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Recent Developments in Australian Climate History

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The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History

Abstract

There have been considerable advances in historical climatology in Australia over the past decade. Recent interdisciplinary research using documentary and early instrumental records has identified twenty-four new drought events and seventeen major wet periods for eastern New South Wales over the 1788–1899 period. These results provide the first opportunity to use well-verified historical Australian rainfall data in long-term global drought studies. While considerable progress has been made using material collected from the main population centres of New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Queensland, there is still great potential to recover more colonial-era data from many parts of the country.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Webb, 1997.

  2. 2.

    Macintyre, 1999.

  3. 3.

    Macintyre, 1999.

  4. 4.

    Fenby and Gergis, 2013.

  5. 5.

    Strzelecki, 1845; Jevons, 1859; Russell, 1877.

  6. 6.

    Kingston, 1879; Foley, 1957; Nicholls, 1998; Clarke and Moyal, 2003; Ashcroft et al., 2014a.

  7. 7.

    Day, 2007; Jones et al., 2009.

  8. 8.

    McBride and Nicholls, 1983; Risbey et al., 2009.

  9. 9.

    Sherratt et al., 2005; Morgan, 2013; Beattie et al., 2014.

  10. 10.

    Nicholls, 1988; Garden, 2009.

  11. 11.

    Gergis et al., 2009, 2010, 2018; Ashcroft et al., 2012, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Fenby and Gergis, 2013; Gergis and Ashcroft, 2013.

  12. 12.

    Ashcroft et al., 2014a.

  13. 13.

    Gergis and Ashcroft, 2013.

  14. 14.

    Murphy and Timbal, 2008; Ummenhofer et al., 2009; Verdon-Kidd and Kiem, 2009.

  15. 15.

    Gergis et al., 2009, 2010; Fenby and Gergis, 2013; Gergis, 2018.

  16. 16.

    Fenby and Gergis, 2013.

  17. 17.

    Fenby and Gergis, 2013.

  18. 18.

    Fenby and Gergis, 2013.

  19. 19.

    Ashcroft et al., 2014a, 2016.

  20. 20.

    Risbey et al., 2009.

  21. 21.

    Gergis et al., 2010; Gergis, 2018.

  22. 22.

    Gergis and Fowler, 2009; Gergis et al., 2010.

  23. 23.

    Fenby and Gergis, 2013.

  24. 24.

    Fenby and Gergis, 2013.

  25. 25.

    Ashcroft et al., 2014a.

  26. 26.

    Gergis and Fowler, 2009.

  27. 27.

    Timbal and Fawcett, 2013; Garden, 2009; Gergis et al., 2012.

  28. 28.

    Brázdil et al., 2005.

  29. 29.

    Nash and Endfield, 2008; Neukom et al., 2009; Nash and Grab, 2010; Gergis and Henley, 2017; Gergis, 2018.

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Acknowledgments

JG acknowledges funding from Australian Research Council (ARC) Projects LP0990151 and DE130100668. LA received support from ARC project LP0990151 and thanks Claire Fenby for advice that helped to improve the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Joëlle Gergis

  2. Centre for Climate Change, University Rovira i Virgili, Tortosa, Spain

    Linden Ashcroft

  3. School of Geography, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Don Garden

Authors
  1. Joëlle Gergis
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  2. Linden Ashcroft
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  3. Don Garden
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sam White

  2. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

  3. Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Franz Mauelshagen

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Gergis, J., Ashcroft, L., Garden, D. (2018). Recent Developments in Australian Climate History. In: White, S., Pfister, C., Mauelshagen, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_21

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