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AUSTRAINIAN OF THE YEAR
Sydney’s dam levels:
Note the sudden increase in life-giving rain beginning in June. That, my friends, is graphic confirmation of 2007’s famous Flannery Floodening.
Fool! That graph shows the dams are almost half empty.
Get with the program, man.Posted by Crusader-Rabbit on 2007 12 29 at 08:44 PM • permalinkAt Haydon Walker with long-range weather advice
First Published: 03/09/2006
Reporter Sally Sara: What about the cycles of rainfall and weather? When we were out in western NSW a couple of months ago looking at the variations there, people were wondering whether maybe we’re not looking at large enough cycles for the weather when our records at the moment only go back 100 or so years.
HAYDON WALKER: That’s true. I mean, the cycles I use go from 11 through to 165 years. And when you look at it, the first weather recording was done in Parramatta in 1824, so that’s a very small part of the equation, I suppose. If you go over and look at the time charts in Europe back in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, there are myriads of conditions that have happened in past centuries. So really I think Australia is relatively, I suppose, small in relation to taking weather records. If you are looking at 300 or 400 years, I think you get a better idea of what the rainfall is.Posted by stackja1945 on 2007 12 29 at 09:10 PM • permalink#4 and #5 Fear not!Relief is at hand.As soon as the Kurnell Desal plant gets anywhere near completion and the price of water is increased exponentially all restrictions will be removed.In fact it will become your patriotic duty to use as much water as you possibly can.Meanwhile current storage has been around 60% of capacity for weeks.In fact we have so much water that Tallowa and Fitzroy Falls dams have been overflowing.
#9 Kae, I am sorry but I disagree. Hayden Walker is no more reliable than sticking a wet finger out the window. eg. he predicted that 2006 would have 5 or six cyclones off Qld. result = none, and a nasty El Nino.
Poor bastard, prolly though he was on good odds considering that the average is about 4.7 pa.David McRae in the back of the Country Strife is a much better source for three month forecasts.
#12 entropy
The sun does not follow what is predicted. But the sun is more reliable than any human.Posted by stackja1945 on 2007 12 29 at 10:12 PM • permalinkEntropy and stackja1945
I went looking on the web for long range weather forecasters to see what they said was happening with the Aussie drought. I was disappointed, they’re not easy to find if they are available on the web.
I tend to go with the sunspot activity tie in rather than the human data & variables (ha ha ha) entered in a computer model. It can’t predict what happened in the past, so how can it get the future right?
I had heard that the Country Life (I think) long range weather forecaster was good, but I don’t get that rag/mag.Too bad all those lefty/green Labor state govrnments weren’t urging the private sector to get into the dam-building and water-supply business during the drier years.
I imagine it is a lot easier to build a dam when the water flow is low than when it is often a raging torrent. I guess.
If the entire water market was opened up to the private sector water could be “produced” by whatever means - including dams, re-cycled stormwater/sewage and even de-salination. Who cares how water is “made” as long as there is open competition driving down the cost.
#17 Kae
Re: sunspot activitySolar Influences Data Analysis Center
posted: Dec 13, 2007
An area in the northern hemisphere of the solar disk at a rather high latitude with a leading negative and trailing positive polarity is spotted: this could be the first indication of the start of solar cycle 24!Prepare ye for the floods.
Posted by stackja1945 on 2007 12 29 at 11:06 PM • permalink#21 Stackja1945
I’ll be fine. I’m on a hill. Last flood here was in 1996, it was good for me - not wet at all (but the grey water pump got damp and kept tripping the meter’s safety switch, so I had to put a bucket over the powerpoint).
I said ages ago that Inigo Jones said that there would be bad drought leading up to end of 2007 and then the best rains in 160 years in 2008.
We’ll see, I suppose.Well, of course the catchments are 60% full—that happens when the sea level rises 100 metres.
/geothermia nuthousePosted by andycanuck on 2007 12 30 at 02:02 AM • permalink#Kae and Stacka. I have no problem with sunspots as a measure of intedecadal climate cycles. But I think that the Lennox Walker system that his son Hayden uses gives them too much emphasis. It’s like many climate models - someone gets a bee in their bonnet and the one factor becomes the major driver of everything (sound familar?)
Even the ENSO cycle probably accounts for no more that 30 percent of the actual weather in any month, and then mostly NE Australia.
You don’t have to get the Country Life to see the QDPI forecasts. That would beyond the call of duty. Go to the long paddock website and click through the links on the left. it also has some links to some experimental systems such as SPOTA-1 on the right.
IMHO BOM are not as good with QLD forecasts as the QG forecasters (who probably aren’t as good at SE Aust). With Anna Bligh installing her husband as head of climate change in QlD and shifting emphasis from integration of climate/seasonal forecasting into management systems (adaptation) to AGW mitigation instead I am very worried that the capacity to monitor drought and seasonal forecasts will erode.
there is also this site that monitors the madden julien oscillation. This is a longitudinal wave that travels about the globe in an approx. 5-6 week cycle. Depending on where it is, you can predict how likely rainfall is in various parts of Australia (best for summer - and no good for northern hemisphere). You can use it to plan when to sow, wherever or not to ditch that camping trip, etc.
# 28 entropy I can agree with you on climate models. Again I quote:
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Volume One, by Charles MacKay: “In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”
Like you said sound familar?
Posted by stackja1945 on 2007 12 30 at 03:58 AM • permalink#30 Clive Hamilton, head of the Australia Institute, past director of the Evatt Foundation.
Of course Doc Evatt was a few cans short in the end.Posted by stackja1945 on 2007 12 30 at 04:03 AM • permalink
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Sydney at least has some dams -Melbourne is coming up with a totally eco sensitive nat gas burning desal plant. And it is soooooo friendly that the equation C+O2=CO2+heat just doesn’t apply….... rather C+O2= nice nothingness and the highly concentrated salt solution we’ll just hope that goes away rather than poisoning the marine ecology close to the plant.
Age of reason, bye bye
Beware of chemistry qualifications from Victorian universities if your hiring, folks