2009 – Climate Change impacts on the Water Supply in Maryborough

Martina Reichstetter and Dr Mohand Amghar

The future effects of climate change on water resources in southeast Queensland and other parts of Australia will depend on trends in both climatic and non-climatic factors. Evaluating these impacts is challenging because water availability, quality and streamflow are sensitive to changes in temperature and precipitation. Other important factors include increased demand for water caused by population growth, changes in the economy, development of new technologies, changes in catchment characteristics and water management decisions.

This paper provides an overview of how climate change may affect water yields and water availability in the Tinana Creek catchment. The Tinana Creek water supply is located in the south-eastern costal area of Queensland and covers an area of 783 km2. The catchment experiences a sub-tropical climate with warm to hot summers and mild dry winters. Climate variation and change are expected to impact the upper Tinana Creek water supplies and the planning of potential future water supply options. The Maryborough City’s water supply is currently supplied solely by Teddington Weir to domestic and industrial users. In this paper, climate change impacts on the water yields were investigated by assigning climate change, derived from SimCLIM, onto the input data used in the Sacramento rainfall-runoff model and Integrated Quantity and Quality Model (IQQM). Eighteen different climate change scenarios were undertaken, using three different Global Climate Models (GCM) (CSIRO MK2, HadCM3 and CGCM2), three different emission scenarios (A1FI, B2 and A1B) at two different time steps (2030 and 2050). This paper presents results with current and future climate scenarios of water availability in the study area.

Keywords: Teddington Water supply, IQQM, water resource plan, climate change, SimCLIM, Maryborough.

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