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Relationships between climate variability, soil moisture and Australian heatwaves
Citation
Perkins, SE and Argueso, D and White, CJ, Relationships between climate variability, soil moisture and Australian heatwaves, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 120, (16) pp. 8144-8164. ISSN 2169-897X (2015) [Refereed Article]
Copyright Statement
© 2015 American Geophysical Union
Abstract
While it is established that low-frequency climate variability modes have a dominant role on
Australia’s climate, limited work to date has focused on relationships between climate
variability and Australian heatwaves. Moreover, heatwaves are a distinctive type of extreme
weather that can be classified by multiple characteristics, such as intensity, frequency,
duration and timing. This study identifies the relationships between known modes of climate
variability that influence Australian climate, and discrete seasonal characteristics of the
intensity, frequency, duration and timing of heatwaves. The large-scale seasonal modes of
the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and the Southern
Annular Mode (SAM) are investigated for extended Austral summers commencing between
the years 1911–2012. While ENSO is found to have the strongest relationship with
Australian heatwave characteristics, this study finds that ENSO’s influence differs between
heatwave frequency, duration, intensity and timing. Regions dominated by ENSO experience
more, longer lasting and hotter heatwaves combined with an earlier commencement of the
heatwave season during El Niño phases. The exception to this is southeast Australia, where
SAM is generally more dominant. In contrast, the IOD provides little indication of seasonal
heatwave characteristics due to its relative inactivity during the Austral summer months.
Lastly, we show that antecedent soil moisture has varying strengths of relationships with
Australian heatwave characteristics, exhibiting relationships with heatwave intensity and
timing over some regions where none are detected between large-scale modes. However,
while significant relationships between dry antecedent soil moisture and extreme heatwaves
do exist over Australia, these appear to be slightly weaker than similar relationships over
Europe reported in other studies.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
---|---|
Keywords: | heatwaves, climate variability, soil moisture, climate change, El Niño-Southern Oscillation, Australian climate |
Research Division: | Earth Sciences |
Research Group: | Atmospheric Sciences |
Research Field: | Climate Change Processes |
Objective Division: | Environment |
Objective Group: | Climate and Climate Change |
Objective Field: | Effects of Climate Change and Variability on Australia (excl. Social Impacts) |
UTAS Author: | White, CJ (Dr Chris White) |
ID Code: | 102083 |
Year Published: | 2015 |
Web of Science® Times Cited: | 33 |
Deposited By: | Engineering |
Deposited On: | 2015-07-28 |
Last Modified: | 2017-10-30 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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