Your climate change context reflects where you or your organisation are on your journey of understanding climate change. It is based on your previous and current work, such as climate risk assessments and climate change adaptation plans. Knowing your climate change context will help you set your project aims and identify the information and resources you need.

Climate change may multiply existing threats and increase existing vulnerabilities and risk exposure. The international leading practice climate risk framework, associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, defines climate risk as a combination of 4 components:

• Hazard: the driver of the climate-related impact, such as heatwaves, floods, temperature rise and bushfires.
• Exposure: the living and non-living factors and regions at risk of climate impacts, such as communities, assets and infrastructure, and cities.
• Vulnerability: the sensitivity of the exposed factors to climate impacts – for example, some people are more susceptible to heatwaves, such as young and older people, or those with certain health conditions.
• Response: the actions, such as adaptation, undertaken to reduce the severity of the climate risk.

This framework is an expansion of the climate risk framework used in past IPCC reports, which can also be found in the Climate Risk Ready NSW Guide.

NARCliM’s data and products help you understand how assets, communities and other factors exposed to multiple climate hazards may change over time under different emissions scenarios for different regions. You will need your own data (either collected climate data or non-climate data) to ensure that the NARCliM outputs are more relevant to your purpose. For example, you need to fully understand where you operate so you can focus on where to assess climate changes.

For government agencies in NSW, the following guidance can help you understand your context and implement climate risk assessments:

• NSW state government agencies: Climate Risk Ready NSW Guide and Climate Risk Maturity Health Check Tool. The NARCliM project is a trusted data source to inform step 2 of the risk assessment process outlined in the Climate Risk Ready NSW guide. Experienced councils may also benefit from these tools.
• NSW local governments: Guide to Climate Change Risk Assessment for NSW Local Government. In addition, our local government climate action user guide and resources supports the development of a consistent, statewide approach for local governments to achieve low-carbon/net zero emissions and climate-resilient communities in their organisation and Local Government Area (LGA).

Setting clear aims for your project will help you identify the skills and resources needed, and ensure you use climate projections appropriately. The first step is to identify what you are trying to achieve and the questions you are trying to answer. This might also include setting the scope of your analysis, such as selecting the future point in time that you want to explore, or establishing other boundaries such as the physical location. It may help to see how others have used NARCliM data through accessing our case studies. 

Consider the capabilities and capacity of your organisation. The roles and skills you need will depend on the project, but an interdisciplinary team is often needed with expertise in:

• governance
• project management
• stakeholder engagement
• data analysis or review of synthesised data and literature, or both
• climate risk assessment
• climate science
• communication
• other fields relevant to the project, such as policy, health, community services, land use planning, engineering, asset management, environment, economic development and industry knowledge.

Involving stakeholders throughout the project is vital for success. This includes stakeholders from the local or regional community and businesses, as well as internal staff.

Some climate data tools visualise the local impacts of climate change, which can support conversations to improve stakeholder understanding. For example, the regional climate change snapshots or interactive climate change projections map can help you visualise projected climate changes based on NARCliM data. Under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, information in these materials can be directly repurposed for your communications. To avoid inaccuracies, we recommend using these materials without rewording or paraphrasing.

Different sources of climate projections are available for NSW and Australia, including national-scale projections for Australia from the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. Each source uses a different method to produce the data, and may provide slightly different types of data. For example, some sources use different CMIP generations and emissions scenarios, and provide data for different time periods and at different resolutions.

When choosing which projections to use, consider which data best meet your needs and make sure you’re familiar with their limitations.

Along with the data, many resources are available that have been informed by climate projections. The choice of data, tools and resources depends on your aims and capabilities. A complex tool may provide more information, but your project may not need the extra detail. You may also need to use a mix of different data, resources and tools in your project.

For NSW government agencies, climate projections data, resources and tools are used throughout the Climate Risk Ready process, especially to help identify, analyse and evaluate climate risks.

See NARCliM generations and parameters for more detailed considerations for choosing specific NARCliM datasets.