Strengthening Severe Weather Prediction Using the Advanced Victorian Regional GPS Network - a Recent NDRGS Project

The Natural Disaster Resilience Grants Scheme (NDRGS) is a grant program funded by the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department under the Australian National Partnership Agreement on Natural Disaster Resilience signed by Prime Minister and state Premi er of Victoria. Under the Agreement, Victoria devel ops an Implementation Plan, for approval by the Australian Commonwealth Minister for Justice, to receive cont inued funding for the NDRGS. This contribution introduces the Victorian NDRGS project ‐ “Strengthening Severe Weather Prediction Using the Advanced Victorian Regional Global Navigation Satellite Systems” awarded to a consortium led by RMIT University in 2013. This project aims to develop a smart GPS-based water vapour estimation system for disaster management users to reduce the risks and impact of natural weather disaster events. The regional preci pitable water vapour measurements obtained predominantly from this new system using measurements from regional ground-based GNSS continuously operating reference stations (CORS) networks in Australia ‐will be assimilated into the Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator (ACCESS) model. In this paper, the main objectives, anticipated out comes and research roadmap for this project are int roduced. The key issues and challenges confronting innovativ e applications of GNSS for severe weather event pre diction in Australia are emphasised. The key results achiev ed so far related to atmospheric remote sensing and atmospheric modelling etc. are briefly reported.

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