On my way to work, I walk across the intersection of Knuckey and Wood streets. Most days a homeless man on his haunches is mouthing bureaucratic platitudes: Let’s workshop this? We need to have meeting about this! Can […]
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Drought is in the news here in New South Wales, Australia. But how are rainfall, drought and groundwater related? First, we need to understand what drought is. Is it a water shortage? Or a lack of rainfall? Or […]
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Two years ago we were celebrating just about the best year for farmers ever. Now many farmers – particularly in New South Wales and southern Queensland – are in the grip of drought. It underlines just how variable […]
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With Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s National Drought Summit on today, state and federal political leaders will be pressured to “drought-proof” Australia. We have seen it all before –ideas from the bottom drawer of past policies, reflecting Australia’s obsession […]
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It’s not about more money for farmers. It’s about long-term settings for a changing climate – and taking the politics out of it Central to the Australian meaning of drought is the idea of a rainfall deficiency, a […]
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Evaporation pans measure atmospheric evaporative demand and are used to estimate water loss from storages such as dams and to provide inputs to hydrologic models and drought indices. In the late 20th century, a surprising trend was found: […]
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All over the world, the wind is slowing. Bit by bit, low-level land wind speeds have been decreasing since reliable records began in the 1970s. It is called “the stilling”. The decline was silently sneaking through under the […]
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Australians should brace for a dry, hot summer, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, with no relief for drought-stricken farmers. The bureau’s climate outlook for November to January, released on Friday, says there is an 80% chance temperatures […]
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Lake Eyre is one of Australia’s most iconic wetlands, home to thousands of waterbirds that migrate from all over Australia and the world. But it is often dry for decades between floods. Many people think wetlands are swamps […]
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The inaugural OzFlux-AsiaFlux Conference was held in Darwin this year, hosted by Charles Darwin University’s Research Institute of the Environment and Livelihoods (RIEL). The conference (OAFlux18) addressed regionally specific issues associated with ecosystems, climate and land use change […]
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Barnaby Joyce, Australia’s new special envoy for drought assistance and recovery, will have to be careful he doesn’t do more harm than good. Government funding of agriculture during a drought typically falls into three categories: subsidies for farm […]
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Streamflow data underpin hydrological and climate change studies. Without such data, it is hard to understand catchment hydrological processes under climate change and non-stationarity. Unfortunately, continuous streamflow data are not always available and most gauges suffer from missing […]
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If you’ve ever walked in a rainforest or even a greenhouse, you’ll know that the air inside is heavy with moisture. This phenomenon is caused by trees releasing water vapour through pores in their leaves called stomata. We […]
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Technology is quickly catching up with water theft and the NSW Government is funding new research projects to monitor water anomalies, as well as water flows. Just a week after the new NSW water regulator announced a number […]
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So far, 2018 has been very warm and exceptionally dry over large parts of mainland Australia. The Bureau of Meteorology’s climate outlook for spring, released today, shows that significant widespread relief is unlikely. The chance of a spring […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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