Environmental news is rarely good. But even by those low standards, 2018 was especially bad. That is the main conclusion from Australia’s Environment in 2018, the latest in an annual series of environmental condition reports, released today. Every […]
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Hydrology has evolved as a transdisciplinary, data-driven science in a remarkably short period of time. Over the past 50 years, hydrology has experienced a revolution in theory, technical application, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Space-based topographic data, real-time weather telemetry, […]
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Australia’s rainfall is among the most variable rainfall in the world. The highest rainfall is received along the coast; an area that supports more than 84% of the population of the country. Australia has seen some major changes […]
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A lack of guidelines around groundwater modelling has led to inaccurate and unreliable results, a new paper has found. In Australia, groundwater makes up about 17% of accessible water and accounts for more than 30% of the country’s […]
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As heat extremes become more commonplace, understanding the physiological response of the vegetation to temperature becomes more important. Recent experimental evidence – including collaborative work done between Western Sydney University, CLEX and other institutes – has shown that […]
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On the occasion of World Meteorological Day 2019, ECMWF Director of Research Andy Brown looks at how the theme of the Sun, the Earth and the Weather ties in with the Centre’s Earth system approach to numerical weather […]
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Brett Shearwood doesn’t like to tell people what he does for a living. He worries about the response he will get because, he says, his industry is ‘on the nose’. Mr Shearwood, an irrigation farmer from the New […]
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Hundreds of billions of litres of water is missing from the Murray-Darling Basin, according to a new report. An Australian National University (ANU) study claimed the Federal Government had grossly exaggerated the amount of water being returned to […]
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Giving irrigators a licence to divert huge volumes of water is a recipe for disaster, opponents say. Aboriginal groups, graziers, environmental groups and the former commonwealth environmental water holder have urged the New South Wales water minister to […]
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It’s not good. Not good at all. The hot dry summer has stripped the soils of moisture, water storages are down in every state and territory, and New South Wales is drowning in dust. So far this drought […]
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In the lead up to the NSW state election, UNSW’s Professor Richard Kingsford outlines what needs to be done to protect the Murray-Darling rivers and the communities that rely on them. Rivers running dry, algal blooms, more fish […]
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The recovery in the health of major river systems such as the Barwon-Darling is likely to be delayed well after the return of good rainfall because of policy changes under which irrigators will get the first right to […]
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Coupling between the land surface and the atmosphere can affect how much and when it rains. One way coupling has been uncovered in nature is through identifying when the amount of rainfall has been affected by how wet […]
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In predicting the trajectory of future climate, water and ecosystems, we can no longer ignore the many ways in which human feedbacks modify our natural systems. The 5th national OzEWEX workshop explored how well we understand stores and […]
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People have used moving water to create energy for thousands of years. Today, pumped hydro is the most common form of grid-connected energy storage in the world. This technology is in the spotlight because it pairs so well […]
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If you want a salutary example of the taxpayers’ money that can be wasted and the harm that can be done when governments yield to the temptation to prop up declining – and, in this case, environmentally damaging […]
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Most people imagine that as temperature rises, evaporation increases. While that is true under specific circumstances, in general this is not the case. This is because when evaporation increases it causes a surface to cool and thereby reducing […]
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The AUSWOT Working Group (auswot.org) is a consortium of researchers and stakeholders that aims to develop capacity within the Australian scientific community to capitalise on the next generation of Earth-observing satellites, specifically the NASA/CNES Surface Water Ocean Topography […]
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As the planet warms, subtropical regions of the Southern Hemisphere, including parts of southern Australia and southern Africa, are drying. These trends include major drought events such as Cape Town’s “Day Zero” in 2018. Climate projections suggest this […]
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Convective organisation refers to convective systems that cover a larger area and last longer than an individual convective cell. Tropical extreme rain is closely related to convective organisation, but it is unclear how it influences extreme rainfall and […]
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