIFFs.

The source NARCliM data for the GeoTIFFs can be accessed from the Climate Data Portal https://www.climatechange.environment.nsw.gov.au/climate-data-portal.

More information about this data source data can be found at in the Climate Data Portal’s Variables dictionary https://www.climatechange.environment.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-04/Climate-data-portal-variables-dictionary.pdf.

<strong>What is NARCliM?</strong>

The New South Wales (NSW) and Australian Regional Climate Modelling ("NARCliM") is a project that was established by the NSW Government to address the need for high-resolution climate change projections for regional decision-making and impact assessments. The NSW Government has released climate projections for over a decade, with latest release (known as NARCliM2.0), being a public commitment under the Climate Change Adaptation Strategy (https://climatechange.environment.nsw.gov.au/about-adaptnsw/nsw-climate-change-adaptation-strategy) and the NSW Climate Change Fund (https://www.energy.nsw.gov.au/nsw-plans-and-progress/government-strategies-and-frameworks/taking-action-climate-change/nsw). See the resource link below to learn more about NARCliM.

<strong>What else do I need to know?</strong>

For more information, please review the linked resources below.  If you have more questions, please contact us at narclim@environment.nsw.gov.au.

Tags: CLIMATE-AND-WEATHER-Climate-change, CLIMATE-AND-WEATHER-Rainfall, CLIMATE-AND-WEATHER-Temperature, Climate Data, Climate projections, climate change impacts and risks
Organization: NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water