the rains coming re: geelong company claims it can
'Rare 50-year dry spell' to blame for drought
By Selina Mitchell
October 20, 2006 01:00am Article from: The Australian
CLIMATE change and an extended dry spell that occurs about every 50 years are to blame for the devastating drought, irrigators, scientists and water experts said yesterday.
While the extended dry is part of a natural cycle of variable events, increased temperatures from global warming would make droughts more severe and were part of the reason this drought could become Australia's worst.
"It is an overreaction to say this is climate change," the general manager of the largest irrigation company in Australia, farmer George Warne, said yesterday.
"My family has been farming (in Victoria) since 1888, and we have kept records on weather conditions," the head of Murray Irrigation said.
"I am certain a huge component of the latest drought is cyclical. That is not to say that we are ignoring climate change, or its likely impacts, or are not concerned about climate change."
The director of the CSIRO's climate program, Bryson Bates, said it was "generally accepted" the current drought was a mix of climate change and natural variability.
"We do not have science yet to be able to say what proportion is due to climate change or to natural variability," Dr Bates said yesterday.
"But there is no doubt this drought is more intense than it would otherwise be because of climate change."
The managing director of water company United Utilities, Graham Dooley, said Australia's current devastating drought was a nasty mix of natural and cyclical variability, climate change, and ElNino activity.
"About every 50 years we get a drought," Mr Dooley said.
"This latest dry is part of the typical cycle. There was the drought in the 1850s, then the early 1900s Federation drought, and then the World War II drought.
"But on top of that we are moving into a three-year El Nino event which also sees less rainfall and then there is observable climate change having an effect."
Blair Trewin, from the National Climate Centre, said there was a cyclical pattern to weather conditions in Australia in one sense, as "dry times have been experienced before".
"But we can't say a dry happens exactly every 50 years - there is no evidence of a regular cycle," Dr Trewin said.
The director of the Queensland Department of Primary Industries' Climate Impact Studies Group Roger Stone said there was not one felon to blame for the latest drought.
"Because of the very nature of droughts, you cannot attribute any particular drought to climate change," Dr Stone said.
He likened climate change to an underlying illness in a person, which could be ameliorated or exacerbated by cyclical conditions (such as a cold) at any particular time.
"There may be occasions when a natural pattern of more rain could help lessen the effects of climate change, but I think most times it will be dry cycles making it worse," he said.
