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Drought in southern Australia declared ‘worst on record’

  2. MeganMcKenzie
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If you want to know what the U.S. southwest faces in the coming decades if we don’t reverse greenhouse gas emissions trends quickly, just look to Australia:

David Jones, the head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology, said the drought affecting south-west Western Australia, south-east South Australia, Victoria and northern Tasmania “is now very severe and without historical precedent”.

Dr Jones said Victoria had had “the driest multi-year period on record, but also by far the hottest….”

He said temperatures were running at about one degree “above any previous comparable drought. That is substantially hotter, and that one degree is a global warming signal.”

He said the data suggests that for every one degree of warming, there is a 15 per cent decline in run-off, or river flow, in the Murray Darling Basin….

He said a similar drying pattern had been observed in Europe’s Mediterranean, and the south-west in the USA….

The highlighted point is key. Previously, droughts around the world were either cold-whether droughts or warm-weather droughts. In the future, virtually all droughts will be hot weather droughts, which are obviously the worst kind.

He said the current dry was at the extreme end of what the climate models had predicted.

Most of the major predicted climate impacts the planet is now experiencing are at the extreme end of what the models had predicted (see “Are Scientists Overestimating — or Underestimating — Climate Change, Part I“).

Here is more on Australia’s astonishing drought:

He said the rainfall deficiencies were the largest on record.

“If you look at Victoria, where the effect has been particularly severe, in the last 12 years we have now missed out on two years of rainfall, which is an extraordinary result,” he said.

“Across Victoria as a whole, if you add up how much rainfall has been missed in 12 years, it is now up around 1300mm or four feet of rainfall, a very, very large rainfall deficit….”

The most dramatic effects have been felt by Melbourne.

Melbourne recorded its driest September on record.

“If one looks at the history of data we have for Melbourne, we have rainfall records going 150 years. We simply have not seen anything like what we currently have, not even close,” he said.

The previous longest dry for Melbourne was the six years from 1979 to 1984.

“Starting in 1997 we have had 11 years, nearly 12 years” of dry conditions.

The shape of things to come for us. The time to act is yesterday.

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MeganMcKenzie

18 responses // Drought in southern Australia declared ‘worst on record’

  •  

    I have family in South Australia. I feel I'm growing gray with worry between what's happening here in the U.S and this drought in Australia.

    natenate
  •  

    We have family friends there as well. This is just the beginning and if we--USA-- do not cut consumption and take action on all climate issues as our nations top priority it will be a global disaster.

    Our econmic crisis has developed in part because we live beyond our means which has been encouraged by neocons who "own" our country.

    This crisis can be opportunity by encouraging small business in green economy. It can be an ending of old ways and the rebirth of our nation as one that is ethical, fair, and demonstrates through behavior --not words-- how to address and solve global warming and the problems of a safe and healthy food supply.

    MeganMcKenzie
  •  
    watch this comment being used here, here and here

    As our friends in Australia suffer, the polar bears continue to die, the hurricanes get stronger, and the ocean currents that have favored us for travel and fishing throughout history leave us; I am stunned by the inactivity of our elected officials. We have to light a fire under them. WE have to swamp them with a current of correspondence and public display that are impossible to ignore or put on the back burner. Up Up and Away.

    karnathis
  •  
    watch this comment being used here, here, here, here and here

    Did you see the movie "The happening" the planet is pissed off at us. We are a blight on the planet. And just as so many species before us we will become dust in the wind.

    kennymotown
  •  

    It is a mark for the end of the world
    ~2012

    metalcookiesxy70
  •  

    Dominoes

    Nealeigh
  •  

    Agreeeeeeeeeed!

    scvar
  •  

    I'm getting thirsty looking at that image...

    LeLa_27
  •  

    Watch, the animals and wildlife will adapt to the conditions, proving the theory of evolution again. Award that reward for proof to the environment mother earth needs some money too.

