Climate Risk Management 16 (2017) 10–21

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Climate Risk Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/crm

Increasing risk of months with low rainfall and high

temperature in southeast Australia for the past 150 years
Dewi G.C. Kirono ⇑, Kevin J. Hennessy, Michael R. Grose
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Oceans and Atmosphere, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Climate variability, climate change and extreme events pose risks that need to be quanti-
Received 29 September 2016 fied and managed. Dry and hot conditions have notable impacts, and have a strong link to
Revised 7 April 2017 drought risk. Many extreme event analyses focus on one variable at a time. However, com-
Accepted 10 April 2017
pound extremes, involving two or more climate variables, can have a disproportionately
Available online 12 April 2017
large impact. Thus integrated multivariate analyses are necessary to comprehensively
assess climate impacts. Here we document 150 years of information about events with
Keywords:
low monthly rainfall and high temperature for southeast Australia. The number of hot/
Compound extremes
Hot and dry month
dry months per year exhibits decadal variability and increasing trends. Long-term trends
Drought are more influenced by temperature than rainfall, consistent with a warming climate.
Climate variability The number of hot and dry consecutive events, defined as three to five consecutive months
Climate risks of compound events, is increasing. Our findings reinforce the need to consider definitions
that include multivariate variables such as rainfall and temperature and/or other hydrocli-
mate variables, where possible, when quantifying drought risk. Discussion on how the
results could contribute to improvement in climate projection science in Australia or else-
where is provided.
Ó 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC
BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction

The risks of climate change to a given sector (e.g. health, agriculture or water) generally arise through a chain of conse-
quences. For example, increases in ambient temperature and reductions in rainfall could lessen streamflow and hence water
supply for agriculture, which then could introduce risks of food price instability. In this regard, the impacts of climate often
depend on not only one but multiple climate variables (Fischer and Knutti, 2012). Thus, any risk management exercises
would benefit from the availability of knowledge regarding changes in multiple climate variables (e.g. Commonwealth of
Australia, 2006).
Compound extremes, involving two or more climate variables, have attracted particular attention recently as they could
have a disproportionately large impact. According to IPCC (2012, p. 118):
‘‘compound events can be (1) two or more extreme events occurring simultaneously or successively, (2) combinations of
extreme events with underlying conditions that amplify the impact of the events, or (3) combinations of events that are
not themselves extremes but lead to an extreme event or impact when combined. The contributing events can be of sim-
ilar (clustered multiple events) or different type(s).”

⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: dewi.kirono@csiro.au (D.G.C. Kirono).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2017.04.001
2212-0963/Ó 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
 D.G.C. Kirono et al. / Climate Risk Management 16 (2017) 10–21 11

