Australia's rainfall recycling and evaporative origins during average, drought and pluvial periods — Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

Australia's rainfall recycling and evaporative origins during average, drought and pluvial periods (#195)

Chiara M Holgate 1
  1. Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

Where does Australia's rainfall come from? How much of the rainfall is recycled across the landscape, and so contributes to further rainfall? Understanding the answer to these questions can reveal whether anomalous rainfall during droughts and pluvials was due to changes to: source evaporation, atmospheric circulation, land surface control on the atmosphere through feedbacks, or a combination of these. With the aid of back-tracking analysis we have established the long-term average evaporative source regions that supply Australia's rainfall, and the level of recycling that rainfall undergoes. Seasonal climatologies of rainfall origin and recycling will be presented, along with anomalies detected in sample drought and pluvial years.

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