Environment
- Publication no: AP-R358-10
- ISBN: 978-1-921709-16-6
- Published: 4 May 2010
- PDF (free) Download
Climatic conditions play a significant role in the performance of road infrastructure. Models which have been developed to describe road performance can benefit from accurate knowledge of climatic trends. Without access to complete historical data, the road infrastructure/climatic interaction cannot be fully understood. As climate information is collected at weather stations located sporadically around Australia it is often an arduous and time consuming process to match pavement sections with their equivalent climates.
This project increases the ease of access to climate data, both historical and simulated future data, by providing a combination tool and database.
Contact austroads@austroads.com.au for a copy of the Climate Tool. The Tool is a large 167MB Excel file.
- 1. INTRODUCTION
- 1.1. Evidence of Climate Change
- 1.2. Benefits of Climate Data
- 1.2.1. Example of Climate Data Benefits
- 1.3. Climate Tool Data
- 1.3.1. Climate Tool Restrictions
- 2. RANGE OF DATA
- 2.1. Thornthwaite Method 2
- 2.2. Thornthwaite Method 3
- 2.3. Mean Daily Temperature
- 2.4. Mean Minimum Daily Temperature
- 2.5. Seasonal Minimum Daily Temperature
- 2.6. Monthly Minimum Daily Temperature
- 2.7. Yearly Maximum Daily Temperature
- 2.8. Seasonal Maximum Daily Temperature
- 2.9. Monthly Maximum Daily Temperature
- 2.10. Total Yearly Rainfall (Precipitation)
- 2.11. Total Seasonal Rainfall
- 2.12. Total Monthly Rainfall
- 2.13. Moving Average
- 3. USING THE CLIMATE TOOL
- 3.1. Query Management
- 3.2. Data Input
- 3.3. Climate Type Selection
- 3.4. Time Series Selection
- 3.5. Query Selection
- 3.6. View Data
- 4. EXAMPLE RESULTS
- 4.1. Thornthwaite Index
- 4.2. Total Yearly Rainfall
- 4.3. Analytical Tool Examples
- 4.3.1. Analysis of the Averaging Effect of Rainfall on TMI
- 4.3.2. Analysis of Simulations of Climate Change
- 4.3.3. Comparative Analysis of Yearly Trends
- 4.4. Analysis of the Effects of Climate Change Scenarios
- 5. THE ACCURACY OF THE CLIMATIC TOOL
- 5.1. Example of Accuracy Limitations
- 5.2. Climatic Tool Accuracy
- 5.2.1. Comparative Analysis of Yearly Trends for WA
- 5.2.2. Comparative Analysis of Yearly Trends for Other States
- 5.2.3. Comparative Analysis of Yearly Trends for Australia Total
- 6. CONCLUSIONS
- REFERENCES