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By Jane Bardon
Monday, 03/03/2008
With heavy rain in some areas and a return to wetter conditions forecast for others, governments doing forward planning are asking, is the drought over?The answer from most of the agencies advising them is: no.With La Nina in full swing, the weather outlook, at least, is wetter for many areas.But Blair Trewin from the National Climate Centre says some areas will still miss out this year."The outlook for the Autumn is leaning slightly towards above average rainfall in many parts of the country, particularly New South Wales and Queensland, continuing the pattern that has established with La Nina."But the outlook for the WA wheatbelt and Tasmania and southern Victoria is leaning towards being below normal.""While the outlook is promising in areas we are a long way from being able to see we can see an end to the longterm drought in the near future."Blair Trewin says its also uncertain how long the La Nina will last, but its likely to end this year. If we went back to an El Nino pattern after that we could get drier years again.Farmers in 70 percent of Australia are still claiming drought relief.The support package in a quarter of the drought declared areas comes up for review in June by the National Rural Advisory Council.The Federal Department of Agriculture's Exceptional Circumstances Manager Jenny Cupit says a return to more rain won't mean farmers will immediately lose support."They look at all of the climatic conditions, the agronomic conditions and the economic situations of all the farmers in those areas."They must have been able to show that there is some sort of economic period of recovery been entered into before they are taken out of exceptional circumstances."So how long a period of recovery would rule an area out of drought support?"It really depends on the kind impact rain or other things that have changed, have changed the situation in the areas, and how much of the impact is being felt on the ground, so a couple of months of rain may not necessarily mean that they've started a recovery, but several months may."All of the Murray Darling Basin is drought declared, and the water situation remains dire.The Murray Darling Basin Commission says despite above rain in many areas, the Murray only has 15 percent of its usual water.Irrigators on no, or very low, water allocations aren't likely to see an improvement this year.Chief executive Wendy Craik says it might take several years for the situation to improve."Its our view it would take several years of really substantial rainfall to restore the storages to the sorts of levels which we are historically accustomed to. I guess the thing we might need to start thinking about is that maybe the sort of environment we seem to be facing right now is going to be more like the norm that we face in the future rather than anticipating that we are likely to go back to what it used to be in the past."
In this report: Blair Trewin, National Climate Centre; Jenny Cupit, Department of Agriculture Exceptional Circumstances Manager; Wendy Craik, Murray Darling Basin Commission
Monday, 03/03/2008
With heavy rain in some areas and a return to wetter conditions forecast for others, governments doing forward planning are asking, is the drought over?The answer from most of the agencies advising them is: no.With La Nina in full swing, the weather outlook, at least, is wetter for many areas.But Blair Trewin from the National Climate Centre says some areas will still miss out this year."The outlook for the Autumn is leaning slightly towards above average rainfall in many parts of the country, particularly New South Wales and Queensland, continuing the pattern that has established with La Nina."But the outlook for the WA wheatbelt and Tasmania and southern Victoria is leaning towards being below normal.""While the outlook is promising in areas we are a long way from being able to see we can see an end to the longterm drought in the near future."Blair Trewin says its also uncertain how long the La Nina will last, but its likely to end this year. If we went back to an El Nino pattern after that we could get drier years again.Farmers in 70 percent of Australia are still claiming drought relief.The support package in a quarter of the drought declared areas comes up for review in June by the National Rural Advisory Council.The Federal Department of Agriculture's Exceptional Circumstances Manager Jenny Cupit says a return to more rain won't mean farmers will immediately lose support."They look at all of the climatic conditions, the agronomic conditions and the economic situations of all the farmers in those areas."They must have been able to show that there is some sort of economic period of recovery been entered into before they are taken out of exceptional circumstances."So how long a period of recovery would rule an area out of drought support?"It really depends on the kind impact rain or other things that have changed, have changed the situation in the areas, and how much of the impact is being felt on the ground, so a couple of months of rain may not necessarily mean that they've started a recovery, but several months may."All of the Murray Darling Basin is drought declared, and the water situation remains dire.The Murray Darling Basin Commission says despite above rain in many areas, the Murray only has 15 percent of its usual water.Irrigators on no, or very low, water allocations aren't likely to see an improvement this year.Chief executive Wendy Craik says it might take several years for the situation to improve."Its our view it would take several years of really substantial rainfall to restore the storages to the sorts of levels which we are historically accustomed to. I guess the thing we might need to start thinking about is that maybe the sort of environment we seem to be facing right now is going to be more like the norm that we face in the future rather than anticipating that we are likely to go back to what it used to be in the past."
In this report: Blair Trewin, National Climate Centre; Jenny Cupit, Department of Agriculture Exceptional Circumstances Manager; Wendy Craik, Murray Darling Basin Commission
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