RECENT research from the South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative has found south-eastern Australia is facing a future climate that will likely be characterised by longer droughts.
The latest research from SEIACI into how the atmosphere and oceans combine to produce natural impacts like droughts and floods in south-eastern Australia will be presented today at a science workshop in Canberra and will focus on the implications of their research for water resource planning and management.
“South-eastern Australia is facing a future climate which will likely be characterised by longer droughts, so SEACI will provide water managers and policy makers with improved seasonal forecasts and longer term climate projections to better plan for the future,” program director Dr David Post said.
“Water managers have faced a diverse set of challenges in recent years, ranging from the most persistent rainfall deficit of the instrumental record in the ‘Millennium Drought’ of 1997-2009, to one of the strongest La Nina events on record with widespread rainfall and flooding across Australia in 2010–2011.
“While 2010 brought welcome rains for much of south-eastern Australia, there is growing evidence from SEACI research that a long-term trend towards a drier climate is taking place.
“The next step is to determine to what extent some of the changes we have seen so far are linked to global warming, and to figure out how these conditions may change into the future in a warmer world.”
SEACI is a partnership between the CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, the Bureau of Meteorology, the Murray–Darling Basin Authority, the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, and the Australian Government’s Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.
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