The Bureau of Meteorology says investment in early warning systems and environmental monitoring and analysis would reduce risks from climate change.

In a submission to the Productivity Commission’s draft report into climate change adaptation, the bureau says climate change studies indicate “that we can expect a higher incidence of severe weather events, particularly heavy rainfalls and very hot days”.

“This increases the odds of more serious flooding, heatwaves and bushfires.”

The bureau says insurers are increasingly starting to use its seasonal forecasts, which look ahead one to three months and potentially nine months.

“It appears as though the uptake of seasonal forecasts has been stimulated by the strong interannual climate variability we have experienced over the past decade, indicating that climate change is likely to stimulate further uptake,” it says.

The submission says areas where improvement in monitoring and data analysis could support climate change adaptation include rainfall intensity, frequency and duration as well as river height monitoring for floods.

More than 100 state agencies and councils supply the bureau with information for river height monitoring, but it says there are gaps in obtaining the data to the standards it needs to prepare a national flood-monitoring network.

It says high-performance computing can be used to improve early-warning systems, by running more frequently and at a finer scale so information can be localised.