Heat and Moisture Anomalies During Crop Failure Events in the Southeastern Australian Wheat Belt

Abstract

Prolonged droughts and heatwaves are common causes of agricultural failure in Australia, yet the origins of these climate anomalies remain understudied. Here, we use a Lagrangian trajectory model driven byatmospheric reanalysis and constrained by satellite data to unravel the sources of precipitation and heat over the South eastern Australia wheat belt. Furthermore, we assess the impact of local and upwind drought conditions on the moisture and heat imports to the region. Results indicate that the most extreme crop failure events over the wheat belt (i.e., 1994, 2002, and 2006) were associated with persistent high‐pressure systems. The ocean provided on average 72% of the moisture for precipitation and 39% of the heat arriving over the wheat belt, with the moisture sources substantially decreasing during crop failure events. Upwind drought further intensified rainfall deficits and heat stress during these events due to lower moisture and higher heat imports to the region.This was particularly clear during the initial phase of the Millennium Drought in 2002. Then, yield deficits exceeded 50%, and ∼4% of the precipitation originated from drought‐affected regions upwind, compared to the 9% that was expected climatologically from those regions. Simultaneously, the heat import from these regions upwind increased by ∼10 W m Show more