The New South Wales (NSW) Government through the Rural Assistance Authority (RAA) is funding the Bureau of Meteorology to include additional rainfall observations and improve the analysis of the State's rainfall information. The project is called the Enhanced Rainfall Analysis, ERA. This will improve the information available to the State Government and farmers for decision making and improve drought resilience. In particular, it will strengthen the data that underpins eligibility for several drought assistance programs delivered to rural producers and businesses.

The main output from the project will be a new rainfall analysis product at monthly and daily time scales that has enhanced accuracy and utility (called the Australian Gridded Climate Data, AGCD). Planned improvements contributing to this dataset include additional data using third party and newly installed Automatic Weather Stations, better quality control, more advanced statistical spatial analysis methods, and much higher spatial resolution (approximate 1km).

Progress in the development of this new rainfall dataset is presented, including comparisons against current operational products, improved handling of the climatology, and the use of third party data. Our verification statistics show improvement compared to those estimated against current products, with a significant reduction in estimated bias.