Characteristics of wintertime daily precipitation over the Australian Snowy Mountains

Abstract

The relationship between orographic precipitation, low-level thermodynamic stability, and the synoptic meteorology is explored for the Snowy Mountains of southeast Australia. A 21-yr dataset (May-October, 1995-2015) of upper-air soundings from an upwind site is used to define synoptic indicators and the low-level stability. A K-means clustering algorithmwas employed to classify the dailymeteorology into four synoptic classes. The initial classification, based only on six synoptic indicators, distinctly defines both the surface precipitation and the lowlevel stability by class. Consistent with theory, the wet classes are found to have weak low-level stability, and the dry classes have strong ..