Leonard et al. (2014) found that in many cases, methods that focus on univariate extremes are insufficient to define and
detect all relevant conditions that lead to a significant impact. They conclude that greater appreciation of compound events
will lead to further insight and a changed perspective on how impact risks are associated with climate-related hazards.
For instance, during a drought period the rainfall deficiency is usually accompanied by an increase in temperature.
Whether the increased temperature is a result of the drought (e.g. Lockart et al., 2009) or whether it causes the drought
(e.g. Nicholls, 2004; Gergis et al., 2010; Assani et al., 2015) is still debatable (Kiem et al., 2016a,b). Regardless, research indi-
cates that drought impacts are associated with increased temperature in Australia (Alston and Kent, 2004; Horridge et al.,
2005; Mitchell et al., 2014; Anwar et al., 2015; Mosley, 2015) and elsewhere (e.g. Fischer et al., 2007; Thompson et al.,
2014; Allen et al., 2015). Even if the increase in temperature that accompanies rainfall deficiency was moderate and not nec-
essarily extreme, it could still increase risks and impacts (Mitchell et al., 2014; Leonard et al., 2014). Thus documenting the
history of compound events involving low rainfall and high temperature could be relevant for risk management, particularly
when considering human-induced global warming (Karoly et al., 2003; Nicholls, 2004; Lewis and King, 2015).
Since 1910, the annual mean temperature averaged across Australia has warmed by around 1 °C, with most rapid warm-
ing since around 1950 (Fawcett et al., 2012; CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology; 2016; Ayers, 2016). A recent work, using
between 2 and 28 paleoclimate records networks for the September-February season of Australasian temperatures, suggests
the post-1950 temperature has been noted as the warmest in the past 1000 years (Gergis et al., 2016).
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) regularly monitors and reports drought based on Rainfall Deficiencies, and
Soil Moisture conditions separately (www.bom.gov.au). Gallant et al. (2013) described the climatology and variability of
seasonal-scale droughts using rainfall and soil moisture, individually, for 1911–2009. As part of a comprehensive review
on the Australian drought policy, Hennessy et al. (2008) assessed variability in exceptionally high temperature, low rainfall
and low soil moisture, separately, from 1900 to 2040 using observed and simulated data. Their historical analysis based on
observed data of rainfall and temperature and estimated soil moisture which each start in 1900, 1910 and 1957, respectively.
They found that exceptionally hot years have been increasing rapidly over recent decades and that the trends were projected
to continue. Meanwhile changes in exceptionally low rainfall years and low soil moisture years were very much dependent
on the period of analysis, and the regions, due to large rainfall variability between decades. Similar conclusions were drawn
when the projections were based on a drought index considering the ratio between rainfall and potential evapotranspiration
(Kirono and Kent, 2011; Kirono et al., 2011). Australian drought projections based on the Standardised Precipitation Index
(SPI, McKee et al., 1993) highlighted a projected increase in southern Australia over the 21st century (CSIRO and Bureau
of Meteorology, 2015). Other indices such as the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and the Standardised Precipitation
and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) incorporate not only rainfall but also evaporation or the effect of temperature on evap-
oration, and are used for assessing relative dryness with a warming climate (e.g. Cook et al., 2014). However, these indices
have not been widely used for climate change studies in Australia, and each index has different sensitivity to temperature
change, so do not provide a consistent and robust story. There is the need for a general index of hot temperature and low
rainfall to frame and understand the changing context of water balance without creating an index that is too specific or
overfitted.
There have been studies on compound event trends in Europe (e.g. Beersma and Buishand, 2004; Beniston, 2009) and
Australia (e.g. Gallant and Karoly, 2010; Gallant et al., 2014). However, to the best of our knowledge, there is still limited
study of the historical and future nature of compound events involving low rainfall and high temperature in Australia.
This paper focuses on the historical hot and dry conditions in southeast Australia over the past 150 years. Southeast Aus-
tralia was selected because of data availability and because the region is a major contributor to the national economy (Kelly
et al., 2014).

2. Data and method

2.1. Data

Monthly rainfall and temperature data from two meteorological stations (Fig. 1) were used. The stations, with records
spanning more than 150 years, were Melbourne Regional Office (station number 86071) and Sydney (Observatory Hill,
66062). At the time of the study, the complete data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (www.bom.gov.au) was
for January 1856 to December 2014 for Melbourne and January 1859 to December 2014 for Sydney. For each month within
the time series, the monthly data is accompanied with information about the ‘‘quality” of that particular month. For example,
the January 1990 temperature data is assigned with a ‘‘Y”, while that of February 1990 has a ‘‘Y” and so on. The ‘‘Y” indicates
‘‘completed quality control and acceptable” while an ‘‘N” means ‘‘not yet completed quality control process”. The metadata
also informs that the data passes through a number of stages in quality control which occurs over a period of time, and the
‘N’ indicates no significant errors have yet been detected although this may change during a later stage of the quality control
process. Regarding temperature data, all months for both stations are flagged with the ‘Y’. For rainfall, 99.8% and 96.5%
months are flagged with a ‘Y’ for Melbourne and Sydney station, respectively. Thus they are deemed to have a good data
quality for the purpose of the study.
These two stations had the longest available data record in southeast Australia, and represent Australia’s two largest
cities. The greater Sydney and greater Melbourne areas each support approximately 21% and 19% of Australia’s population
12 D.G.C. Kirono et al. / Climate Risk Management 16 (2017) 10–21

Fig. 1. Location of Sydney and Melbourne stations in Australia. The southeast Australia (SEA) region defined for this study is shaded.

