Australian Drought–A Year On
By Paul Homewood
A year ago, all eyes were on the Australian drought in the Southeast:
But looking back now, just how bad was it?
The most up to date figures we have are for the Financial Year to June 2019, and these show that that rainfall anomalies for the last two years are by no means unprecedented in Southeastern Australia, the most badly affected region.
There have been twelve years drier than this last financial year since 1900. Cumulatively, the last few years have been close to average.
Dry years are in fact much more common than wetter than average ones, with 73 years since 1900 drier than the 1961-90 average. That is because the average is skewed upwards by a small number of extremely wet years.
The total rainfall chart below shows just how enormously variable annual rainfall can be there. There is clearly no such thing as a “normal” year.
It also includes a 10-year running average, which illustrates just how little things have changed.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Scaremongering headline again from that once respected organ which now jumps on the tabloid bandwagon for moronic headlines. Hence my cancelled subscription last year.
The world is a big place with ever varying random weather, there will always be somewhere that farming fails or is poor for a year or longer.
Fortunately somewhere else with have a bumper year.
Thanks to fossil fuel enabled climate resilience, nation-feeding quantities of food can be stored/preserved and readily shipped around the globe.
The eco-fanatics want to ban fossil fuels and watch people die instead.
Another nothingburger from climate alarm-land.
Most of Canada is the the same way. Too much rain and then not enough
The UAH Global Anomalies figures:
OCTOBER + 0.46
September + 0. 61
August + 0.38
July + 0.38
June + 0.47
Always exciting.
October CET was the coldest relative to ‘normal’ month all year, about 10.0C (-0.7C ref. 1961-90). Ranked joint 201st of 361.
Unfortunately I can’t post images here. I downloaded the raw data and plotted cumulative rainfall. Tells you all you need to know – check it out😉
Hi Mike
It’s possible if you save your image(s) as *.JPG, then upload them via https://postimages.org
Then, copy & paste the provided *.jpg link directly into your comment
Australia’s (like california) normal climate is one of drought. This is punctuated by occasional floods from tropical storms. So drought in Aus just means climate is normal.
Next they’ll tell us that drought in the sahara is alarming, or rain in Ireland signals climate change.
Yep, Heller clipping on Australian weather long before climate change was a thing.
More history for BOM to expunge.
It won’t surprise anyone that the floods in Queensland in 2010 – 2011 were attributed to CC™, as will the next flood, as will the next drought.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/qld-floods-linked-to-climate-change
Of course the enthusiasts have that covered in ‘CC™ causes extremes’ so the question is: are extreme weather events becoming more extreme and even if they are what of the attribution puzzle?
And by what tortured reasoning process is building more wind and solar farms the logical response to drought, instead of more water storage?
Through a maze of state and federal regulatory instruments the greens are able to stall approvals for dams etc. for years until plans are abandoned through exhaustion.
The greens’ objections to dams parallel their objections to nuclear power.
Yes, the drought continues here in eastern Australia with another hot summer approaching. However, similarly severe droughts have occurred many times in the past; on average every 10-15 years.
For example at Wellington, a badly affected locality in the Central West region of New South Wales, since 1880 there are many (11) previous droughts of similar or worse severity than the present 2014-2019 drought: 1881-1886, 1898-1903, 1911-1916, 1918-1924, 1926-1930, 1935-1940, 1942-1947, 1963-1968, 1978-1983, 1990-1995 & 2002-2007. https://briangunterblog.wordpress.com/
Similar statistics apply to other locations in eastern Australia. Tenterfield in the far NE corner of NSW is an exception with the present drought being the most severe on record. Plus, of course, the present drought continues so maybe next year the conclusions will be different.
So what is different with the present drought? Based on rainfall totals it is not unusual, but other factors may be relevant. Maybe warmer temperatures or a different time distribution of the rainfall that has occurred. Or maybe non-meteorological factors such as the present economic situation of many farmers or changed cropping or stocking rates in recent times. I don’t know, but the present situation is dire for many farmers and farming communities.
“I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges, of drought and flooding rains”
Written by an Australian poet in…..1908
There are interesting parallels with the Federation Drought in the last years of the 19thC.
There were three back-to-back el Ninos. We’ve now likewise had the same thing since 2015, although the current Modokai el Nino is weak. Also the Indian Ocean Dipole at present is unfavourable, which tends to exacerbate drought.
Another interesting thing is the Federation Drought occurred about 120 years ago, which suggests it took place in about the same phase of the ~60 year cycle as we are now at.
Australian governments have built almost no storage dams in the last 50 years despite very rapid population rise through immigration. My town has gone into stage 1 water restrictions for the first time in 25 years. It will be interesting to see how cities like Sydney and Melbourne fare if we have a repeat of the FD.
Looks like some cyclic activity with the spells of positives following spells of negatives. A similar cyclical pattern can be seen with UK weather as seen on my website when I looked at the figures after Dame Julia Slingo got worried that we were all going to drown.
Once again people shrieking about extremes based on a non-existent average.