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The role of climate variability in Australian drought

Nature Climate Change volume 10, pages 177–179 (2020)Cite this article

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Much of Australia has been in severe drought since at least 2017. Here we link Australian droughts to the absence of Pacific and Indian Ocean mode states that act as key drivers of drought-breaking rains. Predicting the impact of climate change on drought requires accurate modelling of these modes of variability.

Australia has an exceptionally variable climate1, with periods of drought punctuated by heavy rainfall events that can cause widespread flooding. This prevalence of floods and droughts is likely to have been typical of Australia’s long-term climate2 and is relatively common in instrumental observations over the past century or so. Droughts ranging from a year or two to more than a decade in length (such as the Millennium Drought of 1997–2009) have tended to be broken by widespread heavy rains (such as in 2010–2012, when rain brought devastating floods to Queensland) rather than simply a return to average rainfall conditions. Recently, there has been considerable discussion around the causes of the ongoing drought in southeastern Australia, including the possible influence of human-induced climate change. Here we contend that the primary reason for the long-lasting dry conditions is a recent lack of La Niña and negative Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) events in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, respectively.

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Fig. 1: The recent drought in context and the drivers of seasonal rainfall variability in the Murray–Darling Basin of Australia.
Fig. 2: A lack of recent La Niña or negative IOD conditions is contributing to the ongoing drought in the Murray–Darling Basin.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Bureau of Meteorology, the Bureau of Rural Sciences and CSIRO for providing the Australian Water Availability Project data. Several authors received funding through the Australian Research Council: A.D.K. (DE180100638), and A.J.P. and A.M.U. (CE170100023). B.J.H. received funding from an Australian Research Council Linkage Project (LP150100062), which was co-funded by Melbourne Water and the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and supported by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

    Andrew D. King, Benjamin J. Henley & Josephine R. Brown

  2. ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, University of New South Wales, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia

    Andrew D. King, Andy J. Pitman, Benjamin J. Henley, Anna M. Ukkola & Josephine R. Brown

  3. Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia

    Andy J. Pitman

  4. School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Benjamin J. Henley

  5. Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Anna M. Ukkola

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  1. Andrew D. King
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  4. Anna M. Ukkola
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Contributions

A.D.K. conceived the study and performed the analysis. All authors contributed to the methodological design and the writing of the paper.

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Correspondence to Andrew D. King.

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King, A.D., Pitman, A.J., Henley, B.J. et al. The role of climate variability in Australian drought. Nat. Clim. Chang. 10, 177–179 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0718-z

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