An empirical investigation into long-term climate change in Australia

In this paper, we undertake an empirical investigation into the possibility of climate change in Australian centres using average monthly air temperatures for six sites around the country over the period 1901:1–1998:12. By estimating a multivariate structural time series model and carrying out the appropriate tests, it is concluded that the temperature series is I(1). A graphical inspection of the extracted trends reveals that temperature has an upward trend in many centres. Given that the data may involve measurement errors, the results should be treated with caution.