In September–November 2022, south-eastern Australia (SEA) experienced its wettest spring in the 126-year record, causing widespread and long-lasting flooding in the region. During this season, large-scale oceanic and atmospheric circulation conditions that generally drive SEA rainfall variations in spring were conducive to higher-than-normal rainfall over SEA: moderate La Niña and negative phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD...

Cool season rainfall has declined in recent decades in many areas of the southern hemisphere subtropics and midlatitudes including parts of southern Australia. This has been partially linked to increases in sea level pressure and a decrease in extratropical fronts and lows. We use the ERA5 and JRA-3Q reanalyses to assess whether the trends near Australia between 1959 and 2022 can be characterised as a poleward shift in the lat...

We examine the climatology, variability and change in the global mean meridional circulation (MMC) as measured in a dry isentropic coordinate system from 1979–2017 using the ERA-Interim reanalysis. The methodology presents a zonal-mean view of the MMC as a single thermally direct circulation cell in each hemisphere. The circulation is decomposed into 'steady' and 'transient' components which allows us to identify and quantify...

Most of the rainfall in southern Australia is associated with cyclones, cold fronts, and thunderstorms, and cases when these weather systems co-occur are particularly likely to cause extreme rainfall. Rainfall declines in some parts of southern Australia during the cool half of the year in recent decades have previously been attributed to decreases in the rainfall from fronts and/or cyclones, while thunderstorm-related rainfal...

A systematic analysis of the main weather types influencing southern Australian rainfall is presented for the period 1979–2015. This incorporates two multi-method datasets of cold fronts and low pressure systems, which indicate the more robust fronts and lows as distinguished from the weaker and less impactful events that are often indicated only by a single method. The front and low pressure system datasets are then combined...

Significant rainfall declines have been observed across much of southern Australia over the last 50 years. In particular, strong declines occurred in the southwest of Western Australia (SWWA) from the late 1960s with further declines in the late 1990s, and in the southwest of eastern Australia (SWEA) from the mid‐1990s. As a result, most communities in these regions are facing water shortages. Meteorologically, the regions sha...

The quality and availability of climate data suitable for palaeoclimatic calibration and verification for the Australian region are discussed and documented. Details of the various datasets, including problems with the data, are presented. High‐quality datasets, where such problems are reduced or even eliminated, are discussed. Many climate datasets are now analysed onto grids, facilitating the preparation of regional‐average...