    Gephoria
  •  

    Once you examine the work already accomplished upscaling desalination technology and then look at the extent to which oil dependent countries have lagged behind and you begin to see how fossilized the attitudes to green tech really are.

    The standard argument against desalination has been, "It's too expensive!"

    Compared to what? Crop failure? Evacuation of cities? People and animals dying of thirst?

    Wave, tidal power, and solar, let alone geothermal is waiting to be tapped. Elsewhere, in Europe, Spain in particular, it has been tapped.

    In Australia's desert regions solar is only too obvious.

    Our attitudes are absurd.

    What do we expect more of in the decades to come? Rising sea levels.

    What do we expect less of in the decades to come? Available unpolluted water supplies.

    With desalination and pipeline technology where could you get new water supplies?

    Rising sea levels.

    So instead we will foot-drag and whine that it's just too expensive but wars over water are price-competitive?

    This isn't an either, we reduce greenhouse gases or, we purify water - do both.

    AveryMoore
  •  

    No good news from all over the planet.

    joshuaheller
    1 response to this
  •  

    Solar Power=Solar electric, Solar Thermal, Wind, and Wave.

    Earth Power=Geo Thermal and Flowing Water.

    Recycled Waste Power=Gasification of Human Waste to produce Hydrogen, Methane Capture, and Biomass.

    Alternative fuels from plants (algae) such as Biodiesel.

    All of these are available to US, the world, NOW, If we will only focus our attention and intention on them.

    Using Solar Power or Earth Power to recycle human waste to produce Hydrogen would allow US, the world, to fulfill our needs for electricity, heat, and potable water. Using Solar Power and Earth Power to produce Hydrogen from Sea Water would allow US, the world, to fulfill our needs for electricity, heat, and potable water.

    Al Gore's challenge to be fossil fuel free within ten years can be accomplished, if we will it and are willing to let it happen.

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    WhiteCrow22
    1 response to this
  •  

    MeganMcKenzie, Karnathis, Kennymotown, Scvar, WhiteCrow22, et al,

    When the nation rallies finally to stop the bingeing on money as a form of dope, wake up, clean up, and bring America out of this brute force fantasy of global domination, we can survive the perpetual recycling of neocon imperial idiocy by letting it shrink.

    Till then how we live and adjust is up to us. No one is going to declare of environmental and economic protection, "Bring it on!" Not while one half of America wants to silence the other and shut down the knowledge network of science..

    How will the new techniques - and doubtless a lot of of seemingly archaic ones - spread?

    Monkey see: monkey do.

    AveryMoore
  •  

    This is how its going to be for all of us in not too long : ((

    natg
  •  
    http://video.google.com/videosearch?source=ig&hl=en&...
    Image...

    As painful as the climate crisis is to watch, it is only the climate changes that have convinced people beyond the treasonous rhetoric of corporate media and complicit politicians that the crisis is real and the danger is imminent.

    Since I was a child, I have felt pain with the understanding that the acts of humans are so destructive to the gifts of the earth. To understand that the arrogance of humans would allow them to cut down an ancient tree or destroy the last of an endangered species or to soil the water that is the life blood of us all...

    I understood then that we humans are like a cancer on the earth. I did not understand until now that there could be a response, an immune system response, and that we humans can be the healers of the disease.

    Check out this video, buy the book "Blessed Unrest", join the web site "wiserearth" and share my excitement about the concept that civil rights, human rights, and environmental rights and healing are the growing, dynamic movement of the now and the future.

    No one knows if it will be in time, it we will live or die, but this is the thing that will save us: US!

    We can no longer afford to let the greedy elite and the corrupt media distract us, or let our politicians deflect us. If we act now, each in their own way, to stop our species from destroying our nest.

    Thank you to Paul Hawkin for bringing this evolution to light for the rest of us.

    uppityprogressive
  •  
    watch this comment being used here and here

    Its frightening that climate change seems to be moving so fast our generation will probably live to see a environment completely different from the one that we grew up in.

    Pardon

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