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The contribution of tropical cyclones to rainfall in northwest Australia
Author(s) -
Ng Benjamin,
Walsh Kevin,
Lavender Sally
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/joc.4148
Subject(s) - tropical cyclone , tropical cyclone rainfall forecasting , climatology , environmental science , tropics , cyclone (programming language) , geology , field programmable gate array , fishery , computer science , computer hardware , biology
Northwest Australian rain gauge data is analysed to obtain new estimates of the fraction of rainfall caused by tropical cyclones (TCs), in one of the regions of the globe where this fraction is greatest. For annual rainfall, at some coastal stations more than 40% of rainfall arises from TCs. There is substantial seasonal variation in this fraction, with largest fractions occurring in the October through December period, where some stations have more than 70% of rainfall from TCs. There is a sharp gradient in this percentage away from the coastline, with inland values typically less than 30%. With the exception of a narrow coastal region in the tropics, changes in TC rainfall cannot explain recent rainfall trends in this region, with only a small number of locations exhibiting agreement between trends in total rainfall and trends in TC rainfall.