We hate to rain on your parade, but we have some bad news — you have probably been reading the weather forecast all wrong. The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) forecasts help us make decisions each day about what […]
Read more
My PhD research looks into how we can provide earlier indications of flood hazard at the global scale. One way of doing this is through seasonal forecasts of high (or low) river flow. Seasonal forecasts are designed to […]
Read more
Diverting water earmarked for the environment to help drought-hit farmers would “absolutely” breach the federal Water Act, says David Papps, the former head of the Commonwealth Environment Water Office. Mr Papps was responding to Barnaby Joyce, the former […]
Read more
Version 2 of the Fine-Root Ecology Database is bigger, better, and free to download and use. Fine roots are complex and dynamic structures that serve many critical roles for land plants. Their well-known importance for acquiring water and […]
Read more
“The sky, a great flaming oven. Grass withered; water gone; famine-stricken, blear-eyed bullocks, staggering pathetically … Skeletons and bones everywhere.” So reads a tale of the terrible drought that scorched western Queensland in June 1902. Earlier that year, Sydneysiders […]
Read more
Australia’s rainfall events are already becoming more intense with climate change, raising the risks of flashflooding and potentially exceeding the nation’s engineering codes, a new study finds. While it’s long been understood the atmosphere holds about 6.5 per […]
Read more
Currently, flood risk management practitioners in Australia mostly use event-based models (simulating a single flood event in isolation) as opposed to continuous models (simulating runoff dynamically over time). However, there is a commonly held belief in the hydrology […]
Read more
Hydrologic models are the most important tools for decision makers and scientists to assess water resources availability, risks due to flooding and the health of our waterways. Improving our hydrologic modelling toolbox remains a critical research area, with much […]
Read more
One of the likely effects of rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is an increase in plant water use efficiency. This is due to the expected enhancement of photosynthesis under future atmospheric CO2 concentrations, together with a partial […]
Read more
Groundwater serves as the primary source of drinking water for more than 3 billion people around the world. The year-round availability and low infrastructure requirements like major dams and canals, made groundwater irrigation a convenient choice for farmers. […]
Read more
Water management and agricultural planning in New South Wales is set to receive a significant boost with 33 new seasonal streamflow forecasting sites coming online. Monitoring these sites allows the Bureau of Meteorology to forecast likely streamflow volumes […]
Read more
Doctors learn a lot about their patients’ health by taking their temperature. An elevated temperature, or fever, can be a sign of illness. The same goes for plants, but their temperatures on a global scale are harder to […]
Read more
For the first time, water for the environment has flowed through a 2000-kilometre network of rivers in the northern Murray–Darling Basin, reaching the Menindee Lakes near Broken Hill. Murray–Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) head of compliance Russell James and […]
Read more
New data recording the past 1,500 years of flows in the Brisbane River have revealed that South-East Queensland’s climate – once assumed to be largely stable – is in fact highly variable. Until now, we have only had access to […]
Read more
The CSIRO Centre for Earth Observation will help Australian researchers maximise the benefits of observing Earth from space and further develop Australia’s space sector, which is estimated to be worth over $3 billion per year (APAC Report 2015 […]
Read more
Advancement in measurement technologies and improvements in computational capability have led to complex models to simulate highly non-linear and non-stationary systems. In such a complex simulation system, calibration is an inseparable component. A common challenge in most calibration […]
Read more
I am glad to announce that Remote Sensing in Earth Systems Sciences (RSESS), a new journal with Springer, is now accepting submissions for its inaugural 2018 volume. You are cordially invited to submit your work as well as […]
Read more
Like numerous basin aquifers in Australia and around the world, the Adelaide Plains aquifers contain water derived from adjacent mountains – the Mount Lofty Ranges in this case. The reason is simple: mountains typically benefit from higher precipitation […]
Read more
Quantifying evapotranspiration (ET) is key to understanding the water budget at the regional and global scales. At the site scale, flux tower networks provide direct observations of ET, however, both precipitation and streamflow are monitored with wider networks […]
Read more
The southern states of Australia have been experiencing unseasonably hot weather this autumn. Instead of enjoying a cool change after a harsh summer, in the first two months of autumn we have seen record-breaking temperatures, bushfires, and blistering […]
Read more