The Bureau of Meteorology has developed a new set of high-resolution spatial climate analyses for Australia, covering rainfall and temperature. The analyses are updated in real-time and extend back as far as the late nineteenth century for monthly rainfall. These analyses are a component part of a recent effort to improve the spatial representation of Australian rainfall and temperature. 

Under the 2015 New South Wales (NSW) Drought Strategy, the NSW government funded the Bureau of Meteorology on the project "Enhanced weather information for farm drought resilience in NSW – Incorporation of NSW third-party data with enhanced rainfall analysis plus additional climate data". The project included replacing the Bureau of Meteorology's operational national AWAP (0.05° resolution) analyses with an improved analysis scheme (Australian Gridded Climate Data, or AGCD) that has a higher resolution and can make better use of third-party raingauge data. The original driver was to improve rainfall information across NSW, particularly for rainfall deficiency analysis. Although the targeted beneficiaries were within NSW, the resultant national analysis scheme will see all Australian jurisdictions (Federal, State and Territories) benefit. In August 2019, the Bureau completed a new monthly rainfall analysis for the period since 1880, using a statistical interpolation scheme with improved quality control. Compared with AWAP, these analyses have effectively resulted in near-zero bias (a reduction in magnitude from 0.51 mm to -0.071 mm), and a significant  improvement in RMSE and MAE by approximately 16% and 25% respectively. The reduction in analysis error is equivalent to adding approximately 2,600 additional rainfall sites nationally. A system has been established to incorporate third-party rainfall data, if the source of the data conforms to new technical specifications for equipment, siting, metadata and maintenance. The improved analyses are now in the process of being operationalised.