Historical extreme rainfall events in southeastern Australia

Abstract

The cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide are home to almost half of the Australian population, and are often exposed to extreme rainfall events and high year-to-year rainfall variability. However the majority of studies into rainfall in these cities, and southeastern Australia in general, are limited to the 20th century due to data availability. In this study we use rainfall data from a range of sources to examine four rainfall indices for Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide for 1839–2017. We derive the total rainfall, number of raindays, wettest day of the month and the simple daily intensity index for each city over the past 178 years, and find relatively consistent relationships between al..