A severe convective wind diagnostic for Australia derived from ERA5 (1950-2023, hourly)

This record contains monthly files of a diagnostic of severe convective wind (SCW) events for Australia, as estimated from large-scale atmospheric conditions provided by the ERA5 reanalysis (Hersbach et al. 2020). The diagnostic is based on a statistical model that relates large-scale environmental conditions to observed SCW occurrences in Australia, and represents the probability that the environment is favourable for a SCW event. The diagnostic was developed by Brown and Dowdy (2021) and is therefore referred to as the Brown and Dowdy (2021) Statistical Diagnostic (BDSD). In that study, a diagnostic value of 0.83 is used as a threshold to declare whether an environment is favourable for a SCW event or not, although this value could potentially be sensitive to the region or type of thunderstorm (see Brown et al. 2023, supplementary section S2 therein).

Further details on the BDSD are provided in the methods below, as is the spatial extent of the data and the resolution of the data.

This diagnostic data can be used as a broad-scale estimate of where severe convective wind events might be more or less likely to occur based on atmospheric conditions. However, there are significant uncertainties linking favourable environmental conditions to actual events (e.g. see Brown and Dowdy 2021), and this should be taken into account when applying this data.

This record was produced using the Australian National Computational Infrastructure (NCI).