in 2014, respectively (Australian Bureau of Statistics, http://www.abs.gov.au) and both generated almost 10% of all economic
activity in Australia (Kelly et al., 2014).
Areal average monthly rainfall and temperature data for southeast Australia (SEA) (Fig. 1) were also considered for com-
parison purposes. These data were only available for January 1911 to December 2012 at the time of the study, but were used
to check whether features from the two stations were representative of the SEA region. Following Timbal (2010a), the SEA
region was defined as mainland Australia south of 33.5°S and east of 135.5°E (Fig. 1). The areal average of monthly rainfall
and temperature data was calculated from the Australian Water Availability Project (AWAP) gridded climate datasets of the
Australian Bureau of Meteorology (Jones et al., 2009). It is important to note that it is an interpolated dataset which has pros
and cons (e.g. Tozer et al., 2012; King et al., 2013a,b; Chubb et al., 2016).
Both Sydney and Melbourne are under the same climate zone of Cfb according to the Köppen classification (Peel et al.,
2007). The annual time series for rainfall and temperature for the two stations and the SEA region are plotted in Fig. 2.
The correlation coefficients (R) between rainfall or temperature for each of the stations and those for the SEA region are sta-
tistically significant (at p < 0.01). The correlation between Melbourne and the SEA region is 0.76 and 0.76 for rainfall and
temperature, respectively. Between Sydney and the SEA region, they are 0.41 and 0.66, while those between Sydney and Mel-
bourne are 0.21 and 0.84, respectively. The same results (not shown) are found when the correlation coefficients are calcu-
lated using detrended data. It must be noted that unlike Melbourne, Sydney is located on the eastern seaboard, which is
influenced by atmospheric processes (e.g. easterly winds and east coast lows) that are slightly different to the rest of the
SEA region (e.g. Timbal, 2010b; Dowdy et al., 2014; Kiem et al., 2016a,b). For instance, Sydney receives around twice the rain-
fall of the rest of SEA and is dominated by summer/autumn rainfall (Timbal, 2010b).

2.2. Method

Step 1: A monthly time series consisting of either a compound (i.e. hot and dry month) or a non-compound was con-
structed for each of the stations, and for the SEA region. A hot and dry month was defined as a month when rainfall was
below average and the temperature was above average. Although the average is not an ‘extreme’ threshold, it represents
conditions conducive to dry conditions and droughts. The index will strongly reflect the increase in mean temperature seen
in observations, but it is presented as a useful metric since a moderate increase in temperature alone has the potential, for
instance, to increase the risk of drought and its potential impacts on Australian ecosystems (Mitchell et al., 2014). Also, a
 D.G.C. Kirono et al. / Climate Risk Management 16 (2017) 10–21 13

Fig. 2. Annual rainfall and mean temperature for Sydney, Melbourne and the SEA region.
14 D.G.C. Kirono et al. / Climate Risk Management 16 (2017) 10–21

compound event can lead to an extreme impact through a combination of variables, not all of which are necessarily extreme
(IPCC, 2012; Leonard et al., 2014). This method produces a greater sample of hot and dry months than a definition that uses
extreme thresholds, which has benefits for statistical analysis. The monthly average was based on 1856–2014 for Melbourne,
1859–2014 for Sydney, and 1911–2012 for the SEA region, unless stated otherwise.
Step 2: The variability of hot and dry months in the past 150 years was assessed. To do so, the number of hot and dry
months for each year was calculated based on the time series obtained in Step 1. By definition, a given year will have a range
of 0–12 months of hot and dry months. After that, the number of hot and dry months in each year was plotted in a graph,
including the 11-year moving average to help with the initial inspection of any potential decadal variability and/or long-term
trend.
To examine the effect of trend and variabilities in temperature and rainfall on the detection of hot and dry months, the
raw rainfall and temperature data were each subjected to singular spectrum analysis to remove trend and variability. Fol-
lowing this, the residual rainfall and temperature data were used to generate monthly time series of compound (or non-
compound) events as in Step 1, and to assess compound variability as described above.
To quantify the presence of various periodicities or modes of variability, a multitaper-spectral analysis with a harmonic F-
test statistic (e.g. Thomson, 1982; Karim, 2014) was conducted for the time series of the number of hot and dry months,
using the ‘Packages multitaper’ in R software.
Step 3: Periods of consecutive hot and dry months were identified using the monthly hot and dry time series data
obtained in Step 1. Consecutive events were defined as either three or five consecutive months of hot and dry conditions.
The three- and five-month windows were selected so that they align with the Bureau of Meteorology’s current practice of
monitoring drought (i.e. three months or more). The three-month window had also been used by Gallant et al. (2013) to
examine seasonal drought in Australia. We found that using a window of more than five months produced a very limited
number of events during the past 150 years.
Step 4: We anticipated that results could be sensitive to the baseline period used, threshold values and the temperature
variables being considered. To examine the impacts of different baseline, thresholds and temperature variables, we con-
ducted three sensitivity experiments, focussing on Sydney, where independent drought and wet year data for 1788–2008
(Gergis and Ashcroft, 2012) were available for comparison.

