Swings between seasons and years of high and low precipitation are ubiquitous in Australia, leading to our reputation as a land of ‘droughts and flooding rains’. But characterising these precipitation see-saws, and understanding the underlying causes of this variability, remains somewhat elusive. To this end, Associate Professor Ailie Gallant’s work has focused on trying to understand how bad Australian droughts can get using multiple lines of evidence, and by working to understand the underlying causes of precipitation variability and drought. Her work has examined observations to understand how the characteristics of drought vary and have changed, and how these characteristics covary with other climate extremes such as extreme heat and rainfall. She has worked on methodologies to define droughts; from rapidly-onsetting ‘flash droughts’ through to multi-year droughts. She has worked on extending hydroclimatic records using proxies like tree rings and corals to find where modern droughts fit relative to longer-term estimates of climate variability. More recently, Associate Professor Gallant’s team has focused attention on understanding how precipitation is regulated by both large-scale drivers, like El Niño, right down to the weather-scale. Specifically, her team has identified a strong role for heavy rainfall, which may consist of only around a week or so’s worth of rainfall, in ‘making’ or ‘breaking’ droughts; with an absence of significant rainfall during drought conditions, and a return or enhancement following drought conditions. In an era of global warming, understanding the causes and nature of drought is essential to determine any effect of climate change.
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