Fears flare over chance of 2003 Australia drought
Date: 30-Jan-03
Country: AUSTRALIA
Author: Michael Byrnes
Recent warnings by Australia's Deputy Prime Minister, farmer John Anderson, that the El Nino-induced drought could last into a second devastating year, have alarmed Australian farm groups.
Concern has deepened for Australia's sugar industry, as it braces for another tough year with reduced cane and sugar production because of the drought, after a briefing by Anderson that raised the possibility of a second year of drought, CANEGROWERS Chairman Jim Pedersen told Reuters.
The possibility of back-to-back drought years has been raising heightened concern in the past week throughout Australian agricultural, stockbroking and economic circles.
A spokesman for Anderson told Reuters yesterday that the deputy prime minister's warning, to a range of farm groups in Brisbane last Thursday, was based on cautions to him by academics and long-range forecasts to agricultural organisations, that back-to-back El Ninos were possible in 2002 and 2003.
This was seen as "possible but not probable", with the last such case occurring in the 1940s, he said.
The greatest likelihood was still that the El Nino would lift by March or April, Anderson's spokesman said yesterday.
"(But) all the farm groups are concerned about it," he said.
FOUR, FIVE-YEAR DROUGHTS IN PAST
Anderson's warning was based on a minority view and was regarded as unlikely, climatologist and Bureau of Meteorology spokesman Blair Trewin told Reuters yesterday.
This is despite the fact that Australia, the driest continent on Earth, has had historical cases of four-or five-year droughts.
The present serious drought has already generated huge bushfires throughout vast tracts of eastern Australia, destroyed tens of millions of tonnes of winter wheat, barley and canola crops, sent cattle and sheep markets reeling as farmers dump starving stock, and is now destroying winter crops of cotton, sorghum and rice.
Another year of drought would have terrible long-term consequences for farmers, blocking the financial and stock recovery which many will struggle to achieve even if the drought breaks, experts say. Weather bureau spokesman Trewin pointed out to Reuters that seven out of 11 sophisticated computer models were predicting that the Pacific Ocean, which has generated the drought-inducing El Nino, would return to neutral by this May.
"You wouldn't absolutely rule out the possibility (of successive El Nino years) but we think it's the least likely scenario," he said.
Past Australian droughts of four to five years duration had not involved successive years of the same intensity or affected such a large area as the drought of 2002, he also said.
Historical records of prolonged droughts showed runs of six or 12 very dry months punctuated by a return to near-normal conditions, but without enough rain to offset the dry periods.
The "federation drought" at around the turn of the century showed this pattern, as did protracted droughts in the 1940s.
"A sequence like that would still be uncomfortable for a lot of people, but there's no precedent...for two successive years of the severity of 2002," he said.
El Nino weather events are caused by abnormal warming of the Pacific and its interaction with the atmosphere.