Across Australia multiple modes of climate variability, such as ENSO, Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and Southern Annual Mode (SAM), interact to modulate precipitation and temperature, affecting the likelihood of climate extremes such as bushfires, droughts, floods, and heat waves. Focusing on east Australia, this study provides a new perspective into the links between these important modes of climate variability and east Australian precipitation, by investigating the changes to moisture sources during individual and combined phases of ENSO, IOD, and SAM. The results can be used to better understand and predict the regional impact of long-term changes in these modes of climate variability, which are potentially altered under climate change. This paper presents a framework that could be used as a template for examining regional precipitation processes in and other parts of the world similarly subject to large-scale modes of climate variability. Building on the framework presented in this study, future work may consider the impact of other processes important for east Australian precipitation.
Read more: Holgate, C., Evans, J.P., Taschetto, A.S., Gupta, A.S., & Santoso, A. (2022). The impact of interacting climate modes on East Australian precipitation moisture sources. Journal of Climate, 35(10), 3147-3159. doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0750.1