CSIRO - Ocean Current Interaction To Prolong Australian Drying Trend For Decades - Reuters

SYDNEY, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Interactions between major oceans, triggered by climate change, will produce increasingly dry conditions in southern parts of Australia for decades to come, projections by the country's main science organisation show.

Further projected decreases in rainfall in southwest and southeast Australia could be arrested if carbon dioxide emission increases were halted, but a full recovery would take around 600 years, Dr Wenju Cai, a leading scientist with the government-backed Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said. "The recovery takes a long, long time.... Not in our lifetime," Cai said.

As it stands, the CSIRO is confidently forecasting a further 10-15 percent decline in rainfall in southeast Australia and a decline of over 20 percent in southwest Australia by 2050. This takes in Australia's capital cities, almost all of the national population of around 20 million and farmlands which produce one of the biggest exportable surpluses of agricultural produce in the world.

As crops wilt and die for lack of rain, this year's spring rainfall could be as much as 40 percent below average because of an unusual weather pattern last seen in 1967 -- but which is now more likely to recur because of climate change, Cai said. Cai, a senior CSIRO scientist who specialises in marine and atmospheric research, said in an interview that Australia was presently being affected by the conflicting influences of a "wet weather" La Nina event in the Pacific and a "dry weather" Indian Ocean Dipole effect in the west.

EDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSYD217753

Kind of a twofer . . .

No reason at all to go changing lifestyles........

Wow... just wow.

In the early 1400s, Tamerlane was kicking ass, the capitol of China was moved to Beijing (after 35 years since the founding of the Ming dynasty), the Medicis were on the rise in Florence, the Great Schism was going on with several popes running around, and Henry IV announced that anyone owning an English translation of the Bible would be killed.

Good times.