Another month – another miserable failure for the BoM rain “Outlook” as real world data shows the continent awash with rain. Small wins in SW WA and far eastern Australia are hugely outweighed by comprehensive failures over vast areas elsewhere.
The Parliament of Australia, House Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Innovation, is holding an Inquiry into long-term meteorological forecasting in Australia. Great to see some MP’s are trying to call the giant BoM to account. Tough job – the BoM needs to be told to stop wasting resources kowtowing to IPCC science and concentrate on real-world issues affecting Australia.
Category Archives: Water
CSIRO’s Dr David Post huge climate flip-flop
This weekend the nations press and media is full of this BoM/CSIRO story predicting the big “big dry” drought will return despite the useful post Autumn rains.
Now I do not know anybody who does not accept that Australia’s climate history is dominated by a series of droughts – so predicting future droughts is a bit of a non event. However what the BoM/CSIRO are saying I think is that the “worst drought ever” of the last decade will reappear and continue worsening – I think that is the doomster message.
Anyway – because the CSIRO’s Dr David Post is widely quoted this weekend as being connected with the source report for this weekend media blitz – “South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative” which interestingly came out in May 2010 just before record winter and September rains – I thought it worthwhile looking a bit closer at what Dr Post says.
I came across this fascinating article from January this year headed “No Link – Drought and Climate Change – CSIRO” – where he says –
Dr Post said in January there is “no evidence” linking drought to climate change in eastern Australia, including the Murray-Darling Basin.
“At this stage, we’d prefer to say we’re talking about natural variability. The science is not sufficiently advanced to say it’s climate change, one way or the other. The jury is still out on that.”
The Canberra Times carried a similar article.
So in a few short months Dr Post seems to have changed his opinion 180 degrees on the influence of “climate change” on drought.
Continue reading CSIRO’s Dr David Post huge climate flip-flop
Australian wheat crop history does not shout “worst drought ever”
Of all the knee jerk green-media beatups – that of “worst drought ever” or variations on that theme to cover the years 2001 and later – would one of the most predictable storylines of recent years.
My experience is that when rainfall data for an area in question are examined – the claims usually do not stand up. But lets take a broadbrush approach –
The graphic of Australian wheat production history (2010 number is an estimate from Abare) indicates a few dry years in the last decade but there must have been much useful rain.
Agreed ? – or wheat does not grow.
MDB water-buy-back scheme redundant after rains
Just now we are seeing a classic example of totally pointless Australian Government meddling – that can not do anybody – or the environment any good.
The last decade has seen much publicity by the “expensive water lobby” – much talk of “worst drought ever in the history of the planet” etc etc we have all heard the GreenMedia lies and exaggerations. This has driven the incompetent various Australian Govts to lather up in a Green fervour and plan to buy back water from irrigators – to simply pour into the river environments which would help maintain swamps a bit wetter than they otherwise might have been.
Unfortunately for all these high paid Green planners – SE Australia has had a wet winter and record wet September rainfall which has caused much wetting and even some flooding down our Murray Darling Basin waterways – including opening the Murray mouth to the sea for the first time in a long while.
So – in a nutshell – let us be thankful that nature has already done what the future water-buy-backs were planned to do.
Why not put all these expensive water-buy-back plans back in a file marked “NOT NEEDED NOW” – and we can be thankful that for the time being, nature has done the job for us. Let’s get off the backs of the irrigators and let them get on with their job.
Are we being conned with excessive water charges ?
I noticed Andrew Bolt drawing attention to plans by the Victorian Govt to release 10 billion litres of “environmental water”. That’s 10 Giga Litres or GL and at a time the Yarra has flooded of its own accord. Surreal waste.
Here are some ideas of mine for discussion.
Continue reading Are we being conned with excessive water charges ?
BoM incompetence again – for the 5th month in a row
The BoM rolling 3 month rainfall Outlook prediction published in late March. Has turned out to be just as irrelevant and useless as the previous four.
Compare to the actual rain deciles for April-May-June the poor hapless BoM can only approach reality in the Kimberly-Northern Territory sector. All the other major features of their prediction are wrong.
