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Lavery et al. (1992) identified 191 high-quality long-term rainfall records after an exhaustive search of documentation on Australian rainfall sites, coupled with statistical tests. This dataset had a relatively poor spatial distribution and so high-quality composited rainfall records and some records of shorter duration now have been added. The final dataset of 379 high-quality rainfall records (341 of which commence no later than 1910) can reliably monitor rainfall trends for most of Australia. The techniques used to composite the records, and the resulting dataset, are described. With this enhanced spatial coverage it is feasible to perform an areal averaging of precipitation for Australia. 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 Niño/Southern Oscillation signal is clearly evident.
Lavery et al. (Sat,) studied this question.