[ExI] Oz Big Dry

[BillK]

On 5/4/07, Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> May 4, 2007
> Op-Ed Columnist, nytimes.com
> The Aussie 'Big Dry'
> By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
> SYDNEY, Australia
>
> Almost everywhere you travel these days, people
> are talking about their weather ­ and how it has
> changed. Nowhere have I found this more true,
> though, than in Australia, where "the big dry," a
> six-year record drought, has parched the Aussie
> breadbasket so severely that on April 19, Prime
> Minister John Howard actually asked the whole
> country to pray for rain. "I told people you have
> to pray for rain," Mr. Howard remarked to me,
> adding, "I said it without a hint of irony."
>
<snip>
>
> Politics gets interesting when it stops raining.
>


<http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=31&set_id=1&art_id=nw20070402225835747C285911>

 April 03 2007 at 01:41AM

Sydney - Nature lovers are making their way to Australia's normally
parched interior for what some believe is a once-in-a-lifetime
experience.
Huge monsoon rains in the north-east of the continent have swollen
streams into raging rivers that are now gushing over the salt flats of
Lake Eyre in outback South Australia.


<http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/58591707-32F4-4C10-AFA3-42F3D4415729.htm>
(with pictures)

APRIL 02, 2007
Desert lake springs to life 		
By 	Dan Nolan in Lake Eyre, Australia

Lake Eyre draws in water from one-sixth of the Australian continent
A rare phenomenon underway in Australia's biggest and driest lake is
part of a change in weather systems that scientists say could end the
country's worst drought in 100 years.

The water has traveled a long way too, taking two months to snake its
way through a maze of rivers and creeks left parched by Australia's
worst drought in 100 years.

Scientists believe the changes may herald an end to Australia's record drought
That rain came with the demise of El Nino, the dry weather system
dreaded by Australian farmers. It occurs when the waters of the
Pacific Ocean are cooler causing reduced evaporation and therefore
less rain clouds in northern Australia.

But climate scientists believe it may now be switching to a wetter
system known as La Nina – a system not seen in Australia since 2000,
the year Lake Eyre last flooded.
"It doesn't guarantee rain," says Professor Matthew England from the
Climate Change Research Centre. "But generally speaking a year where
there's a La Nina event we'll see higher rainfall to the north of
Australia and we're seeing the start of those effects this year with
northern Australia getting a lot of rainfall."

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BillK