1. As climate varies temporally, the average value depends on the chosen baseline period. The first experiment tested the
influence of six different baseline periods: the long term period (as in Step 1) and some common baseline periods i.e.
1980–1999 and 1986–2005 (used by IPCC, 2007, 2013; CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology, 2007, 2015) as well as
1900–2000, 1950–2000, and 1961–1990 (IPCC, 2001).
2. An average value is not an ‘extreme’ threshold, so the second experiment tested the influence of applying ‘extreme’
thresholds, i.e. the 25th–75th and 10th–90th percentiles. In this experiment, a compound event was defined as a month
when rainfall was below the 25th (or 10th) percentile while temperature was above the 75th (or 90th) percentile of that
particular month.
3. Variability and trends in maximum and minimum temperature can be different in Australia (e.g. Ashcroft et al., 2012),
thus the use of mean temperature might not reveal such differences. To address this matter, the third experiment con-
ducted the same analysis as in Steps 1–3, but included (i) the maximum temperature; and (ii) both the maximum and
minimum temperatures, instead of the mean temperature.

In addition, the study calculated the 12-month Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) (McKee et al., 1993) for Sydney and
defined drought as when SPI was continuously (greater than or equal to 3 months) negative and reached an intensity of 1.0
or less at some time during each event. Sydney’s SPI-based droughts, along with the 1788–2008 dry and wet year data for
New South Wales (Gergis and Ashcroft, 2012), were used for comparison when interpreting the results.

3. Results

3.1. The history of hot and dry months

The number of hot and dry months per year exhibited decadal variability and increasing trends (Fig. 3). The trend seems
to follow the respective increase in mean temperature shown in Fig. 2. The number of hot and dry months per year was
above 3, on average, during the Federation drought (1895–1903) and the World War II drought (1939–1945) but the
number during the Millennium drought (1997–2009) was notably higher. This reflects the importance of mean tempera-
ture change to this index, potentially distinguishing the results from precipitation-based drought measures such as the Stan-
dardised Precipitation Index (SPI). Noteworthy was the high number of hot and dry months during short but intense
droughts such as those in 1914, 1972, 1994, and 2002. The number of hot and dry months in 2002 (11 out of 12), in partic-
ular, really stood out – and was consistent with results found by Nicholls (2004).
The Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients between the number of hot and dry months per year in each of the stations
and the SEA region were statistically significant (at p < 0.01) as expected. The correlation between Melbourne and the SEA
region was 0.64, between Sydney and the SEA region was 0.46, and between Sydney and Melbourne was 0.54. This was con-
 D.G.C. Kirono et al. / Climate Risk Management 16 (2017) 10–21 15

Fig. 3. The number of hot and dry months in a given year, along with the 11-year moving average, for Sydney, Melbourne and the SEA. Three major
Australian droughts are also shown.

