Water scarcity in Australia started 15 years ago

CSIRO (Australia): While the results from the work by senior CSIRO researcher, Dr Albert van Dijk, may not surprise many people, it provides scientific evidence of the shift. The finding follows the first ever national and comprehensive analysis of 30 years of on-ground and satellite observations of Australia’s water resources.

Dr Albert van Dijk told the the Sixth International Scientific Conference on the Global Energy and Water Cycle in Melbourne today that the analysis provides a valuable, new insight into the country’s water balance. ”The data shows the first signs of diminishing water availability in Australia appeared somewhere between 1993 and 1996 when the rate of water resource capture and use started to exceed the rate of streamflow supply,” Dr van Dijk said.

Dr van Dijk’s work is part of the water information research and development alliance between the CSIRO’s Water for a Healthy Country Flagship and Bureau of Meteorology in which scientists are building an observation and modelling system that will provide water balance estimates across Australia.

Long-term on-ground records and 30 years of satellite observations are combined with models that integrate and analyse the data within a powerful computer system that provides comprehensive, detailed and reliable information about the nation’s water resources. ”If this technology had been available to us in the mid-1990s, the onset of dry conditions could have been detected earlier,” Dr van Dijk said…..

The long-term trend in total water availability in soil and groundwater between 1980 and 2008 (red areas have experienced declines over this period, blue areas increases). The dry state of the catchments show that a return of rainfall does not automatically mean streamflows will return to previous rates. Image by CSIRO