Oceans Interact To Dry Australia Further

Interactions between major oceans, triggered by climate change, will produce increasingly dry conditions in southern parts of Australia for decades to come, projections by the country's main science organization show. Further projected decreases in rainfall in southwest and southeast Australia could be arrested if carbon dioxide emission increases were halted, but a full recovery would take around 600 years, Dr Wenju Cai, a leading scientist with the government-backed Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research organization (CSIRO) said. "The recovery takes a long, long time.... Not in our lifetime," Cai said. Cai, a senior CSIRO scientist who specializes in marine and atmospheric research, said in an interview that Australia was presently being affected by the conflicting influences of a "wet weather" La Nina event in the Pacific and a "dry weather" Indian Ocean Dipole effect in the west. The Indian Ocean effect was showing itself to be the stronger, replicating results in 1967 when a weak Pacific La Nina was overwhelmed by the Indian Ocean and Australian rainfall dried up to 40 percent less than average...