Far Eastern Australia wet — EXACTLY wrong
South Australia – West Victoria dry — EXACTLY wrong
Sth Pilbara and much of WA wet — mostly wrong
Nth Qld dry patch — EXACTLY wrong
Why are we paying these dills to waste our taxes ?
Yet our Govt listens to BoM utterances on “climate change” as though they are written on tablets of stone.
Stunning ignorance and lies surround Perth water supply policies
This ABC online news item from Perth caught my eye, “Water prices up 40 per cent: Labor”. With Eric Ripper the Labor opposition leader saying, “Of course in a dry climate there is pressure on water prices..”
Wrong Mr Ripper, there is no “dry climate” over Perth dam catchments – see my graphic of 35 years of May-October catchments rain which averages near 900mm. Any water shortage in Perth is artificially induced by Govts failure to do simple things such as – manage catchments – clearing the Gnangara pines – cheaply desalinate weakly brackish water wasted from Wellington Dam and other local rivers (see my 2007 downloadable report). The only reason for this crazy state of affairs that I can see – is the Govts terror of hostile reactions from Greens.
Continue reading Stunning ignorance and lies surround Perth water supply policies
ABC Catalyst TV show warped view of SW West Australian rainfall
Quote from Catalyst: Mark Horstman
“Since the 1970s, the south-western corner of Western Australia has suffered a dramatic decline in their winter rainfall, so rapid and so extreme that it’s like, somewhere, a giant tap is being turned off.”
What utter exaggerated twaddle.
Once again the Australian media spins normal climate variations as something caused by IPCC climate change.
The entire thrust of the show is that rainfall in “..the south-western corner of Western Australia..” dropped ~15% in the 1970’s and a scientist is quoted linking this to changes in Antarctic ice cores. The scientist – Dr Tas van Ommen
Principal Research Scientist, Ice Cores and Climate, Australian Antarctic Division, Hobart – may well be right is linking the events – we will look for a peer reviewed paper on the subject.
My point is that there are many sudden rainfall change events in Australian climate history – and from larger regions than SW WA – and little attention is put into explaining these.
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Here is a graphic of West Australian rainfall – note the sharp increase in the 1990’s – what caused that ?
Here is a graphic of Murray Darling Basin rainfall – note the sharp increase in the 1940’s – what caused that ?
You can explore the BoM data for NSW etc and that huge increase in rain about 1950 often stands out. But it is a feature that nobody wants to explain.
Maybe because it corresponds with the period of post WWII cloud seeding experiments. Sorry – not PC.
Note my graphic of Perth dam catchment rain – steady over 35 years.
Finally a graphic of Perth rain history back to 1876 – note how the pre WWI winter rain is similar to the post 1970’s rain. Who is to say what is “normal” ? I am not aware of any “tablet of stone” which tells us whether the WWI to mid 1970’s high rain era was normal – or are the slightly dryer decades before and after more “normal”.
BoM rain predictions wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again
Seeing this headline “Perth faces dry winter” – made me check BoM 3 month Outlook rainfall predictions again. They are as hopeless as ever – for month after month from November 2009 – the BoM has failed to predict the dominant wet over most of Australia.
Starting with the Outlook for summer (Dec-Feb) – the links below let you compare
the BoM prediction with real world rainfall. I am simply looking for the BoM to correctly predict the broad shape of the rain decile patterns – but I do not see that they are close to doing that over the past six months. If a private business was wrong this often – they would soon go broke.
Continue reading BoM rain predictions wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again
Huge BoM rain and temperature prediction failures
This Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) prediction for summer made on 24 November 2009 has turned out to be so exactly wrong in several aspects. You can see in the BoM Outlook archive It is not only the 24 November prediction that is so wrong – check out their maps of predicted rain percentages published on 21 December, 19 January and there is no learning going on. Check actual rain here, choose 3 months to see summer rain.
The temperature Outlook for summer was just as hopeless but I have not got the time to put all these maps up – you can check against maps you can make here – make maps for 3 months for max and min anomaly, they compare with the BoM max and min temperature prediction maps for summer.
I am at a loss to understand how a well funded org of professionals can repeatedly get these Outlooks so wrong. Obviously the models they use are not worth a cup full of warm spit.
Australia pays for better and deserves better.