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This paper reviews tourism-relevant advances in climate science and tourism policy in the Australasia region over the past 20 years, focusing particularly on the seven years (2015–2021) since the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Within the Australasia region, Australia and New Zealand have a complicated relationship with climate change, as both countries are dependent upon stable climates for tourism while contributing to high tourism greenhouse gas emissions. Both are economically reliant on their respective tourism industries, which market environmental products to predominantly long-haul tourism markets. In this paper we critically address the climate change context in Australasia, reviewing the tourism systems, climate risks and carbon risks in the region. We critique the (dis)connection of climate change and tourism policy at the national scale in the region, and find that the extent of climate responses in relation to tourism are generally limited to descriptive (Generation 1) and normative (Generation 2) approaches. We conclude that serious deficiencies remain in the climate science – tourism policy translation required to transform the tourism systems of Australia and New Zealand in response to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing levels of photovoltaic (PV) penetration to the electricity grid brings challenges to both design and operation of the grid due to its vulnerability to climate change. A crucial aspect of PV operation is power ramps leading to variability and instability in the grid. With notable large-scale PV deployment planned, including the world's largest planned solar energy infrastructure in Powell Creek Australia, characterising future ramps is crucial for ensuring stable power generation to support large-scale economic development. Using CORDEX-Australasia projections under RCP8.5 and RCP4.5 emission scenarios, future solar ramps across Australia have been characterised up to 2100. Results predict a reduction in ramp magnitude across Australia, with changes in frequency and period length varying with the location. This work highlights the importance of considering future changes in climate when designing large-scale solar farms to ensure the incorporation of frequency control devices and storage plans for a reliable power supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global climate models (GCMs) are essential for investigating climate change, but their coarse scale limits their efficacy for climate adaptation planning at the regional scales where climate impacts manifest. Dynamical downscaling of GCM outputs better resolves regional climate and thus provides improved guidance for climate policy at regional scales. Being expensive to run, downscaling uses a subset of GCMs, necessitating careful GCM selection. This evaluation identifies a suitable subset of CMIP6 GCMs for downscaling over Australia by assessing individual GCMs against three criteria: (a) performance simulating daily climate variable distributions, climate means, extremes, and modes; (b) model independence; and (c) climate change signal diversity. Over Australia, GCMs are generally biased cold (warm) for maximum (minimum) temperature, with larger biases for minimum temperature. GCMs are generally wet biased, especially over the monsoonal north, but dry biased over eastern regions. Most GCMs show larger biases for temperature and precipitation over geographically complex, heavily populated eastern regions, relative to other regions. Evaluations identify a distinct group of 11 GCMs that perform consistently poorly across climate variables, statistics, and timescales with widespread, statistically significant biases, versus 13 GCMs that show consistent adequate‐to‐good performance with substantially reduced errors. Assessment of model independence highlights the lack of independence between several high‐performing GCMs, particularly from allied modeling groups, demonstrating the importance of careful ensemble selection when making selective samples of climate space. Once GCM climate signal diversity is considered, 6–8 mid‐to‐high‐performing, independent GCMs occupy the full range of the future climate space and, thus, are suitable for dynamical downscaling over CORDEX‐Australasia. Key Points: Per‐global climate model (GCM) performances varied markedly, though the best‐performing GCMs simulated consistently well across temperature variables and statisticsAssessment of model independence highlights the lack of independence between several high‐performing GCMsSix to eight mid‐to‐high‐performing, independent GCMs capturing a broad range of the future climate space are identified as suitable for downscaling [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new regional climate projection ensemble has been created for the Australasia region as part of the World Climate Research Programs Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX). The CORDEX-Australasia ensemble is the largest regional climate projection ensemble ever created for the region. It is a 20-member ensemble made by 6 regional climate models downscaling 11 global climate models. Overall the ensemble produces a good representation of recent climate. Consistent biases within the ensemble include an underestimation of the diurnal temperature range and an underestimation of precipitation across much of southern Australia. Under a high emissions scenario projected temperature changes by the end of the twenty-first century reach ~ 5 K in the interior of Australia with smaller increases found toward the coast. Projected precipitation changes are towards drying, particularly in the most populated areas of the southwest and southeast of the continent. The projected precipitation change is very seasonal with summer projected to see little change leaning toward an increase. These results provide a foundation enabling future studies of regional climate changes, climate change impacts, and adaptation options for Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]