Australian weather types, 1979-2015

This is a dataset of the weather systems present over Australia during the period 1979-2015, detected using ERA-Interim. The weather types are described in detail in Pepler et al. (2020), and used for assessing the influence of weather systems on rainfall changes in Pepler et al. (2021). Data is provided for all of Australia, but the weather types used are most useful for areas south of 25S. <br> There is one netCDF file for each year, which contains 60hourly weather type information on a 0.75 degree grid. Each grid cell has a number from 0 to 10, indicating the type of weather present at that location and time: Cyclone Only (1), Front Only (2), Thunderstorm Only (3), Cyclone-Front (4), Cyclone-Thunderstorm (5), Front-Thunderstorm (6), Triple Storm (7), High (8), Warm front (9), Unconfirmed front/cyclone (10), Undefined (0) <br> Cyclones are identified using a combination of the Murray and Simmonds (1991) and Wernli and Schwierz (2006) methods; cold fronts using a combination of the Simmonds et al. (2012) wind-based method and Berry et al. (2011) thermal front parameter method, with a 3 degree rgion of influence; and thunderstorms using the Dowdy (2020) dataset of calibrated thunderstorm environments for Australia. These three datasets are combined into 7 combined weather types to look at interactions and compounding effects. In addition to netCDF files, we provide CSVs of the monthly contribution of each weather type to rainfall for 15 regions of Australia (https://www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au/en/overview/methodology/nrm-regions), derived by combining the 6-hourly weather types data with a daily 0.05 dataset of gridded rainfall over Australia (AGCDv1, Jones et al. 2009). Similar CSVs can be generated for custom regions of Australia on request wuth the provision of an appropriate shapefile or netCDF mask. <br> This dataset was developed as part of the Victorian Water and Climate Initiative and supported by funding from the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. For more information about VicWaCI see https://www.water.vic.gov.au/climate-change/climate-and-water-resources-research/the-victorian-water-and-climate-initiative <br> References: Pepler, A. S., A. J. Dowdy, P. van Rensch, I. Rudeva, J. L. Catto, and P. Hope, 2020: The contributions of fronts, lows and thunderstorms to southern Australian rainfall. <em>Clim. Dyn.</em>, <strong>55</strong>, 1489–1505, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05338-8. Pepler, A. S., A. J. Dowdy, and P. Hope, 2021: The differing role of weather systems in southern Australian rainfall between 1979 – 1996 and 1997 – 2015. <em>Clim. Dyn.</em>, 2289–2302, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05588-6.