We have undoubtedly entered a new era where, globally, the economic and insured losses due to Tropical Cyclones (TCs) are rising. Currently, exposure and vulnerability still dominate this trend, but changes to the TCs themselves, combined with rising sea levels are compounding the impacts.

TCs are expected to change in a number of ways, yet our confidence in these changes varies. Potential changes include increasing average peak wind speeds, increasing maximum potential intensity (MPI), increasing rain rates, a shift in the intensity distribution towards the most intense events, a poleward shift in the lifetime peak wind speed, increasing longevity, and decreasing frequency.

Our understanding of future TC activity is most advanced at global scales, with the common assumption that these changes are also valid for Australia. However, extending global average findings to the Australian region introduces substantial uncertainty. The unique geography and climate of Australia introduces regional climate processes that modify global average changes, such as dry-air intrusions off northwest Australia modifying TC size distributions. Studies that focus on Australia suggest other significant regional behavior and there remains a wealth of regional detail to be uncovered.

The primary research goal of this paper is to better understand the effects of warming on TC frequency and intensity along Australia’s Coast, particularly the South East Queensland and North East NSW region. Here we use both the NCAR CESM Decadal Prediction Large Ensemble (DPLE) and the Large Ensemble (LENS) to investigate TC changes along the SE QLD and NE NSW coastlines. A TC Risk Model is used to quantitively assess the probability of change out to 2100. We will also show select results of downscaled TC activity out to 2100.