Trends in extreme rainfall in the state of New South Wales, Australia

Evan Hajani, Ataur Rahman, Elias Ishak

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

36 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The trends in annual maximum rainfall (AMR) intensity data in New South Wales, Australia, were examined. Data from 60 stations were used covering three study periods, 1955–2010, 1965–2010 and 1978–2010. Mann-Kendall (MK) and Spearman’s rho (SR) tests were applied to assess trends at local stations. Pre-whitening (PW), trend-free pre-whitening (TFPW) and the variance correction (VC) tests were used to assess the effects of serial correlation on trend results. For regional trend analysis, the regional MK test was employed. The impacts of climatic variability modes on the observed trends in AMR intensity and seasonal maximum rainfall data were investigated. It was found that positive trends were more frequent than the negative ones. The PW, TFPW and VC tests resulted in a slight reduction in the count of stations exhibiting significant positive trends. The number of stations exhibiting significant trends decreased when the impact of climate variability modes was considered.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2160-2174
Number of pages15
JournalHydrological Sciences Journal
Volume62
Issue number13
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Keywords

  • New South Wales
  • climatic changes
  • climatic extremes
  • rain and rainfall

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