Drought variability in the eastern Australia and New Zealand summer drought atlas (ANZDA, CE 1500-2012) modulated by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation

JG Palmer; ER Cook; CSM Turney; K Allen; P Fenwick; BI Cook; A O'Donnell; J Lough; P Grierson; P Baker

Journal article

Drought variability in the eastern Australia and New Zealand summer drought atlas (ANZDA, CE 1500-2012) modulated by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation

JG Palmer, ER Cook, CSM Turney, K Allen, P Fenwick, BI Cook, A O'Donnell, J Lough, P Grierson, P Baker

Environmental Research Letters | Published : 2015

DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/10/12/124002

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Abstract

Agricultural production across eastern Australia and New Zealand is highly vulnerable to drought, but there is a dearth of observational drought information prior to CE 1850. Using a comprehensive network of 176 drought-sensitive tree-ring chronologies and one coral series, we report the first Southern Hemisphere gridded drought atlas extending back to CE 1500. The austral summer (December-February) Palmer drought sensitivity index reconstruction accurately reproduces historically documented drought events associated with the first European settlement of Australia in CE 1788, and the leading principal component explains over 50% of the underlying variance. This leading mode of variability is..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Patrick Baker Author

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

Support was provided by the Australian Research Council through grants: FL100100195, LP120100310 and DP130104156 for CSMT and DP0878744, DP120104320, LP120200811, FT120100715 for PJB, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Contribution No. 7948.