The drought seems to be getting worse

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Originally Posted by SBD4

I think is would be fair to say the point being made is not whether or not Australia is a dry continent but rather that it seems much drier than it has been previously.

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I'm not convinced it is correct to say that Australia is drier than previously. We don't have the data for 2019 yet, but 2018, for which data are available, was the 39'th driest since 1900 (Annual climate statement 2018). The BOM link shows annual rainfall trends, and there is no evidence that rainfall is decreasing.

Where we do have a problem is that the number of people in Australia keeps goes up, largely driven by immigration, so even if rainfall is on average constant (as I think the evidence shows) the per capita availability of water, sourced from rainfall, is decreasing.

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Originally Posted by Saitch

The thing is, you have to define "Previously". Whatever records there are must be considered recent in the big scheme.
I think what Eevo and more so, Discomick, are alluding to is the fact that, for the last/first 231 years since the 1st Fleet arrival, most people in Oz have been trying to create a European styled economy i.e. sheep, cattle and various crops, in a significantly non-Euro climate.

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Sorry, I didn't pick up on that...and if that's what they are saying then yes I agree and, yes "previously" is very recent.

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Originally Posted by 1984V8110

I'm not convinced it is correct to say that Australia is drier than previously. We don't have the data for 2019 yet, but 2018, for which data are available, was the 39'th driest since 1900 (Annual climate statement 2018). The BOM link shows annual rainfall trends, and there is no evidence that rainfall is decreasing.

Where we do have a problem is that the number of people in Australia keeps goes up, largely driven by immigration, so even if rainfall is on average constant (as I think the evidence shows) the per capita availability of water, sourced from rainfall, is decreasing.

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I agree with the last part of your statement though, how much rain falls out of the sky is only part of the equation, where it falls and how quickly along with how hot it is determines how much of it gets into and stays in the ground therefore how dry it is.

Naturally, there'll always be parts of the country getting good rain when others are getting none.

PS I knew I would regret posting such a generalised statement.[wink11]

The other issue is that while the country as a whole may not be getting drier, some parts do appear to be, compensated for by the fact that other parts are getting wetter. Problem is, the parts that are getting less rain are parts that already had less, and the parts with more rain had plenty anyway.

Compounding this is the fact that the increased temperatures, especially when coupled with low humidity and strong wins such as we had here in the first few months of the year, mean that we are drier than would have been expected for the same rainfall deficit a few decades ago.

And confounding all of this is that to really see climate trends, we need much longer data sets - Australia as a whole has only had reasonable data going back a little over a century, if that. We really need a couple of hundred years of data to confirm long term trends.

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Originally Posted by JDNSW

Yes, but Antarctica is far drier.

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probably why they dont have much agriculture down there.


if the drought is getting worse or aust is getting drier, instead if complaining, maybe we should be moving to farming methods that are more suited to our dry climate.

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Originally Posted by Eevo

if the drought is getting worse or aust is getting drier, instead if complaining, maybe we should be moving to farming methods that are more suited to our dry climate.

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That is what we are doing,what else can we do?

We have records going back to the 1920's for the property.The last 5 yrs has been worse than anything on those records.

There has never not been good or reasonable summer rains,apart from a couple of years around 1965.

Winter storms were aways quite common,they haven't occurred for the last few years either.

Could be a cycle,who knows.

Its definitely patchy,areas 120Km north west have had reasonable rain,in fact some properties have had good rain.

Goondiwindi isnt too bad either,but Warwick,Stanthorpe, is very bad.

We just have to work with what we have.

Hopefully we will get rain soon,but not floods.

They are predicting a very dry Spring and Summer,but thats probably a good guess.

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Originally Posted by JDNSW

And confounding all of this is that to really see climate trends, we need much longer data sets - Australia as a whole has only had reasonable data going back a little over a century, if that. We really need a couple of hundred years of data to confirm long term trends.

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I vaguely remember, 20 years ago perhaps, a TV report on an Australian scientist carrying out drought research by studying coral.
She stated that there is a correlation between the condition and number of rings a cut piece of coral has to the amount of rain over a certain period. These rings are similar to the growth rings of a tree trunk.
I'm sure she said some of the droughts of yore were around 30-40 years duration.

Also, there was something more recent about ice core drilling in Antarctica, which shows that there was a drought from 1100AD to 1200AD, although I'm not sure of the accuracy of this report as I can't remember how I found it.

Yes, you can get information on past climate from a variety of sources, including trees, coral, ice cores, seafloor sediments etc. But these do not give daily rainfall measurements for the entire continent, although they can give clues.

This seems like a useful summary.
Climate change in Australia - Wikipedia

I guess one point is there have always been huge regional variations.
Another point is we have warmed by one degree in a century.
We certainly do need to do better at adapting to our climate, which is very different to Europe's.
Some ideas for adapting agriculture are here, but there are also other possibilities.
Department of Agriculture


Adapting to a changing climate

Well, the channel country looks fantastic at the moment, there are wet creeks , waterways and waterholes as far as you can see. The Cooper Basin is just alive at the moment.

Conversely I dont think I have seen Kati Thanda South looking so brown and dry.

As someone else said all the western rivers are dead, and some may not recover.

I just came back from my trip into SA deserts and hardly saw a roo or an emu or a dingo , very little bird life.

Many road gangs are doing minimal work other than a light grade as there is no water , so we may see degradation of many outback roads.

Dust is hanging making road visibility quite bad. At one stage I actually had to stop while travelling behind a road train as I became spatially disorientated.

Might be interesting next year if no rain.

My cattle station friends as a group....The Williams Cattle Company.... are holding on but they are lucky enough to own a farm...Carrieton....on the edge of the Flinders and they are able to use their own trucks to take feed up for the cattle, their calves still look good , but that's because of best practise management.