Understanding the surface hydrology of the Lake Eyre Basin: Part 1—Rainfall

Tracking the <sup>26</sup>Al/<sup>10</sup>Be source-area signal in sediment-routing systems of arid central Australia

“…Significant flow in the western tributaries is generated mainly by summer rainfall today (Kotwicki, 1986;Costelloe, 2011). Finke River flows have not reached Lake Eyre in historical times (McMahon et al, 2008), but large floods along the Neales have done so repeatedly in more recent years 30 (Kotwicki, 1986;Kotwicki and Isdale, 1991). Periodic high-magnitude flooding in Eyre Basin rivers triggered phases of deposition and incision recorded in fluvial and lacustrine sediments over >300 k.y.…”

Sub-daily rainfall events in an arid environment with marked climate variability: Variation among wet and dry years at Fowlers Gap, New South Wales, Australia

“…Though annual rainfall in drylands commonly exhibits large coefficients of variability, the ENSO regime and the influence of other teleconnections (Risbey et al, 2009) makes this variability unusually large for the study region, and the range of annual rainfalls is very wide. McMahon et al (2008) have demonstrated statistically higher variability of rainfall and runoff for the Australian drylands than for a set of 'world' dryland sites. In years of above average rainfall, more radiant energy is partitioned into latent heat over moist soil or vegetation than occurs in drought years, reducing surface heating.…”

“…Owing to the multiple teleconnections affecting Australian rainfall, the SOI is used here primarily as a convenient index that scales one of the dominant influences on rainfall (McMahon et al, 2008), though it is accepted as only partially characterising a complex suite of climate influences (Suppiah, 2004). The variation of annual rainfall with SOI in eastern Australia is among the highest in the world, as are the coefficients of variation (C v ) of the annual rainfall (McMahon et al, 2008). Monthly rainfalls at Fowlers Gap are positively related to monthly SOI, though the correlation coefficient is only about 0.3 (author's data).…”

“…This paper seeks to contribute to knowledge of dryland rainfall by examining the rainfall record from Fowlers Gap, in arid western New South Wales, Australia. This area is strongly affected by mechanisms including the El Niño -Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) (Hendon et al, 2007;McMahon et al, 2008;Risbey et al, 2009;Timbal and Hendon, 2011), and experiences marked variability in annual rainfall amounts. It therefore provides a location where the effects of prominent climate variability on rainfall event properties can be explored.…”

A Comparative Study of GRACE with Continental Evapotranspiration Estimates in Australian Semi-Arid and Arid Basins: Sensitivity to Climate Variability and Extremes

“…Rainfall within the basin varies widely and is usually unable to meet the atmospheric demand. The annual rainfall over the arid region of the LEB barely reaches 200 mm/year while the north-east edge receives rainfall of up to 700 mm/year under the influence of infrequent tropical storms [40]. The annual potential evaporation (PET) averaged from 1961 to 1990 is of 1453 mm/year (sourced from Australian Bureau of Meteorology data).…”