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Association of climate drivers with rainfall in New South Wales, Australia, using Bayesian Model Averaging

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Abstract

Rainfall in New South Wales (NSW), located in the southeast of the Australian continent, is known to be influenced by four major climate drivers: the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). Many studies have shown the influences of ENSO, IPO modulation, SAM and IOD on rainfall in Australia and on southeast Australia in particular. However, only limited work has been undertaken using a multiple regression framework to examine the extent of the combined effect of these climate drivers on rainfall. This paper analysed the role of these combined climate drivers and their interaction on the rainfall in NSW using Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to account for model uncertainty by considering each of the linear models across the whole model space which is equal to the set of all possible combinations of predictors to find the model posterior probabilities and their expected predictor coefficients. Using BMA for linear regression models, we are able to corroborate and confirm the results from many previous studies. In addition, the method gives the ranking order of importance and the probability of the association of each of the climate drivers and their interaction on the rainfall at a site. The ability to quantify the relative contribution of the climate drivers offers the key to understand the complex interaction of drivers on rainfall, or lack of rainfall in a region, such as the three big droughts in southeastern Australia which have been the subject of discussion and debate recently on their causes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Quality, Atmospheric Science and Climate Change Research Group (EAAC), Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Hiep Nguyen Duc

  2. Climate and Atmospheric Science, Office of Environment & Heritage, NSW, Lidcombe, NSW, Australia

    Hiep Nguyen Duc & Kelly Rivett

  3. Department of Environment and Geography, MacQuarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Katrina MacSween

  4. Division of Computational Mathematics and Engineering (CME), Institution for Computational Science (INCOS), Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Linh Le-Anh

Authors
  1. Hiep Nguyen Duc
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  2. Kelly Rivett
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  3. Katrina MacSween
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  4. Linh Le-Anh
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Correspondence to Hiep Nguyen Duc.

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Duc, H.N., Rivett, K., MacSween, K. et al. Association of climate drivers with rainfall in New South Wales, Australia, using Bayesian Model Averaging. Theor Appl Climatol 127, 169–185 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1622-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1622-8

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