AN EXTENDED HIGH-QUALITY HISTORICAL RAINFALL DATASET FOR AUSTRALIA

Lavery et al, (1992) identified 191 high-quality long-term rainfall re cords after an exhaustive search of documentation on Australian rainfa ll sites, coupled with statistical tests, This dataset had a relativel y poor spatial distribution and so high-quality composited rainfall re cords and some records of shorter duration now have been added, The fi nal dataset of 379 high-quality rainfall records (341 of which commenc e no later than 1910) can reliably monitor rainfall trends for most of Australia, The techniques used to composite the records, and the resu lting dataset, are described. With this enhanced spatial coverage it i s feasible to perform an areal averaging of precipitation for Australi a, A time-series of all-Australian annual rainfall since 1890 has been constructed, Time-series were also constructed of northern summer and southern winter Australian rainfall, In all time-series the El Nino/S outhern Oscillation signal is clearly evident.