Mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef is driven by unusually warm ocean temperatures, but cloud cover also plays a critical role by regulating how much sunlight reaches the ocean. This study examines daily patterns of clouds and rainfall over north-east Queensland during bleaching seasons using satellite, radar, and regional weather data. Clouds and rainfall patterns differ between land, ocean and wind conditions, helping improve understanding of processes influencing reef heat stress.

Sea breezes are characterised in potential offshore wind development areas in Australia. For most areas in summer, there are more available wind resources in the afternoon on days with sea breezes (by 15–30 %), although there are also late-morning lulls due to the sea breeze opposing the existing prevailing winds. The afternoon peak in wind speeds occurs at around the same time as peak energy demand. These findings have implications for energy system planning and wind farm development.

We developed software to identify sea breezes from weather model output, using three different methods, and applied these to four models for a 6-month period over Australia. We tested each method using case studies and statistics of sea breeze occurrences, finding that a method that identifies atmospheric moisture fronts performs well. Some potential errors are demonstrated due to detection of other frontal systems, but this method could be useful for robustly analyzing sea breezes from models.

We investigate how wind speed at the height of a wind turbine changes during El Niño and La Niña years and with season and time of day in southeastern Australia. We found that El Niño and La Niña can cause average wind speed differences of around 1 m s^-1 in some regions. The highest wind speeds occur in the afternoon or evening around mountains or the coast and during the night for inland areas.  The results help show how placement of wind turbines can help balance electricity generation.