Image of the Week 7

This true-color image shows southwestern Australia as it appeared on 18 August 2002. A significant chunk of the coastal region is green, a sign that ample seasonal rainfall has done its job. However, to the north and east, hot and dry conditions persist, as a reminder that much of the Australian landscape is dominated by the arid and semi-arid “Outback.”

Australia is the driest inhabited continent, and it is getting drier. The patches of temperate and sub-tropical areas along the coast (including the pictured bit of southwestern Australia) are getting warmer, but receiving less rainfall. Much of southeast Australia (including most of the major urban centers) has been wracked by a decades-long drought. The Murray-Darling river system in the southeast, the only major river system on the continent, is drying up quickly, depriving the country’s limited agricultural land of much-needed irrigation. Cities like Western Australia’s Perth (with a 2009 population of 1,659,000) have seen water demand spike as reservoirs drop. Already, the country has three desalination plants operating to provide water for coastal cities, with three more under construction and at least one more planned. These desalination plants will likely increase Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, already the highest per capita in the world.

Most climatologists attribute Australia’s current woes to the early stages of human-induced climate change, and warn that the country’s problems are just beginning. If climate change persists unabated, the southeast of the country (which includes Melbourne and Sydney) should become hotter and drier as the rains decrease and the Murray-Darling system dries up. In addition, wildfire season should become more severe. Indeed, an intense series of wildfires last year north and east of Melbourne killed over 200 people and left over 7,000 homeless. Australia’s already massive deserts could spread, though the northern tropical coast and the arid rural northwest may see increased precipitation. More frequent and intense cyclones may impact the north and northeast, and increased coral bleaching threatens to eradicate the Great Barrier Reef off of Queensland, the world’s largest reef system and a major source of tourism revenue. All in all, climate change may turn Australia, already a land of extremes, more toward the brink.

Against this bleak scientific prognosis, the Australian government lately has begun to take steps to confront the continent’s future. Given the strains that climate change will have on human settlements of all sizes, politicians have called for more strict immigration controls to keep the country’s population from swelling beyond a sustainable size. However, some environmentalists already contend that the country’s population of over 22 million is already twice as much as the stressed Australian climate can support sustainably. In addition, the current government under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has proposed a sweeping cap-and-trade scheme to reign in the country’s out of control greenhouse gas emissions. This legislation was the centerpiece of Rudd’s center-left Labor Party, which was swept into power in 2007 after over 11 years of rule by the center-right Liberal Party. Though officially in opposition, the Liberal Party (under climate change sceptic Tony Abbott) still controls the upper house of the Australian Parliament. Thus, the Liberal party has repeatedly stalled Rudd’s cap-and-trade legislation in the upper house, and argued that the reforms would cripple Australian industry and agriculture. Today, the Rudd government announced that it would set aside the cap-and-trade legislation until at least 2013, after the Kyoto Protocol expires. The bill’s future prospects are still uncertain. The Rudd government would like a post-Kyoto comprehensive international climate change policy in place to give it political support, especially since public support for cap-and-trade at home has waned significantly after the opposition Liberal Party began its assault.

Meanwhile, two well-timed rainfalls in the southeast have brought temporary relief the Murray-Darling basin. Farmers are gleefully refilling their reservoirs as the country breathed a much-needed sigh of relief over this rare bit of good climate news. However, climatologists still warn that persistent drought over the long term, as well as current water use policies, will doom the Murray-Darling in the long run. The four Australian states that bitterly fight for water rights from the Murray-Darling are continuing their long-running debate. The federal government and private firms are getting involved too, as Australians continue to argue over how to save (or even if they should save) their only major river system. The clock is ticking.

Image of the southwest Australian coast provided courtesy of Jacques Descloitres, the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Rapid Response Team, NASA, and the Goddard Space Flight Center.