Variability of southeastern Queensland rainfall and climate indices

Abstract

AbstractThe variability of climate indices and rainfall in southeastern (SE) Queensland (Qld) is studied. Using high‐resolution gridded rainfall data for all of Australia and global sea‐surface temperatures (SSTs), the relationship between Australia‐wide rainfall (and in SE Qld in particular) and SST indices and the southern oscillation index (SOI) have been investigated. It is found that SE Qld is more subject to the breakdown of correlations between the SOI and rainfall than any other part of Australia. Model predictions suggest that this is probable in the future.Considering only time scales longer than interannual, it was found that SSTs in the central tropical Pacific Ocean (TPO; represented by the Niño‐4 index) correlated best with SE Qld rainfall. Eastern TPO (Niño‐3) SSTs and the SOI produced successively weaker correlations. The time series of the second modes of variability of SSTs over the Pacific and Indian Oceans were shown to have limited impact on SE Qld rainfall variability.The data were split into periods before and after 1946, when Australian mean rainfall changed. Whereas the SOI correlations with rainfall in SE Australia were similar in both periods, in SE Qld the correlations were very weak in the earlier period (0.06) but very strong in the later period (0.72). The Niño‐4 index correlated better than the Niño‐3 index in both periods, but both indexes showed smaller changes from the earlier to the later periods than the SOI. Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society.