I don’t have to tell a lot of you about the current drought in Australia and water shortages but, apart for a reducing number of good years, we had better get used to it. Rain is decreasing in many part of the world and our population continues to increase so we will have less water per head. Desalination will help but it needs to be wind or solar powered and there needs to be somewhere safe to discharge the bitterns left over from the process. This is discussed further in the articles in the blog links at the bottom of the page.

So what will climate change and the water and energy restrictions mean to you and your business? It is time to start planning and to reduce you environmental footprint now.

Findings released at the Greenhouse 2007 conference in Sydney this morning, include projections of up to 20 per cent more drought months over most of Australia by 2030. By 2070 this could rise to 40 per cent more drought months in eastern Australia and 80 per cent more in south western Australia.
A warming of 0.9 degrees since 1950 and an increase in hot nights have been mostly due to greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded. These higher temperatures have “exacerbated” the effects of drought and led to a decline in snow cover, including a 40 per cent reduction in snow depth in Spring in the Snowy Mountains in the past 45 years.

Weather patterns and ocean currents have changed, reducing rainfall to south-west Australia and leading to a warming of waters off the east coast of Tasmania that is occurring at triple the global rate of ocean warming.

Technorati Tags: drought, Australia, water shortages, Desalination, south-west Australia, global rate of ocean warming, ocean warming, global warming, ISO 14001

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Global Warming, Climate Change & Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.