ToonTalk.Show Cartoon Bite: Drought

The Bureau of Meteorology has characterised the Millennium Drought as primarily affecting: • Southern Australia (rainfall in northern Australia was above average during the same period). • Cool season (April to October) rainfall, other than for Tasmania where rainfall was well below historical averages in both warm and cool seasons. Although the period of the Millennium Drought was characterised by several El Niño weather patterns, which affect the entire southern Pacific region and typically bring hot and dry conditions to eastern Australia, it cannot be explained purely by natural variability. The Bureau of Meteorology concluded that climate change exacerbated the extent and severity of the drought. The effects of the drought on water availability was compounded by historically high temperatures over the same period. The Bureau of Meteorology's head of climate analysis, David Jones, released statistics showing that in 2007 South Australia, NSW, Victoria, the ACT and the Murray–Darling basin all set temperature records by a very large margin. 2007 was the eleventh year in a row that the Murray–Darling basin had experienced above average temperatures and was (at that time) Australia's sixth-warmest year on record. Jones warned that "There is absolutely no debate that Australia is warming... it may be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent." Reference: Wikipedia