Winds of change
Changes in the jet stream are steering autumn rain away from southeast Australia, and the forecast is troubling.
NASA
You wouldn’t know it from the torrential rains that have inundated large parts of New South Wales and Queensland this year, but average late-autumn rainfall over southeast Australia has declined significantly since the 1990s.
Less rain in these areas is an expected consequence of global warming. In both the northern and southern hemispheres, the paths of the weather systems that bring rain in the middle latitudes have been moving away from the equator and towards the poles.
We studied in detail the drop in rainfall during April and May in southeast Australia, and found it is just one consequence of far-reaching changes in the behaviour of high-altitude winds over Australia.
Continue reading on the UTS Newsroom: Winds of change
