Cyclones, fronts and thunderstorms cause the majority of rainfall worldwide, and extreme rainfall is often associated with the combination of two or more of these systems at the same place and time (Dowdy and Catto 2017). We present a new dataset for southern Australia which identifies the presence and interaction of these three weather types, which builds on Dowdy and Catto (2017) by incorporating additional front and cyclone data as well as a new thunderstorm environment dataset to extend the dataset for the 1979-2015 period. We connect this dataset with both daily AWAP rainfall and high-resolution 6-hourly rainfall from the new BARRA reanalysis to identify the importance of interactions between these weather types for total and heavy rainfall in different parts of Australia. We will also show how different combinations of weather systems may be differently influenced by climate drivers such as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation and the Southern Annular Mode.

Dowdy, A. J., and J. L. Catto, 2017: Extreme weather caused by concurrent cyclone, front and thunderstorm occurrences. Sci. Rep., 7, srep40359, doi:10.1038/srep40359.