Climate change will over time challenge many aspects of societies and a range of adaptation responses will be required to minimise damage to assets, ensure community safety, and facilitate resilience in natural systems, among other things. Many of these responses will require change to policies and plans by various spheres of government. A challenge is that in many areas effective adaptation measures will cross-jurisdictional borders, and spatial scales need to be considered. This paper explores adaptation issues for Canberra, and identifies multiple areas where responses to a changing climate will require collaboration between jurisdictions. These include the management of impacts of extreme weather events such as from bushfires or floods, natural resources vulnerable to climate such as water and biodiversity, and exposed communities, including those in regional NSW that depend on ACT services. Emerging issues from the need for cross-jurisdictional collaboration include differences in key datasets required for management, areas where enhanced policy alignment is required, and the importance of institutions to facilitate coordination. Examples of policy and institutional reforms to enable cross-jurisdictional adaptation action will be provided.

This paper discusses findings resulting from a focus group and literature review, examining how governments in Australia draw knowledge from climate adaptation research, and how these knowledges may inform policy.

Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a phenomenon where metropolitan areas show higher temperatures than the surrounding rural landscapes. In context of climate change, UHI patterns may modify impact of summer heat waves over metropolitan areas, critically testing the adaptive capacity of urban populations to respond to extreme events. However, the interactions and spatial patterns of extreme heat events with UHl of urban areas remain unknown and largely untested. In this paper, we analysed the recent heat wave, February 2017, in Australian cities and its impact on UHI. The objective of this paper is to determine interactions of UHI with heat events, to determine if there is amplification of the heat signal as well as effective mitigation strategies. We used satellite based Himawari-8 and MODIS data to look at timing of diurnal patterns, anomalies and statistical significance. The UHI intensities were extracted from LST and BT images by normalizing rural patterns. Results gave the diurnal LST / UHI behave, day and night. The urban zones were seen at 5 – 6 C and rural at 2 – 3 C higher temperature relative to normal days. We conclude that the heat waves can be responsible towards worsening the UHI effect in cities.nt.

This paper investigates the influence of half-hourly variations in weather conditions on transit ridership in sub-tropical Brisbane, Australia. By using transit smart card and weather station records, the relationship between weather and transit ridership across three different travel modes are modelled. Our results reveal that weather exerts dissimilar effects on transit ridership that vary by travel mode. Ferry ridership is found to be more sensitive to changes in weather compared to either the bus or train. Train ridership is shown to be least impacted by variations in weather conditions. The results also show that the influences of weather elements on transit ridership are not fixed over a course of a weekday; at different time periods the weather elements have distinct effects. Taken together the findings extend our understanding of the weather-transit ridership relationship with important consequences for transit agencies in their capacity to inform timetable adjustments in response to shifts in weather.