The mounting impact of climate change on the Murray-Darling
A new analysis plots a downward spiral in southern Murray-Darling Basin water availability, particularly since the 1990s.
Aerial view of the Murrumbidgee River at Wagga Wagga. Picture by Bidgee, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 AU)
Water availability in Australia’s most important agricultural region will continue to decline, with less than required to be shared between community, agricultural needs and environment, according to a new analysis by researchers from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
In a paper published in Scientific Reports, a research team from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences in the UTS Faculty of Science has used statistical analysis to establish trends in rainfall and river height records for the Murrumbidgee River catchment in the southern Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) and applied machine learning techniques to identify important climate drivers of rainfall.
The overarching finding is that the impacts of global warming on the river system have accelerated from the latter half of last century, and particularly since the 1990s, with continued catchment drying and warming set to drastically reduce future water availability.
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