Challenges in attributing the 2022 Australian rain bombs to climate change

Camille Cadiou (1, 2) , Nemo Malhomme (1, 2) , Robin Noyelle (2, 1) , Davide Faranda (1, 2, 3, 4)

1 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
2 ESTIMR - Extrèmes : Statistiques, Impacts et Régionalisation
3 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)
4 London Mathematical Laboratory

In February and March 2022, the eastern coast of Australia recorded unprecedented amount of precipitation with extended floods and damages to properties amounting at least to AUD 2.3 billions. In this paper we use both reanalysis and observations to perform a statistical and dynamical attribution of this precipitation event to climate change. We define 1948-1977 as the counterfactual period and 1990-2019 Challenges in 2022 Australian rain bombs Attribution nature, the lack of long high quality available data and the dependence of the results on the La Nina phase of El Nino Southern Oscillation.

Keywords: Climate Change; Extreme Precipitation; Attribution; Australia

Domains: Ocean, Atmosphere

Camille Cadiou, Nemo Malhomme, Robin Noyelle, Davide Faranda. Challenges in attributing the 2022 Australian rain bombs to climate change. 2022. ⟨hal-03722233v1⟩