Hydrological regime of Australian lakes over the Late-Quaternary and Holocene

By comparing numerous historical records of lake level change across a vast geographic area, we are able to produce continental-scale records of change in the hydroclimate. Early efforts in reconstructing past lake level variability in Australia utilised a step-based approach at 1000-year time intervals. Since then, there has been a significant improvement to the overall spatial and temporal coverage of data across Australia, in addition to the development of new analytical techniques capable of producing higher-resolution records. This study presents an updated lake level reconstruction for Australia on a regional- and continental-scale, through the application of uncertainty-based statistical modelling techniques. The results suggest that lake-status was variable between sites across Australia over the last 30,000 years, with amplifier lakes across arid and semi-arid Australia exhibiting opposing lake-status trends to rain gauge lakes across humid Australia. Consistency in these results across experiments utilising different site inclusion parameters suggest a robustness against chronological and lake-status uncertainties, proving the potential of these models in supporting future research into how Australia’s hydroclimate could change into the future under an uncertain climate.