On the long-term context of the 1997-2009 'Big Dry' in South-Eastern Australia: Insights from a 206-year multi-proxy rainfall reconstruction

J Gergis; AJE Gallant; K Braganza; DJ Karoly; K Allen; L Cullen; R D'Arrigo; I Goodwin; P Grierson; S McGregor

Journal article

On the long-term context of the 1997-2009 'Big Dry' in South-Eastern Australia: Insights from a 206-year multi-proxy rainfall reconstruction

J Gergis, AJE Gallant, K Braganza, DJ Karoly, K Allen, L Cullen, R D'Arrigo, I Goodwin, P Grierson, S McGregor

Climatic Change | Published : 2012

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-011-0263-x

Abstract

This study presents the first multi-proxy reconstruction of rainfall variability from the mid-latitude region of south-eastern Australia (SEA). A skilful rainfall reconstruction for the 1783-1988 period was possible using twelve annually-resolved palaeoclimate records from the Australasian region. An innovative Monte Carlo calibration and verification technique is introduced to provide the robust uncertainty estimates needed for reliable climate reconstructions. Our ensemble median reconstruction captures 33% of inter-annual and 72% of decadal variations in instrumental SEA rainfall observations. We investigate the stability of regional SEA rainfall with large-scale circulation associated wi..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Joelle Gergis Author

David Karoly Author

Related Projects (2)

Reconstructing pre-20th century rainfall, temperature and pressure for south-eastern Australia using palaeoclimate, documentary and early weather station data.

South-eastern Australia is in the grip of a severe water crisis due to the worst drought in recorded history and increasing temperatures. Th..

Improving understanding of climate change and its impacts in Australia through detection and attribution of climate change

This research will quantify the contribution to Australian regional climate change due to greenhouse gases, which will assist policymakers i..

Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

JG is funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project (LP0990151); AG and DJK are supported by ARC Federation Fellowship (FF0668679). RD acknowledges support from the US National Science Foundation (OCE-04-02474) and KA is funded by an ARC Discovery project (DP0878744). Thanks to Anthony Fowler and Pavla Fenwick for New Zealand tree-ring data. We are grateful to our reviewers for very helpful comments that improved this study.