Mapping precipitation in Australia, during 35 Southerly Buster events (1994-2020), by using ERA-5 reanalysis
Creators: name: Gangoiti, Gotzon
name: Torre-Pascual, Eduardo
name: Rodríguez-García, Ana
name: Sáez de Camara, Estibaliz
name: GOMEZ NAVAZO, MARIA CARMEN
name: DE BLAS MARTIN, MAITE
name: García, José Antonio
name: GARCIA RUIZ, MARIA ESTIBALIZ
name: ZUAZO URIONABARRENETXEA, Iñaki
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: precipitation
shallow front
australia
southerly buster

description: DOCUMENT: Mapping precipitation in Australia, during 35 Southerly Buster events (1994-2020), by using ERA-5 reanalysis



Directory: RAIN_DAILY_35_EPISODESThis directory includes PNG files showing daily precipitation in Australia (24-hour accumulated total precipitation) obtained from the ERA-5 hourly reanalysis during 35 Southerly Buster (SB) episodes. Cold fronts, which contribute to SB formation, frequently draw hot and dry prefrontal northwesterly winds from Central Australia, resulting in little precipitation. Only 8 of the 35 SB episodes brought significant rainfall (daily averages > 10 L/m²) to the Snowy Mountain region. This alpine region, located in southeastern Australia, forms the highest part of the Great Dividing Range and provides essential environmental flows along major river systems, as well as critical water resources for agricultural irrigation. The text file "SnowyMountainRain_daily.txt" in the same directory lists daily area averages and 24-hour maxima in the Snowy Mountain region (longitude 148° E – 149° E, latitude 36.7° S – 35.3° S).


 



Directory: 1996-05-decThis directory contains a set of subdirectories with hourly plan views and vertical sections of selected meteorological fields. It corresponds to the day with the highest recorded precipitation within the 35 SB episodes (6 December 1996), where most of the rainfall was prefrontal, accompanied by northerly surface winds. This occurred within a region of intense vertical wind shear (1000–3000 hPa) preceding the surface front passage on December 6.




Subdirectories "fronts_xy1000hPa" and "fronts_xy700hPa" represent fronts at 1000 hPa and 700 hPa, respectively. These include maps showing hourly wind shifts (highlighted in red and blue shaded areas) and convergence above the reference value of 3·10⁻⁵ s⁻¹ (blue contours), as estimated by an automatic frontal identification software, along with 1000 hPa wind vectors.

The subdirectory "mslp_thetaDepth_xy_surf" contains maps of mean sea level pressure (MSLP) in contours (1000 hPa), the depth of the 900–1000 hPa layer (in shaded colors), and 10-meter wind vectors.

The subdirectory "shear_xy1000-500_converg" displays vertical wind shear (m/s) of the 700–1000 hPa winds (in shaded colors and vectors), as well as net mass convergence (kg·m⁻²·s⁻¹) into the lower-middle troposphere (1000–500 hPa column), shown with solid contours for positive values and dashed contours for negative values.

The remaining subdirectories starting with "yzE**" correspond to potential temperature (Theta), relative humidity (RH) in shaded colors, wind velocities (v, -ω·10) in contours (solid for positive-upward motion and dashed for negative-downward motion), and wind vector projections on the respective constant longitude planes. Here, ω represents the omega vertical wind velocity (Pa·s⁻¹).