In a recent paper, we reconstructed 800 years of seasonal rainfall patterns across the Australian continent.
Our new records show that parts of Northern Australia are wetter than ever before, and that major droughts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in southern Australia are likely without precedent over the past 400 years.
Read more: Antarctic ice shows Australia’s drought and flood risk is worse than thought This new knowledge gives us a clearer understanding of how droughts and flooding rains may be changing in the context of a rapidly warming world.
Historical records provide rough estimates of the extent and intensity of droughts in parts of Australia since the late 1700s.
Observational weather records provide more detailed descriptions of climatic variability.
Although the historical and observational records provide a wealth of information about the frequency of wet and dry extremes, they provide only part of the picture.
This allows us to place recent observations of rainfall variability into a much longer context across the entire continent for the first time.
For example, the Millennium Drought was larger in area and longer than any other drought in southern Australia over the last 400 years.
This spatial variability has also recently been demonstrated for eastern Australia.
Our multi-century rainfall reconstruction complements the recent Climate Change in Australia report on future climate.