From Hansard 20268 26Feb18
On page 11 – Senator URQUHART: What are the most authoritative climate change impacts for Australia’s regions?
Dr Johnson: We know that probably the most well-established trend is the drying trend in south-western Australia. We know that since 1970 that there has been a very significant drying trend in south-western Australia.
We know, and we are observing, that there is a drying trend in the south-east of Australia as well. For other parts of Australia, the signal is not as strong.

IMHO the BoM is stunningly misleading to say “For other parts of Australia, the signal is not as strong.”
A truthful statement would be along lines – “..for about half of Australia the 1970-2017 rainfall trend is increasing – getting wetter..”. To leave no doubt whatsoever you could say that from 1900-2017 the vast majority of Australia is getting wetter.
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In view that the BoM choose exactly to inform Estimates about SW WA it was also less than fully honest to fail to mention that region has just seen two cool summers in a row.
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Here is a 3rd instance where BoM could have informed Estimates better.
On top page 15 BoM says “Yes, it’s amazing the way that rainfall works in Australia. We’ve seen on a number of occasions, and Canberra being yesterday, that we can quickly go from below average over time to above average in about three hours.”

Instead of using silly unscientific words such as “amazing” perhaps a more rational organization might have pointed out to Estimates that Canberra and region experienced widespread floods exactly 6 years ago at the start of March 2012 when 179.6mm rain fell over 5 days.

It is an often heard Australian opinion – somebody will say “Oh Eastern States desal plants have been a waste of taxpayers dollars but desal was essential for Perth”.
Not so!! Facts are that many cheaper actions could have been taken by the WA Govt in 2001 to find 150GL of water PA and avoid building the desalination plants. There never was a water shortage in Perth to make seawater desal imperative. See my blog from over a decade ago. “There never was a rain shortage to justify seawater desalination for Perth’s water supply 4Dec2007” www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=145
Here are some of the actions that could have been taken as early as 2001 when the new Labor Govt made a big deal about one dry year. Both sides of politics should have argued the case with Greens that this package of measures had far less impact than energy intensive seawater desal. Premier Gallop and other politicians should not have woven a populist but dodgy story exaggerating rainfall decline.
Here is what could have been done in 2001.
[1] Get the best forestry advice and make a start managing catchment bush (press from 2002) to increase dam inflows for subsequent years. 94GL flowed into dams in 2017 despite over 20 years of catchment bush growth. The yield was 3% and that could easily be doubled with sensible catchment management run by forestry experts. Wow the extra water = Binningup desal!!
[2] Cut the Gnangara Pines and sell the timber – the timber was nowhere near as valuable as the groundwater the pines were suppressing. Labor had some sacred plan for a plywood factory. Replant the reserves with native bush – improve the Gnangara Mound water resource – point out this expansion of native bush to Greens.
[3] Begin exploiting the deeper Yarragadee groundwater – ignore “dog in the manger” whining from SW towns – the resource there is vast.
[4] Build the Agritech project to desalinate ~45GL PA of saline Wellington Dam water (~1/sixth saline as seawater) that was and has been wasted to the sea every year.
[5] Look to rivers such as the Swan, Murray, Harvey to site small dams to source saline water for desal parallel to the Agritech project. SW rivers waste ~1,000GL of weakly saline water to the sea every year – a minor proportion could be desalinated as demand required.

1 and 2 would have eliminated the immediate need for the Kwinana seawater desal and 3, 4 & 5 would have replaced Binningup and taken care of expansion out past 2020.
[6] Looking further ahead the Agritech wheatbelt salinity reduction project with canals draining saline wheatbelt water to the coast – that water could be desalinated as required – on a scale of a doubling of the Perth water supply as well as steadily restoring wheatbelt land.
See – Perth is not running out of water – water is running out of Perth.
How easily this huge myth can be slayed. So now we see that ALL Australian capital city seawater desal plants are a colossal waste of taxpayers money.

Watching Senate Estimates today swamped with Dorothy Dixers to the BoM it seems obvious somebody has cooked up a GreenLeft song sheet that we will hear more about in weeks months ahead. An example – Could a Cape Town happen here? The Australian cities running out of water 17Feb18

This ABC article trying to justify seawater desalination sums up how so much damage has been done to Australian water policy over two decades. From the very first sentence “Perth’s desalination plant has been a lifesaver..”. What utter rubbish –
1 – Perth dam catchments bush could have been managed to release more dam inflows –
2 – The Gnangara Pines should have been immediately cut to increase aquifer recharge.
3 – The SW Yarragadee deep aquifer could have easily made up any Perth shortfall and any drawdown would hardly be noticed as SW WA aquifers waste water to the sea constantly.
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5 – The Agritech Wellington Dam project should have been the starting point for 4.
Perth was never running out of water – water has been running out of Perth.
Back to the ABC article – so these top climate scientists are saying that GCM’s are proving that increasing carbon dioxide driven climate change is causing the decline in SW WA rain. OK say we grant them that. Then how do we/they explain the increase in rain at various periods in the history of various Australian States and regions? Did CO2 do that too? The 14 BoM charts show that Australian rain has increased over a century and that most States and regions enjoy a wetter climate now than they did before 1950. How can anybody cherry pick the SW WA declining rain and say – Ah, that must be caused by IPCC Climate Change? I never hear any climate scientist say “the increase in rain from 1970 in many Australian regions must be caused by IPCC CO2 driven climate change”. I think a more rational view of Australian rainfall history would recognise – most of Australia is most often more dry than we humans would like. The 14 charts show with clarity that rainfall varies on decadal and sub decadal scales, often appearing to be cyclic, in different ways at different times in various regions for reasons we know little about – but we can opine and theorise.

Braidwood farmers struggle with drought as dams dry up – Checking drought areas at these BoM maps you can make a map for various periods out to 4 years and there is very little drought around NSW over 1, 2, 3 or 4 years. The 9 months map shows Braidwood is either near or inside a drought area to the east and north. BoM data from 1888 shows 13 years have been dryer than 2017 and the years 2010 to 2016 have been very consistent with near average rain. Large chart.

Queensland Tourism Industry Council asks Bureau of Meteorology for ‘sunnier disposition’ – I know the feeling – rain is mentioned almost every day in Canberra forecasts but rain is seldom seen. But there might be a spit somewhere in the district. Readers might have examples and I will pony up data from Canberra. I kept the 7 days of Canberra forecasts offline on the 5th and checking against the Airport 3 forecasts were OK while 4 failed.

Cloud seeding to enhance rainfall has had a chequered career in Australia. Starting here with all the surplus aircraft and crews after WWII many missions were flown over various catchments. I get an impression there was a turf war between the BoM and CSIRO and the statistics of rainfall make cloud seeding results often hard to assess and there is always some NIMBY whining that it was too wet or too dry. I mentioned CS in a blog 2 years ago see links and maps there. I have been aware that Snowy Hydro has carried out CS trials against Greens opposition and checked their www pages. Seems the CS trials are still going so I grabbed the 2016 report. Nothing about actual rain results so I checked the NSW rain anomalies for max term of 4 years. Presto the best anomaly in NSW is where do you think?

Maybe we should be getting on with extending CS into other alpine areas where we can value add the Murray River and other Vic & NSW dam catchments. BTW the previous 4 year period ending Dec 2013 had a good result too.