sistent with the description in section 2.1, i.e. rainfall and temperature at the two stations are correlated with the SEA region,
but with some differences between the eastern seaboard and west of the ranges.
Fig. 4 indicates that trends in the number of hot and dry months per year are linked more strongly to temperature than
rainfall. When rainfall and temperature were detrended, there were no clear long-term trends in the index, but notable dec-
adal variability. This decadal variability could link to the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (e.g. Power et al., 1999) which has a
statistical relationship with the decadal variability in the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnections globally (e.g.
Wang et al., 2014) including Australia (e.g. Power et al., 1999). Likewise, the use of raw rainfall data and residual temperature
data demonstrated no clear long-term trends. In contrast, when the residual rainfall and raw temperature data were used,
the increasing trend reappeared, which was also the case for the results obtained from the raw rainfall and raw temperature
data. This emphasises the influence of warming on the index, as stated above.
The results of the multitaper-spectral analysis indicate several periodicities that are significant at the 99% confidence
level: 100, 13, 6, and 4 years for Melbourne, and 100 and 6 years for Sydney. The significant periodicity of 100 years may
reflect the long-term trend, while those in the order of 4 and 6 years may be associated with the periodicity of the ENSO
phenomena (e.g. Chen, 1982; Rasmusson and Carpenter, 1982).
The correlation coefficients (R), as a measure of the association between the number of hot and dry months and ENSO
(represented by the annual Troup Southern Oscillation, SOI), affirm a close relationship. For Melbourne, R is 0.122 and
0.16 for the raw and residual data set, respectively. Meanwhile for Sydney R is 0.21 and 0.22, respectively. These correlations
are significant at the 90% confidence level.

3.2. The history of hot and dry three- and five-month periods

Hot and dry compound of three and five consecutive months occurred more frequently in recent years compared to the
long-term average (Fig. 5). Also, events appeared more often in Sydney compared to Melbourne or the SEA region. As
expected, the use of the three-month window resulted in more frequent consecutive events in comparison to the use of
five-month window.
In Sydney, around 54% of the drought years identified by Gergis and Ashcroft (2012) and 49% of those identified by the
SPI-12 index had also been identified as hot and dry consecutive events by this method, despite SPI just considering rainfall
(Fig. 5). There is greatest coincidence of events between the three methods in the recent decades, whereas in the early part of
the record there are fewer detections using our method as the mean temperature was lower.

3.3. Sensitivity analyses

3.3.1. Experiment 1: Sensitivity to baseline period

The inter-decadal variability and increasing trends in the hot and dry months per year seemed to be insensitive to long-
term baseline periods (>30 years) (Fig. 6). If the baseline period was short (30 years), the hot and dry compound of three
consecutive months could be sensitive to the chosen baseline period (Fig. 7). For example, two of the three 30-year baseline
16 D.G.C. Kirono et al. / Climate Risk Management 16 (2017) 10–21

Fig. 4. 11-year moving average of hot and dry months per year, based on raw data and residual data, for Sydney and Melbourne. Residual data were used to
remove trends and natural variability. P = rainfall, and T = temperature.

periods tested here did not identify the periods of consecutive compound in the late 19th and early 20th century. (The excep-
tion was the 1961–1990 baseline period.)

3.3.2. Experiment 2: Sensitivity to type of threshold

When the 25th and 75th percentiles were applied as a threshold, rather than using the average as a threshold, the number
of hot and dry months in a given year was smaller (as expected) (Fig. 6). However, the inter-decadal variability and the
increasing trend were about the same, albeit less dramatic. Likewise, the number of hot and dry three-month events iden-
 D.G.C. Kirono et al. / Climate Risk Management 16 (2017) 10–21 17

Fig. 5. Hot and dry compound of three and five consecutive months, in the top and middle panels, respectively, for Sydney, Melbourne and the SEA. Drought
events defined using the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) for Sydney (SPI12_Sydney) and the SEA region (SPI12_SEA) are also shown, at the bottom panel,
along with the New South Wales drought years identified by Gergis and Ashcroft (2012).

tified using the 25th and 75th percentiles was much smaller (Fig. 7). For example, during 1859–2014 there were only four
events identified (i.e. in 1980, 1991, 2002 and 2004). These hot and dry consecutive events only occurred in the past few
decades, due to the warmer climate. Overall, the 10th–90th percentiles experiment indicated similar results (not shown
here) to those of 25th–75th percentiles.

