Yahoo News 2 Sep 08;
Rivers in Australia's most important farming region are in critical condition thanks to the long-running drought, with no sign of an end to the 'big dry,' officials said Tuesday.
The Murray-Darling Basin Commission, which monitors the east coast region that accounts for some 40 percent of the nation's farming production, said the level of water entering the Murray River was at a record low.
Winter inflows were at their equal fifth-lowest in 117 years of records while in the two years to August, water entering the system was at a record low after persistent poor rainfall over the past seven years.
"We're continuing to establish new records that we don't particularly wish to establish," the commission's chief executive Wendy Craik told reporters.
"There's really no relief in sight. I think we can say the drought's continuing to worsen."
Australia's three longest rivers, the Murray, the Darling and the Murrumbidgee, form the Murray Darling Basin which runs from Queensland state in the north, through New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia states to the south.
The Bureau of Meteorology has said the system needs several months of torrential rain to return the rivers to health, but that such a weather pattern was not on the horizon.
"The outlook for the Murray system remains very serious," Craik said an earlier statement.
"Critical human needs can now be met through to next winter but water availability for irrigation remains very low."
Drought and irrigation have so depleted the system that freshwater lower lakes at the mouth of the Murray are turning to acid while a lack of flow along the waterways is causing headaches for farmers and environmental damage.
"Things are getting to a very critical stage with environmental deterioration and degradation right along the system and, of course, irrigators and communities are suffering as well," she said.
Craik said the fear was that after poor winter rains, spring will bring rising temperatures which further reduce water levels through evaporation.
"This drought has the fingerprints of climate change all over it," she said. "So chances are, we might be in for this for a while for the future I think."
Drought in Australia Food Bowl Worsens
Rob Taylor, PlanetArk 3 Sep 08;
CANBERRA - Drought in Australia's main food growing region of the Murray-Darling river system has worsened, with water inflows over the past two years at an all-time low, the government's top water official said on Tuesday.
The drought will hit irrigated crops such as rice, grapes and horticulture the hardest, but would have less impact on output of wheat, which depends largely on rainfall during specific periods and is on track to double after two years of shrunken crops.
The rainfall is sufficient to support hopes for a strong wheat harvest, but not enough to replenish ground water, which troubles those farmers who grow fruit rather than grain.
The record drought, which has gripped much of the country for close to a decade, was the worst in 117 years of record-keeping, with 80 percent of eucalyptus trees already dead or stressed in the region as large as France and Germany combined.
"It seems to me from what we've seen to date, there's no indication that it's going to end in the immediate future," said Wendy Craik, chief executive of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission which controls water use and flows in the rivers.
Average rainfall allowed many wheat farmers to plant crops in July, but had not reversed seven years of inflows at their lowest level since 1900, with a dry spring likely ahead, said Neil Plummer, the Acting Head of the National Climate Centre.
"What we really need to make some inroads in the situation is a big wet, and what our weather models aren't showing is a strong likelihood of a big wet over the next few months," Plummer told reporters in Canberra.
The July rains kept alive hopes of a good wheat harvest, with Australia forecast to recover from the last two drought years to boost the national 2008/09 wheat harvest to around 23.7 million tonnes, according to the official Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE).
Last year's crop was just 13.0 million tonnes and a farm forecaster this week said September would be a "make or break" month for crops sown this winter.
The Murray-Darling accounts for 41 percent of Australia's agriculture and provides A$21 billion (US$17.8 billion) worth of farm exports to Asia and the Middle East. Around 70 percent of irrigated agriculture comes from the basin.
The drought has already wiped more than A$20 billion from the US$1 trillion economy since 2002.
Craik said August rainfall was below average and inflows to dams and rivers during the month was only 275 gigalitres (GL), less than a fifth of the long-term average of 1,550 GL.
Dam storages, relied upon by food bowl irrigators heading into the spring and fierce Australian summer, were only 20 percent of capacity.
"The outlook for the Murray system remains very serious. Critical human needs can now be met through to next winter, but water availability for irrigation remains very low," Craik said.
Slowly warming temperatures, she said, were exacerbating the long dry, with climate scientists warning that every rise of 1.0C reducing river inflows by 15 percent in what was already the world's driest inhabited continent.
"Even with average rainfall, you won't get average inflows and the catchment dries out significantly. When it does rain in winter, we don't get the run-off that we used to," Craik said.
Plummer said the only bright spots on the climate horizon were benign neutral conditions in the Pacific and Indian oceans, which both strongly influenced Australia's weather pattens.
"That doesn't necessarily mean there will be average or above average rainfall," he said. (US$1=A$1.18) (Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
