Australian Coastal Storm Event Statistics with Clustering Analysis

A 30-year timeseries of observations from the eastern and southern coast of Australia was used to extract independent storm events. The dataset contains multivariate summary statistics for extreme storm events, including maximum significant wave height, wave period, direction, duration, peak storm surge, and time of occurrence. This data was produced by Geoscience Australia as part of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC Project, with preliminary results from a study site on the central coast of New South Wales.

Use Cases

• Modeling the frequency and intensity of storm events based on a 30-year timeseries of observations.
• Assessing coastal erosion risk by analyzing clustered storm events and their multivariate characteristics.
• Fitting marginal distributions (e.g., Generalised Pareto for wave height) and constructing joint distributions using Copula functions.
• Examining temporal dependencies and anti-clustering patterns in storm event timings.

Strengths

• Based on a 30-year timeseries of observations, providing a long-term climate perspective.
• Storm events are defined using a peaks-over-threshold approach with a 95% exceedance quantile (2.93 m) and manually checked for meteorological independence.
• Multivariate analysis includes key storm parameters: wave height, period, direction, duration, surge, and time.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the specific study sites on the Australian coast.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Extracted from a 30-year observational timeseries using a peaks-over-threshold approach and manual meteorological system checks.

Time Range

Covers a 30-year period (specific dates unknown).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-25 18:58:27.033456; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Eastern and southern coast of Australia, with a specific study site on the central coast of New South Wales.