- Title
- Reconstructing flood and drought cycles in the Murray-Darling Basin using paleoclimate archives
- Creator
- Ho, Michelle; Verdon-Kidd D. C.; Kiem, Anthony S.
- Relation
- Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium 2014. Proceedings of the Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium 2014 (Perth, WA 24-27 February, 2014) p. 382-389
- Publisher
- Engineers Australia
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- A dilemma facing many in the field of water resource management is the ability to adequately assess interannual to multi-decadal hydroclimatic risk - this is especially the case in Australia where instrumental records are relatively short. With rainfall records limited to approximately 100 years (and less for streamflow) there is considerable uncertainty around what to expect in terms of the magnitude and length of flood and drought cycles. This was recently demonstrated during the 'Big Dry' drought ( 1997-2010) where the severity and duration of the drought caught water managers by surprise due to record breaking low inflows into reservoirs. Similarly the flood events of 2010-2012 were also somewhat unexpected after such a prolonged dry period. One approach to improving our understanding of long-term hydroclimatic variability lies in paleoclimate archives that can serve as proxies for records of historical environmental events and processes prior to the availability of instrumental records. However, there is a lack of paleoclimate information in many areas where such insights and long term data are crucial (e.g. the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), east Australian coast etc.). This paper assesses the suitability of available continental paleoclimate rainfall archives to capture rainfall variability in the MDB. Rainfall was modelled using multiple regression, principal component regression and climate field reconstruction. A number of metrics were used to assess the models including the coefficient of efficiency and the reduction in error. Following this work, it is possible to reconstruct rainfall using the paleoclimate proxy records and transform this into a flood and drought history for the MDB to improve assessments of long-term interannual to multidecadal variability and the associated hydroclimatic risks.
- Subject
- engineering; hydraulic engineering; environmental engineering
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1294065
- Identifier
- uon:18724
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781922107190
- Language
- eng
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