Orographic Enhancement of Wintertime Precipitation over the Snowy Mountains and Tasmania

We need to be able to improve precipitation forecast over the mountains of Southeastern Australia to help improve water management efficiency. Precipitation in this region accounts for a third of the inflow to the Murray-Darling basin in the Snowy Mountains, and underpins Tasmania’s economy. With this aim, we carried novel observations during the 2018 and 2019 austral winters with advanced instruments at 3 different locations in each of these regions. These campaigns provided insights on how the orography enhances precipitation, which microphysical processes are dominant, and created a benchmark dataset to evaluate in detail future modeling studies