High-Resolution Modelling of Extreme Storms over the East Coast of Australia

This dataset includes data of 11 extreme East Coast Lows simulated using a multi-physics (5), multi-resolution (3) approach for 4 different boundary conditions, leading to a total of 660 simulations. All simulations were performed using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF v3.6) regional model using a triple nesting approach with different domain sizes.

The outer domain corresponds to the CORDEX (Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment) Australasia domain and is discretized using a 24-km horizontal grid spacing.

ECMWF ERA Interim (ERAI) reanalysis are use to initialize and drive the model for present climate simulations. For future climate simulations, the Pseudo Global Warming (PGW) approach is used. In this case, initial and boundary conditions are built by adding the climate change signal obtained from a global climate multi-model ensemble from the CMIP5.

We selected a total of eleven events featuring an extreme east coast low over the eastern coast of Australia. Events were selected based on their impacts around the Sydney area and the selection includes some of the most iconic events in recent times such as the "Pasha Bulker" (June 2007) and the June 2016 storms. All events were simulated for a total of 8 days, starting about 4 days before the storm peaked near the Sydney's area. A full list of events dates is given below.

Details of the events, physics and boundary conditions are listed in the readme file.

 The final data product is the post-processing files of all simulations made following CORDEX standards.

Names and units of the variables that are available after post-processing. The frequency and the level is also included. Pressure levels are 200, 500, 700, 850 and 925 hPa.

Surface level variables at 1 hr frequency:

   prm - precipitation rate (mm)

2m surface variables at 1 hr frequency:

   tas - temperature (K)

Surface level variables at 3 hrs frequency:

   psl - mean sea level pressure (hPa)

Near-surface level variables at 3 hrs frequency:

   cape2d - Convective Available Potential Energy - CAPE (J kg-1)

   tpw - total precipitable water (mm)

2m surface variables at 3 hrs frequency:

   hus - specic humidity (%)

   hurs relative humidity (%)

10m surface variables at 3 hrs frequency:

   uas - zonal wind (m s-1)

   vas - meridional wind (m s-1)

Pressure level variables at 6 hrs frequency:

   ta - temperature (K)

   ua - zonal wind (m s-1)

   va - meridional wind (m s-1)

   wa - vertical wind (m s-1)

   zg - gepotential height (m)

   hus - specic humidity (kg kg-1)

This dataset was created by Dr Alejandro Di Luca as part of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) funded project (DE170101191) and is part of the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX) Extreme Rainfall research program.