Temperature climbing
Scientific approach: farmers Rene Richard of Inverloch and Lee Storti of Kongwak with Dale Grey, a climate variability agronomist with the Department of Primary Industries, discuss the impact of oceans on weather patterns.
THE past 14 years have been the warmest in the 120 years records have been kept for South Gippsland.
While that news is good for farmers tired of wet winters, warmer days place greater stress on pasture growth in the spring and summer.
That was the message delivered by Dale Grey, a climate variability agronomist with the Department of Primary Industries at Inverloch last Thursday.
He said rising temperatures underpinned his personal belief that climate change existed, even though some farmers at the event wondered whether recent extreme rainfall was part of a cyclic pattern.
The CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology have predicted that rising carbon dioxide emissions would result in an average temperature rise of two degrees, prompting massive changes in weather.
“That could mean the equivalent of 17 extra winter days or 10 extra summer days crammed into the year,” Mr Grey said.
He said Inverloch had a “classic Mediterranean rainfall pattern”, with the winter months typically the wettest and an average annual rainfall since 1885 of 917mm.
However, many years were above and below this average, requiring farmers to adopt systems able to deal with such fluctuations.
“Australia has the level of climate variability that would make a lot of other countries in the world go ‘This is ridiculous. How can you cope with that?” Mr Grey said.
Inverloch experienced below average rainfall between 1915 and 1925, and then again in 1935. The period 1950-1965 was quite wet and so were the years around 1995, but the last few years have produced below average rainfall.
“Climate variability has been incredible over time and it will continue to be into the future,” Mr Grey said.
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Posted by superadmin on Jun 10 2011. Filed under Business, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
