There is growing evidence that lower rainfall and reduced runoff in the south-east of Australia
is linked to global warming.
That’s just one of the findings discussed at a science review for land and water resource managers organised by the South-Eastern Australia Climate Initiative (SEACI) in Melbourne yesterday.
SEACI, which began in 2006, is a three-year, $7 million collaboration between six agencies to provide the most intensive analysis yet of factors responsible for the rainfall decline over the past decade and inflows into the Murray-Darling river systems.
The Murray-Darling Basin Commission is the managing agency of the program.
MDBC chief executive,Wendy Craik, said Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO research for SEACI had generated increasing evidence of the impacts of global warming on rainfall in the south-east of Australia.
"The research shows there are firm signals in the current drought that correlate with future projections of reduced rainfall in southern Australia," Dr Craik said.
"It also provides evidence of a clear north-south rainfall divide on either side of a naturally-occurring band of high pressure (known as the sub-tropical ridge) roughly on a line running east to west through Adelaide and Canberra."
Dr Craik said the Melbourne meeting also discussed SEACI’s work on an extensive review of a century of rainfall and temperature records and a refinement of climate models to deliver localised seasonal forecasts.
SOURCE: SEACI