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Rainfall

• What is happening to Australia's rainfall patterns?
• Observed rainfall trends

What is happening to Australia's rainfall patterns?

Rainfall in Australia is highly variable, across short and long time-scales, and across the country. Some of the year-to-year variability is due to the El Nino-Southern Oscillation.

Australia's relatively short instrumental rainfall record shows large year-to-year and decade-to-decade fluctuations. The palaeo-climatic record, and the fact that many native plants and animals have evolved to cope with extended drought periods, indicate that this variability has existed for many thousands of years.

Observed rainfall trends

National trends

• There has been a significant reduction in winter rainfall in south-west Western Australia since the 1970s.
• Rainfall has decreased substantially since 1950 on the east coast, and in Victoria. This decline is less marked if measured from 1900.
• The last decade has seen very low rainfall in southern and central Victoria
• Rainfall in north-west Australia has increased substantially since 1950.

Australia's Climate Variability and Change
More detailed maps of Australia's rainfall patterns over the last 100 years are available on the Australia's Climate Variability and Change  web site.
(Developed by the Bureau of Meteorology with funding from the Australian Greenhouse Office)

Australia's seasonal rainfall

Summer	Autumn
Winter	Spring

Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology, www.bom.gov.au, 2007