Links between East Coast Lows and the spatial and temporal variability of rainfall along the eastern seaboard of Australia

Kiem, Anthony S.; Twomey, Callum; Lockart, Natalie; Willgoose, Garry; Kuczera, George; Chowdhury, Afm Kamal; Manage, Nadeeka Parana; Zhang, Lanying

doi:10.22499/3.6602.006

Cited by 11 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The low interannual variability reflects much larger variations in the prevailing types of cyclones in each year, with only weak correlations between the overall frequency of surface vs upper cyclones (r ¼ 0.28) and generally weak correlations between the five subcategories, including between strong and weak surface cyclones (r ¼ 0.05) or between strong and weak upper cyclones (r ¼ 0.26). This has also been identified using other methods of subcategorising ECLs, with seasons that have a high frequency of cyclones typically dominated by cyclones with a similar synoptic signature (Browning and Goodwin 2016;Kiem et al 2016). The interannual variability of deep cyclones is particularly large, between 4 days in 1994 and 30 days in 1990.…”

Section: Trends and Variability Of Cyclonesmentioning

confidence: 73%

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Intense east coast lows and associated rainfall in eastern Australia

Pepler

Dowdy

2021

J. South. Hemisph. Earth Syst. Sci.

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East coast lows (ECLs) are low pressure systems that occur near the east coast of Australia. But not all lows cause the same level of impact, and a small proportion of ECLs are responsible for more than half of all days with widespread rainfall above 50mm in this region. In this study, we combine analyses of cyclones at both the surface and 500hPa levels to assess the locations of cyclones responsible for widespread heavy rainfall on the east coast. We found that the majority of days with widespread totals above 100mm on the east coast occur when a low at 500hPa over inland southeast Australia coincides with a surface low located more directly over the east coast. Such events occur on about 15 days per year but are responsible for more than 50% of days with widespread heavy rainfall on the eastern seaboard of Australia. We also found that extreme rainfall was most likely when both the surface and upper cyclones were very strong, when measured using the maximum Laplacian of pressure/height. The seasonal frequency of cyclones at the surface and 500hPa were found to be only weakly correlated with each other and often had opposing relationships (albeit weak in magnitude) with both global climate drivers and indices of local circulation variability. Trends in cyclone frequency were weak over the period 1979–2019, but there was a small decline in the frequency of deep cyclone days, which was statistically significant in some parts of the southeast. Understanding which ECLs are associated with heavy rainfall will help us to better identify how future climate change will influence ECL impacts.

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Section: Trends and Variability Of Cyclonesmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…For the purposes of this analysis, we focused on rainfall along the highly populated coast east of the Great Dividing Range, known as the eastern seaboard (ESB). This was defined similarly to previous studies (Timbal 2010;Kiem et al 2016;Pepler et al 2016b) and is indicated with a polygon throughout the paper (e.g. Fig.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intense east coast lows and associated rainfall in eastern Australia

Pepler

Dowdy

2021

J. South. Hemisph. Earth Syst. Sci.

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“…Work to address this need is underway at BoM (e.g. the MATCHES ECL computer database) and also as part of ESCCI (see for example Kiem et al 2016).…”

Section: A) B)mentioning

confidence: 99%

East Coast Lows and the Pasha Bulker storm - lessons learned nine years on

Verdon‐Kidd¹,

Kiem²,

Willgoose³

2016

JSHESS

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East Coast Lows (ECLs) are intense low pressure systems that form several times a year off the east coast of Australia. When these systems occur close to land they can cause major damage to infrastructure and communities due to gale force winds, intense rainfall, storm surge and coastal erosion. In June 2007, Newcastle and Central Coast regions of New South Wales (NSW) experienced severe weather and subsequent flash flooding. The ‘Pasha Bulker’ storm, as it has become known, was one of the most significant meteorological events in Australia’s history, with large economic losses and social disruption due to the loss of critical infrastructure. This paper provides background information on the meteorology of the event, the impact of the Pasha Bulker storm and a discussion of the lessons learned from the event and subsequent adaptation strategies employed. The paper also provides important reflections, at both regional and national level, on the Pasha Bulker storm and other similar storm events. Lessons for all levels of government and community groups are discussed, including preparedness before the event, actions during the event, and recovery processes post-event. From this, recommendations and conclusions are made on actions and strategies to increase adaptive capacity and resilience to extreme weather events like ECLs.

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“…This study will not explicitly look at ECL impacts on water security but we reference ECL dynamics as motivation for this study. Kiem et al (2016) describes these dynamics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1. Investigate ECL formation, impacts, historical variability and future projections (see Kiem et al 2016). 2.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Case study on the use of dynamically downscaled climate model data for assessing water security in the Lower Hunter region of the eastern seaboard of Australia

Lockart¹,

Willgoose²,

Kuczera³

et al. 2016

JSHESS

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A key aim of the Eastern Seaboard Climate Change Initiative (ESCCI) is under-standing the effect of climate change on the eastern seaboard of Australia, and the implications for climate change adaptation in this area. The New South Wales (NSW) / Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Regional Climate Modelling project (NARCliM) has produced three dynamically downscaled reanalysis climate datasets along with 12 downscaled general circulation model (GCM) projections of current (1990–2009) and future climate. It is expected that the NARCliM dataset will be used for many climate change impact studies including water security assessment. Therefore, in this study we perform a case study investigation into the usefulness and limitations of using NARCliM data for water security assessment, using the Lower Hunter urban water supply system managed by Hunter Water Corporation. We compare streamflow and reservoir levels simulated using NARCliM rainfall and a gridded historical rainfall dataset (AWAP) and focus our analysis on the differences in the simulated streamflow and reservoir levels. We show that when raw (i.e. not bias-corrected) NARCliM rainfall and potential evapotranspiration (PET) data is used to simulate streamflow and reservoir storage levels, some of the NARCliM datasets produce unrealistic results when compared with the simulations using AWAP; for example, some NARCliM datasets simulate reservoirs at or near empty while the AWAP reservoir simulations rarely drop below 60%. The bias-corrected NARCliM rainfall (corrected to AWAP) produces estimates of streamflow and reservoir levels that have a closer, but still inconsistent, match with the streamflow and reservoir levels simulated using AWAP directly. The inconsistency between the simulations using bias-corrected rainfall and historical AWAP rainfall is potentially because while bias-correction reduces systematic deviations it does not fix temporal rainfall sequencing issues. Additionally, the NARCliM PET is not bias-corrected and using bias-corrected rainfall with uncorrected PET in hydrological models results in physical inconsistencies in the rainfall-PET relationship and simulated streamflow. We demonstrate that rainfall plays a large role in the streamflow simulations, while PET seems to play a large role in the reasonableness of the simulated reservoir dynamics by determining the evaporation losses from the reservoirs. The downscaled GCM datasets that simulate the greatest average PET for 1990–2009 show reservoirs often (unrealistically) near empty. This study highlights the need to assess the validity of all climate data for the applications required, with a focus on long-term statistics for reservoir modelling and ensuring realism and coherence across all projected variables.

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Links between East Coast Lows and the spatial and temporal variability of rainfall along the eastern seaboard of Australia

Cited by 11 publications

References 19 publications

Intense east coast lows and associated rainfall in eastern Australia

Intense east coast lows and associated rainfall in eastern Australia

East Coast Lows and the Pasha Bulker storm - lessons learned nine years on

Case study on the use of dynamically downscaled climate model data for assessing water security in the Lower Hunter region of the eastern seaboard of Australia

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