Calperum Mallee Site, Monthly Rainfall Data 1995-2011, Calperum Station 

The record contains information on rainfall data recorded between 1995-2011 from 17 rain gauges across the Calperum Mallee Site, Calperum Station, South Australia. Data on mean monthly and annual rainfall and standard deviation is provided for each site, along with annual rainfall totals. 

We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. 

These gauges were established to assess spatial and temporal variation in the rainfall across the station. 

The rain gauge system was established in 1995 and is distributed across 295,000 ha of Calperum Station. Rain gauges were positioned in each of the original pastoral paddocks on the property, without any consideration of per-conceived hypotheses of rainfall gradients. Data is collected monthly. Of the 17 gauges, thirteen were established on permanent photo-monitoring sites to enable comparisons between observed changes in vegetation and rainfall variation. Every attempt was made to collect data at the end of each month, but on occasions due to limited access some sites were not collected in some months and the next months rainfall represents a cumulative total. Months when gauges were not checked are recorded as “not read” or no data is entered.

Monthly Rainfall: Where possible the gauges are recorded and emptied on the last or first day of every month. The gauges read to an accuracy of 0.5 mm. At least 2 cm of oil is placed in the gauge each month to reduce evaporation. For months with rain in excess of 25 mm the total for the month is calculated by tipping the water in the overflow cylinder into the graduated cylinder.