Australia, the driest inhabited continent, is prone to natural disasters and wild swings in weather conditions – from floods to droughts, heatwaves and bushfires.
Australia, the driest inhabited continent, is prone to natural disasters and wild swings in weather conditions – from floods to droughts, heatwaves and bushfires.
Now two new Flinders University studies of long-term hydro-climatic patterns provide fresh insights into the causes of the island continent’s strong climate variability which affects extreme wet or dry weather and other conditions vital to water supply, agriculture, the environment and the nation’s future.
For the first time, researchers from the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) at Flinders have revealed a vegetation-mediated seesaw wetting-drying phenomenon between eastern and western Australia.
The seesaw phenomenon covered in a new paper in Earth’s Future is characterised by eastern Australia gaining water, while western Australia is losing water, and vice-versa being reset by strong La Niña induced continent-wide wetting.
Read more at Flinders University
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