Trends in annual frequencies of extreme temperature events in Australia

TL;DRAbstract

A number of indices have been developed to investigate recent changes in the annual frequencies of extreme temperature events in Australia. A high-quality daily temperature dataset including 88 station records is used to determine trends in these indices, generally over the period 1957 to 1996. Indices investigated include measures of the frequencies of daily maximum and minimum temperatures above and below fixed temperature thresholds, as well as frequencies above and below specified percentile levels. Trends in consecutive days and nights of extreme temperature are also considered. These trends indicate that occurrences of warm temperature extreme events have generally increased over the investigation period, whilst numbers of extremely cool temperature events have decreased. The trends are particularly strong for indices based on minimum temperature, with many statistically significant at the 95 per cent confidence level. Some of the trends display considerable regional variation. E

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