Dry Future for Adelaide ( very unwise to bring water wasting nuclear industry)

Makes you question the intelligence of South Australia’s businessmen and politicians – even contemplating the high water use, and high water-polluting industries of nuclear industries, and expanding uranium mining

Adelaide is facing a dry future – it needs to start planning now , The Conversation Mark Thyer Senior Lecturer, School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering at University of Adelaide Seth Westra Senior Lecturer, School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering at University of Adelaide, 19 February 2015,

Imagine a future where the yearly flow into one of the largest water reservoirs of a major Australian city could halve within 70 years. This is a scenario that Adelaide could face if the world continues on its current trajectory of high greenhouse gas emissions, according to the latest reports released this week from the Goyder Institute of which we were the lead authors.

This means Adelaide needs to start planning climate change adaption strategies for its water supply now, in combination with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Declining supply

The finding is based on one of the most detailed modelling efforts that has been conducted into the water security of an Australian city. Based on the outputs of 15 recent global climate models combined with downscaling rainfall to the catchment scale and hydrological modelling, we assessed how changes in rainfall and evaporation and transpiration (water evaporating from plants) will affect runoff in the Onkaparinga Catchment. Historically, this catchment has supplied on average about 50% of Adelaide’s water supply, with the remainder supplemented by pumping from the Murray River.

The findings suggested that a high level of confidence can be placed in projections of a decline in runoff. In fact, 98% of the model simulations suggested a decrease in runoff by the end of the century (the remaining 2% suggest little change).

However, the magnitude of change is highly uncertain – some projections suggest only small levels of change; others as much as 75% or more.

Dealing with the dry

The results paint a bleak future, but there are things we can do. The most obvious solution is to collectively reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. By looking at a low-emission trajectory (i.e. one that assumes that society will take active measures to reduce emissions) the reduction of reservoir inflows might only be 25%.

As well as reducing emissions, we need to start preparing to adapt to a drier future…….http://theconversation.com/adelaide-is-facing-a-dry-future-it-needs-to-start-planning-now-37750

February 20, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change - global warming, South Australia

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