Australia’s Droughts Decreasing, Contrary To Warmists’ Claims
By Paul Homewood
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15625626/ns/weather/t/australia-drought-could-be-worst-years/#.U2-fOyjZj9s
Remember the claims a few years ago about “record droughts” in Australia? And claims by Tim Flannery that “climate change will impact on Australia to the point where Sydney can expect to receive 60 per cent less rainfall than it does at present.”
According to Wiki:
The 2000s drought in Australia, also known as the Millennium drought, is said by some to be the worst recorded since settlement.
As we know, since then Australia has had more than its fair share of rain, and I don’t want to dwell on this. Instead, though, I want to concentrate on the longer term rainfall trends there.
The graph below comes from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and shows rainfall anomalies. The black line is the 10-year average.
Three things are quite clear:
1) The drought around the turn of the century was barely noticeable, compared with earlier droughts.
2) Rainfall levels took a step up in 1973, and, despite ups and downs, the underlying trends have remained above pre 1973 levels.
3) The heavy rainfall in 2010 and 2011 fell way short of the record year of 1974.
Of course, there are regional variations. The worst affected area in recent years, that the 1000-year claim specifically relates to, was the Murray-Darling Basin. Yet, even there, the drought was neither as intense, nor as long lasting, as droughts in the 1930’s and 40’s. The driest year of the lot was 1902.
The 1000 Year claim is all part of the systematic lying that has taken place in recent years to convince the public of the dangers of global warming.
There are two other issues that are worth expanding on.
1) It is often claimed that heat makes drought worse, because of greater evaporation. However things are not as simple as this, as Professor Stewart Franks explains:
Immediately following the 2002-3 El Niño and Murray Darling Basin drought, Professor David Karoly authored a report under the auspices of the WWF-Australia. In this he noted that whilst rainfall had been low, the air temperatures had been particularly elevated. This led Karoly to claim that:
The higher temperatures caused a marked increase in evaporation rates, which sped up the loss of soil moisture and the drying of vegetation and watercourses. This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed.
While this may sounds intuitively correct, it is wrong. It completely ignores the known science of evapotranspiration and boundary layer meteorology. That is, when soil contains high moisture content, much of the sun’s energy is used in evaporation and consequently there is limited heating of the surface. However, during drought, soil moisture content is low and consequently nearly all of the incoming radiation is converted into heating the surface. The result is that air temperatures rise significantly.
So drought makes heat, and not the other way round.
2) Flannery also makes the statement
“Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture”
However, he ignores the other side of the equation, CO2 fertilisation. It is scientifically accepted that increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere reduces the need for water in the photo synthesis process.
Translation – If elevated CO2 causes the water use of individual leaves to drop, plants in arid environments will respond by increasing their total numbers of leaves.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/greening-of-the-planet/
Put another way, extra CO2 means that plants need LESS WATER, and not more.
There is no way that Flannery does not understand this. After all, it was CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, which is Australia’s national science agency, which published this report on the CO2 greening of the planet.
Which all raises the question – why are we being continually lied to?
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Reblogged this on the WeatherAction Blog.
My take on the “lied to” part: There needs to be a category of lies called “religious lies.” For example, some preachers believe there is a passage in the good book that suggests poisonous snakebites will not harm believers as long as they are anointed by God. If a believer tells you he is anointed and won’t be harmed – is that a lie?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/16/us/snake-salvation-pastor-bite/index.html
Oops!
What stands out to me is the almost continuous drought conditions from c1900 to c1950, the most recent date the settled science has set for the malign influence of Man on the planet becoming manifest The increase in CO2 correlates with a marked DECREASE in drought conditions. We are therefore left with the hypothesis that, (a) increased greenhouse gases have been net beneficial to the Australian climate or, (b) that Australian drought conditions are mainly controlled by a climate cycle as yet not understood, and that greenhouse gases have a minor effect. Oh Dear.
Are we in danger of conflating Australian-wide rainfall figures and regional ones?
By the way, monthly global temperature update for March is running a bit late Paul. Some results for April have already been reported.
Normal service will be resumed shortly!!
Looking at the State level, all except Victoria show increasing rainfall. Victoria has wetter spell between 1950 & 2000, but has since returned to early 20thC levels.
Australia was dryer 100y ago than it is now. Then people built dams and irrigated = that produced extra moisture on the land and attracted more clouds from the sea. Also, the clouds get lower and drop the rain, when is more water storages and moisture con the ground. BUT:
that was mostly on the south-eastern corner of the country; where the population and records are. On the rest of the continent continued to get dryer – that extra dry heat is now destroying the beneficial effects created by dams &irrigation
2] Tim Flannery is the ”Scare-monger” # one in Australia; if he was personally worried about droughts, how come he is against building dams and saving the floodwater? :http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/5floods-droughts-we-dont-need-to-have/