3.3.3. Experiment 3: Sensitivity to temperature variable

The use of daily maximum temperature resulted in similar findings to those that used the mean temperature, except
there are fewer hot and dry months per year before 1920 when using daily maximum compared to daily mean temperature
(Fig. 6 and Fig. 7). When analyses were conducted using three variables (i.e. rainfall below average, as well as both maximum
and minimum temperatures above average), the increasing trend in hot and dry months per year was only noticeable since
around mid-20th century (Fig. 6), and is consistent with the findings of Karoly and Braganza (2005). Similarly, the number of
period with consecutive hot and dry months was lower, and most of them only occurred in the past 50 years or so (Fig. 7).
This highlights that results were sensitive to the inclusion of the minimum temperature which has not increased as much as
maximum temperature. Droughts typically have hotter days and cooler nights.

4. Discussion and conclusion

The objective of this study was to document the variability of compound hot and dry months, and hot and dry three- and
five-month events in southeast Australia. Our results demonstrated variability and increasing trends in the number of hot
18 D.G.C. Kirono et al. / Climate Risk Management 16 (2017) 10–21

Fig. 6. 11-Year moving average of hot and dry months per year for Sydney for different experiments. The ‘Avg (1859–2014)’ was the control experiment
whereby the 1859–2014 average of monthly rainfall and mean temperature was used as a threshold. The other ‘Avg’ experiments applied a variety of
baseline periods (denoted in the brackets) to calculate the average as a threshold. The ‘Pctl’ used the 25th percentile rainfall and 75th percentile
temperature for 1859–2014 for the threshold. The ‘P, Tmax’ considered rainfall and maximum temperature, while the ‘P, Tmax, Tmin’ combined the rainfall,
maximum temperature and minimum temperature in calculating the compound events – both applying the 1859–2014 average value as a threshold.

Fig. 7. Hot and dry periods, defined as three consecutive months with above average temperature and below average rainfall, for Sydney for different
experiments. The ‘Avg (1859–2014)’ was the control experiment whereby the 1859–2014 average of rainfall and mean temperature was used as the
threshold. The other ‘Avg’ experiments applied variety of baseline periods (denoted in the brackets) to calculate the average as a threshold. The ‘Pctl’ used
the 25th percentile rainfall and 75th percentile temperature for 1859–2014 for the threshold. The ‘P, Tmax’ considered rainfall and maximum temperature,
while the ‘P, Tmax, Tmin’ combined the rainfall, maximum temperature and minimum temperature in calculating the compound events – both applying the
1859–2014 average value as a threshold.

and dry months, using thresholds of the long-term mean, and the 10th–90th and 25th–75th percentile to define hot/dry
months. The use of mean temperature or daily minimum and maximum temperature made little difference to the results.
Likewise, the number of events with three months of consecutive hot and dry conditions has increased over the period. These
findings provided additional compelling evidence that the general dryness is changing and suggested a need to consider a
drought index that combines multivariate drivers such as rainfall and temperature.
The variability and increasing trends in compound events appear to be more related to the temperature trends (Fig. 4).
When the residual data for both rainfall and temperature were applied, there was a clear decadal variability and a less clear
trend.
The sensitivity analyses revealed:
 D.G.C. Kirono et al. / Climate Risk Management 16 (2017) 10–21 19

1. The need to use at least 30 years period as the baseline to calculate the averages for monthly thresholds. Using only
20 years of data is risky since periods such as 1980–1999 and 1986–2005 fail to capture multi-decadal variability (Figs. 6
and 7).
2. The choice of a 25/75 or 10/90 percentile threshold, rather than a mean threshold, did not make a marked difference to
the results, but reduced the sample size. Therefore, the threshold choice will be pertinent to a particular question that one
may need to answer.
3. The trends in the number of hot and dry months and their consecutive events were sensitive to the inclusion of minimum
temperature.
When the mean temperature was combined with rainfall, there was a steady increasing trend since the early 1900s. In
contrast, when minimum temperature was included, the marked increasing trends in compound events started around
the mid-20th century. This concurs with previous findings of Ashcroft et al. (2012) that the increase in maximum and
minimum temperature since the 1960s were the largest and most significant trends in SEA temperature in the past
152 years.
4. The index is strongly influenced by mean temperature trends, so is highly relevant to climate change and a warming cli-
mate. Alternatively, detrended data can be used to examine variability and relationships in the index independent of
long-term trends. Further analysis of the detrended series is likely to yield insights into natural variability. However, this
has to be conducted with care as the results may depend on how the detrending is done.

