Articles | Volume 28, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-1383-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-1383-2024
Research article
 | 
27 Mar 2024
Research article |  | 27 Mar 2024

Potential for historically unprecedented Australian droughts from natural variability and climate change

Georgina M. Falster, Nicky M. Wright, Nerilie J. Abram, Anna M. Ukkola, and Benjamin J. Henley

Related authors

High resolution monthly precipitation isotope estimates across Australia from machine learning
Georgina Falster, Gab Abramowitz, Sanaa Hobeichi, Cath Hughes, Pauline Treble, Nerilie J. Abram, Michael I. Bird, Alexandre Cauquoin, Bronwyn Dixon, Russell Drysdale, Chenhui Jin, Niels Munksgaard, Bernadette Proemse, Jonathan J. Tyler, Martin Werner, and Carol Tadros
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2458,https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2458, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS).
Short summary

Cited articles

Abramowitz, G., Herger, N., Gutmann, E., Hammerling, D., Knutti, R., Leduc, M., Lorenz, R., Pincus, R., and Schmidt, G. A.: ESD Reviews: Model dependence in multi-model climate ensembles: weighting, sub-selection and out-of-sample testing, Earth Syst. Dynam., 10, 91–105, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-91-2019, 2019. 
Arias, P. A., Bellouin, N., Coppola, E., Jones, R. G., Krinner, G., Marotzke, J., Naik, V., Palmer, M. D., Plattner, G.-K., Rogelj, J., Rojas, M., Sillmann, J., Storelvmo, T., Thorne, P. W., Trewin, B., Achuta Rao, K., Adhikary, B., Allan, R. P., Armour, K., Bala, G., Barimalala, R., Berger, S., Canadell, J. G., Cassou, C., Cherchi, A., Collins, W., Collins, W. D., Connors, S. L., Corti, S., Cruz, F., Dentener, F. J., Dereczynski, C., Di Luca, A., Diongue Niang, A., Doblas-Reyes, F. J., Dosio, A., Douville, H., Engelbrecht, F., Eyring, V., Fischer, E., Forster, P., Fox-Kemper, B., Fuglestvedt, J. S., Fyfe, J. C., Gillett, N. P., Goldfarb, L., Gorodetskaya, I., Gutierrez, J. M., Hamdi, R., Hawkins, E., Hewitt, H. T., Hope, P., Islam, A. S., Jones, C., Kaufman, D. S., Kopp, R. E., Kosaka, Y., Kossin, J., Krakovska, S., Lee, J.-Y., Li, J., Mauritsen, T., Maycock, T. K., Meinshausen, M., Min, S.-K., Monteiro, P. M. S., Ngo-Duc, T., Otto, F., Pinto, I., Pirani, A., Raghavan, K., Ranasinghe, R., Ruane, A. C., Ruiz, L., Sallée, J.-B., Samset, B. H., Sathyendranath, S., Seneviratne, S. I., Sörensson, A. A., Szopa, S., Takayabu, I., Tréguier, A.-M., van den Hurk, B., Vautard, R., von Schuckmann, K., Zaehle, S., Zhang, X., and Zickfeld, K.: Technical Summary, in: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by: Masson-Delmotte, V., Zhai, P., Pirani, A., Connors, S. L., Péan, C., Berger, S., Caud, N., Chen, Y., Goldfarb, L., Gomis, M. I., Huang, M., Leitzell, K., Lonnoy, E., Matthews, J. B. R., Maycock, T. K., Waterfield, T., Yelekçi, O., Yu, R., and Zhou, B., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, 33–144., https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896.002, 2021. 
Askarimarnani, S. S., Kiem, A. S., and Twomey, C. R.: Comparing the performance of drought indicators in Australia from 1900 to 2018, Int. J. Climatol., 41, E912–E934, https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.6737, 2021. 
Ault, T. R., Cole, J. E., Overpeck, J. T., Pederson, G. T., and Meko, D. M.: Assessing the Risk of Persistent Drought Using Climate Model Simulations and Paleoclimate Data, J. Climate, 27, 7529–7549, 2014. 
Bao, Q., Lin, P., Zhou, T., Liu, Y., Yu, Y., Wu, G., He, B., He, J., Li, L., Li, J., Li, Y., Liu, H., Qiao, F., Song, Z., Wang, B., Wang, J., Wang, P., Wang, X., Wang, Z., Wu, B., Wu, T., Xu, Y., Yu, H., Zhao, W., Zheng, W., and Zhou, L.: The Flexible Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land system model, Spectral Version 2: FGOALS-s2, Adv. Atmos. Sci., 30, 561–576, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-012-2113-9, 2013. 
Download
Short summary
Multi-year droughts have severe environmental and economic impacts, but the instrumental record is too short to characterise multi-year drought variability. We assessed the nature of Australian multi-year droughts using simulations of the past millennium from 11 climate models. We show that multi-decadal megadroughts are a natural feature of the Australian hydroclimate. Human-caused climate change is also driving a tendency towards longer droughts in eastern and southwestern Australia.
Share