SA climate shift 'proof' - Fifty years of figures show temperatures up, rainfall down

Sunday Mail Adelaide
Sunday 23/11/2008 Page: 18

SOUTH Australia has been in the grip of climate change for the past 50 years, an analysis of Bureau of Meteorology figures has revealed. And the state's climate will continue to get hotter and drier with potentially devastating consequences, the bureau warns. A climate expert says the data, recorded at seven weather stations across the state since 1956, provides "unequivocal" proof that climate change is impacting on the state.

All seven stations, from Ceduna in the Far West to Mt Gambier in the South-East, recorded an annual increase in temperatures, while five also show a decline in rainfall. The data was revealed after a midweek poll on the Sunday Mail website, AdelaideNow, showed almost half of 728 respondents said climate change was a "myth". The figures show the worst-affected area is the famed wine-growing region of Clare in the state's Mid-North.

The area now gets 150mm less rain a year on average than five decades ago, and has experienced a 1.7C increase in the average temperature. The Bureau of Meteorology's SA regional director Andrew Watson said South Australians must get used to living in a changed environment. "Records over the past 50 years across the state show that climate change is happening," he said. "Overall, rainfall will continue below the average and the water in the River Murray will continue at these levels or get worse."

He said climate change had "contributed to the severity of this present dry spell". "This spell is drier than it would have been 50 years ago, and any householder hoping to hang on to their garden with the expectation rainfalls will return to the long-term average is hanging on to a pretty vain hope," Mr Watson said.

Federal Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, said: "Anyone who says we shouldn't act should look at these figures." She pointed to other data to emphasise the need to introduce the Government's carbon trading scheme in 2010, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which contribute to climate change.

"Five of the eight catchments in the southern Murray-Darling Basin over the past 10 years have already seen inflows around, or worse than, the CSIRO's worst-case projections for 2030," Ms Wong said. Australian National University Professor Ross Garnaut, who was employed by the Rudd Government to produce a green paper into the cost of a national carbon trading scheme, said SA was especially at threat from climate change.

"Irrigation farming, the growing of high quality wines and other agriculture are particularly vulnerable ... but the best news on climate change is that a concerted effort by all countries could substantially improve the odds of avoiding the worst damages," Professor Garnaut said. Author, scientist and former SA Museum director Tim Flannery said the SA figures were "consistent with what we are seeing worldwide". "But I think people may be surprised that the impact of climate change has been recorded for the past 50 years in South Australia," Professor Flannery, Australian of the Year in 2007, said.

In the Clare Valley, a well sunk by Jesuit Brothers at the world-famous Sevenhill Winery has run dry for the first time in 150 years. Sevenhill winemaker Brother John May said the well had been dry for the past three years. "I remember big winter rainfalls in the 1960s when no one ever thought of having irrigation," he said.