Dry zone expansion hits Australia’s autumn rains – says CSIRO

The SMH peddles this example of scaremongering by taxpayer funded science.
Unfortunately for the authors the last three Autumns have not followed their plan.
Autumn 2010 rain deciles

Autumn 2011 rain deciles

Autumn 2012 rain deciles

The world just not behaving for the warmistas.

8 thoughts on “Dry zone expansion hits Australia’s autumn rains – says CSIRO”

  1. WARWICK;
    I have a book published in 1975 which describes the expansion of the Hadley cells during warm times, and contraction of same in cooler times. So there is nothing controversial about the idea that the decending branch of the Hadley cell moves S (or N above the equator) when there is Global Warming.

    But it would take someone fixated on Global Warming to insist this is what is happening during a Quiet Sun period. They are describing what they think should be happening, meanwhile in the real world….

  2. Warwick
    What do you think of the Water Corp ad that says (not verbatim) Perth’s water supply used to be the most reliable in the world… But with climate change… Blah blah blah. Isn’t, or hasn’t, the climate always changed.

    Furthermore, an hour or two research will show Perth has had a major drought about every 7-13 years ever since 1840!!!?

    Water Corp send out some dodgy graph with 3 different averages based on three different timescales to prove their right. I’m not a scientist but that is dodgy!!!!

  3. Water Corp send out dodgy bills too… WA quangos have a problem sticking to currency regulations — they cash-round on invoice totals. Cash rounding is only valid if cash is tendered as payment and only a multiple of 5 cents is available.

    But back to the “climate” agenda: Watercorp like to publish “streamflows”, which is the water that runs into the reservoirs of the catchments.

    A while ago, Warwick looked at the rainfall on the catchments and detected a strong divergence between streamflows and rainfall starting in the 1980’s(?). That coincides with government policy changes to catchment management. Catchment management is indicated more strongly as the cause of reduction in streamflows than a change in rainfall. (Perth rainfall is irrelevant as Perth isn’t part of any catchment.)

    (Sorry; I’d provide a URL but my brain is turning fuzzy right now.)

  4. Gidday Lysander & all –
    Talking about WaterCorp misleading people – can I suggest you take the link to my Water category (way down bottom left)-
    here it is –
    www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?cat=5
    it is fairly quick to flick thru checking the headlines on each page then click “Previous Entries” at the bottom of each page. The Perth articles are obvious.

    On the 8th page of ‘Water articles’ is this WaterCorp propaganda – in July 2007 they published a full page newspaper advert using our money of course – I have it scanned –
    W.A. Govt propaganda takes water supply “post rain”
    Anybody interested in my earlier articles on BoM Outlooks – they should all be in the Water category pages.

    A few other pages re key Perth issues –
    Catchment thinning – informative press article
    This online pdf file discusses forest thinning to increase water yield.
    The diagram I use from the Higgins Catchment at;
    is from a Water Corp pdf file that I am yet to rediscover.
    However it is used on page 28 in the ~10MB 2005_Wungong_project_document.pdf – second listing in this search.
    There never was a rain shortage to justify seawater desalination for Perth’s water supply
    Re thinning, my point is that WaterCorp know exactly what to do – but they are wasting time and money on this 12 yr trial on 3% of Perth catchments – when they could just quietly get on with it.
    People have said – but the “Barnett Liberal government is not indebted in any way to the “Greens”, – not quite true, they must fear the Greens – do you remember the Liberals For Forests Movement that split the Liberal vote and contributed to their losing the 2001 election. Doctors wives !! So Liberal water policies go along basically with Labor.
    Because he benefited from the Liberals for Forests revolt – Geoff Gallop made it a mantra not to offend the Greens and to cement the Labor/Greens preference swaps. That has all lead on to the GreenLabor Govts we see today Federally and now in the ACT where policies that 90% would agree with are sidelined in favour of policies that appease the 10%.
    Apologies for the rave on,
    WSH

  5. Considering the CSIRO paper was not submitted until July this year I find it odd that they did not at least include 2011 data. Of course it would not have helped their conclusions re Australia. And if they had checked rain data through Autumn 2012, they might have had second thoughts about even submitting the paper.

  6. The original article has some priceless quotes:

    If anything, the models are underestimating the shift going on, particularly in mid to late autumn, Dr Cai said.
    “We are now seeing in the majority of models in the future showing a dry zone expansion poleward,” he said. “Unfortunately, for reasons we don’t understand, in April and May climate models produce a polar expansion about a factor of 10 too small [compared with observations].”

    The models are fine, just predicting changes 90 per cent smaller than observations? So that “if anything” they are underestimating? Well, yes, just a smidgen…

    The polar shift in weather systems appears to be caused by a combination of increased carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and ozone depletion, Dr Cai said.
    While the reduction in ozone-depleting chemicals may help slow or reverse the poleward shift in weather systems, the gains may be more than offset by the continued rise in greenhouse gas concentrations, he said.

    So the polar shift is “caused by a combination” of GHGs which cause polar shift, and fewer ozone-depleting chemicals which counteract the shift. Despite the counteraction, the actual change is ten times what the models predict. Real clear message there.

    “We’ve noticed a lot of farmers in Victoria comment that autumn breaks, or autumn rainfall, is something that in the last 20 years have become much less predictable,” he said. “There’s no resistance to that message because it’s sort of matching their observations.”

    Cockies whinge about unpredictable rain. Now that really is news, never heard of that happening before. As a result, they don’t resist the message that models predict less rain, despite the fact that the models are out by a factor of 10. Oh, and despite the fact that…rainfall has now been higher than average three years running!

  7. “The shift poleward is caused by a combination of…”
    Oh, that great 18th century sceptic David Hume would have reveled in our time.
    “I see on the billiard table before me, a ball moving and it strikes a second ball which then moves and I must own that I cannot see some third term betwixt them!”
    Global Warming, David, Global Warming!

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