This monthly rainfall-temperature analysis allow us to extend several other drought studies in Australia (e.g. Nicholls,
2004; Hennessy et al., 2008; Gallant et al., 2013) back to the mid-1800s, so that decadal variability and long-term trends
can be explored better. A common limitation in hydroclimate risk assessment is the availability of long records (Ho et al.,
2014) required for assessing decadal to multi-decadal variability (Kiem and Franks, 2004; Verdon-Kidd and Kiem, 2010;
Gallant et al., 2013). Monthly rainfall and temperature data may meet this need in some sites. For example, the earliest
long-term series of observations for temperature and rainfall in Australia commenced around 1840 (Nicholls et al., 2006)
while pan evaporation observations only started in the late 1960s (Jovanovic et al., 2008) and surface humidity observations
began in 1957 (Lucas et al., 2004).
Our approach could be used elsewhere in Australia and internationally to explore long-term variability and trends in
compound conditions of low rainfall and high temperature, or consecutive events defined as three or more consecutive
months experiencing these compound conditions. Other alternatives include combining the rainfall and temperature along
with other variables such as soil moisture and runoff, if possible, into an Aggregate Drought Index (ADI) introduced by
Keyantash and Dracup (2004) or other multivariate approaches as reviewed in Hao and Sing (2015). Recent studies have
argued that a simple rainfall-based index should not be relied upon to characterise drought (e.g. Van Dijk et al., 2013;
Kiem et al., 2016a,b) and that an ADI could be superior to other indices for drought management in southeast Australia
(e.g. Barua et al., 2011).
For potential application in natural resources management, future work could consider compound events based on more
than two climate variables. For instance, it could be a combination of low rainfall, low vapour pressure and high maximum
temperature. Harris et al. (2014) reported that a combination of those metrics during the period September–November is
critical precursor for fire in the state of Victoria, Australia. There is a dataset for rainfall, temperature and atmospheric pres-
sure for 1788–1859 for SEA, constructed by Ashcroft et al. (2014), which can be combined with existing data sets to enable
an assessment for more than 200 years.
Findings from this study could lead to improvement in climate projection science in Australia or elsewhere. The latest
drought projections for Australia were based on rainfall alone (CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology, 2015). Recent evidence
showed that climate models continue to perform better for temperature than rainfall (Flato, 2013; CSIRO and Bureau of
Meteorology, 2015) and that they mostly failed to reproduce the regional SPI drying and wetting trends (Nasrollahi et al.,
2015). Thus, the inclusion of this compound index of hot and dry conditions as context, and the inclusion of temperature
in the development of drought projections, could increase the level of confidence in drought projections. Further research
will be undertaken to assess the ability of climate model simulations to reproduce compound events.
Additionally, the global climate model based projections for rainfall display a wide range of uncertainty (CSIRO and
Bureau of Meteorology, 2015). Thus, the inclusion of temperature along with rainfall in a drought index could help reduce
uncertainty in drought projections. Several studies (e.g. Kirono et al., 2011; Fischer and Knutti, 2012) demonstrated that pro-
jection uncertainty for a metric that combined two variables (including temperature) was much smaller than that if the two
variables were treated independently.
Finally, our work might also lead to improvement in the Australian Climate Futures framework, which is an existing tool
to select representative climate futures based on two variables (Clarke et al., 2011; Whetton et al., 2012). For instance, the
framework could be improved by considering a joint exceedance of the selected variables, instead of looking at the variables
independently.
20 D.G.C. Kirono et al. / Climate Risk Management 16 (2017) 10–21

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Australian Climate Change Science Program (ACCSP) and Project 2.7 of the Earth Systems
and Climate Change Hub funded by the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme. We thank
Louise Wilson and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on early versions of the manuscript.

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