Decadal scale relationship between indices of climate variability and Australian rainfall
Masters Thesis
Title | Decadal scale relationship between indices of climate variability and Australian rainfall |
---|---|
Type | Masters Thesis |
Authors | |
Author | Stilgoe, Bernard |
Supervisor | Ribbe, Joachim |
Butler, Harry | |
Institution of Origin | University of Southern Queensland |
Qualification Name | Master of Science (Research) |
Number of Pages | 242 |
Year | 2016 |
Abstract | Australia’s climate is characterised by high intra and inter annual; decadal and longer term variability of such elements as temperature and rainfall. Various drivers are responsible for variability at these tempos, for example: the Madden Julian Oscillation, El Niño Southern 1. A Pearson’s 'r' technique incorporating Lanczos filtering to track the correlation of 24 globally diverse, monthly climate indices with spatially resolved Australian summer rainfall (December, January and February) for the 2. Relationship was scored (ranked) in terms of four criteria: 3. Finally each index was ranked by its overall score. The highest scoring index was the BEST index a combination of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and the Niño3.4 Index. A novel aspect of this study is the use of Simple Ocean Data Analysis (SODA) datasets where necessary to overcome poor availability of ocean climate data prior to the satellite age. High correlations were from some of the oceanic warm pool (WP) indices that captured the A large variety of climate indices were also correlated against South East Queensland rainfall where an unexplained reduction in summer rainfall had been observed since 1980. The de facto El Niño index, Niño3.4 and SOI fared worse than they do for other regions of Australia. A WP index based on the Warm Water Volume East (WWV_E) was by far the highest scoring index. Derived ENSO indices also scored well. The thesis expands on the existing literature and a subsequent paper will highlight the significance of WP indices and further investigations and applications. |
Keywords | Australia; rainfall variability |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 370201. Climate change processes |
370108. Meteorology | |
Byline Affiliations | School of Agricultural, Computational and Environmental Sciences |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q4v0w/decadal-scale-relationship-between-indices-of-climate-variability-and-australian-rainfall
Download files
596
total views201
total downloads0
views this month0
downloads this month