Australian Drought–A Year On

By Paul Homewood

A year ago, all eyes were on the Australian drought in the Southeast:

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/08/18/telegraphs-worst-australian-drought-in-decades-fake-claim/

But looking back now, just how bad was it?

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=timeseries&tQ=graph%3Drranom%26area%3Dseaus%26season%3D0706%26ave_yr%3D2

The most up to date figures we have are for the Financial Year to June 2019, and these show that that rainfall anomalies for the last two years are by no means unprecedented in Southeastern Australia, the most badly affected region.

There have been twelve years drier than this last financial year since 1900. Cumulatively, the last few years have been close to average.

Dry years are in fact much more common than wetter than average ones, with 73 years since 1900 drier than the 1961-90 average. That is because the average is skewed upwards by a small number of extremely wet years.

The total rainfall chart below shows just how enormously variable annual rainfall can be there. There is clearly no such thing as a “normal” year.

It also includes a 10-year running average, which illustrates just how little things have changed.