We're reanalysing 29 years of atmospheric data to better understand weather systems over Australia.

The BARRA reanalysis provides a consistent way to analyse the data over time. It helps Australians to:

• understand weather and extreme events in Australia
• plan for and manage these events
• identify future risks.

This project uses:

• the Australian Community Climate Earth-System Simulator (ACCESS) computer weather model
• available observations from January 1990 to February 2019.

We worked with CSIRO and Australian universities to develop the reanalysis.

The region covered by the reanalysis shown in figure 1 includes:

• the Australian continent
• part of Asia
• New Zealand
• some Pacific Islands
• part of the Southern Ocean to the ice edge of the Antarctic continent.

The resolution of the Australian area is about 12 km and we reduced this to a 1.5 km resolution for sub-areas within Australia.

All areas have 70 vertical levels up to 80 km into the atmosphere - a higher resolution than existing global reanalysis.

Figure 1: Region covered by the reanalysis. BARRA-R Regional 12km domain within the light blue dotted box, covers all of Australia, New Zealand and the maritime continent. Smaller black boxes are the 1.5km subdomains centred over some major Australian cities, Sydney, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth.

BARRA has about 100 parameters at hourly intervals. This includes information at surface conditions such as:

• temperature
• precipitation
• wind
• humidity
• evaporation
• soil moisture.

Besides surface data, there are:

• parameters at pressure and model levels
• information on solar radiation and cloud cover.

Fire Agencies Australian fire agencies use the Bureau's reanalysis dataset to help them better understand the nature of bushfires. The high spatial and temporal resolution selected subregions across Australia provide more detail for historic fires helping agencies access risks and vulnerabilities for the future.	Extreme Weather Events Studies of extreme weather events over Australia, such as tropical cyclones, east coast lows and heatwaves, will be assisted by the detailed information on wind, rainfall, temperature and pressure available from reanalysis data. Reanalysis data provides a homogenous record over time, providing more detail on weather behaviour.
Energy Industry Energy Industries overseas have made extensive use of reanalysis datasets. Reanalysis datasets can offer information ranging from where to best site renewable energy generation to a detailed examination of past extreme weather events over Australia that have affected the energy market.	Agriculture The fine spatial and temporal scale of reanalysis datasets can be used by the agriculture sector to understand better and prepare ahead for extreme weather events, such as frost, flood and hail – helping the agriculture sector to plan and prepare for extreme weather.

Last Modified: 06 Feb 2023

Simulation of Tropical Cyclone Yasi (28 January to 2 February 2011)

Simulation of cloud cover (2010 to 2016)

Simulation of cloud cover from ERA-Interim and BARRA (February 2015)

Simulation of cloud cover over New South Wales for two resolutions: 12 km and 1.5 km (February 2015)

We have over 100 years of experience in monitoring, predicting and analysing the weather and climate of Australia. With world-class researchers and the new state-of-the-art reanalysis dataset, we're able to provide an expert picture of Australian extreme weather events that may affect your organisation or business.