Scientists Say Link Between Climate Breakdown, Record Australian Drought Strengthening

[hatrack]

An unprecedented drought that has withered Australia's major food production zone could be a taste of things to come as global warming ramps up, experts said Friday.

Prime Minister John Howard, who said the six-year drought was so extreme the country's prime farmland could be left without irrigation water this year, has refused to blame the crisis directly on climate change. "I recognise the ongoing debate about the link between the two things and I don't vary from that," he said Thursday, announcing that the country faced an "unprecedentedly dangerous" drought crisis.

But scientists said the link between climate change and the drying up of rivers in the vast Murray-Darling Basin, which threatens the survival of Australia's prime agricultural zone, was strengthening.

"You can't say that definitively, but I guess on the balance of evidence from southern Australia, rainfall patterns appear to have shifted," Adelaide University's Professor of Natural Resources Science Wayne Meyer said. "There's no question about the evidence in terms of increased temperature. We have seen this persistent increase in temperature over the last 30 or 50 years. All the projections are that that will continue."

EDIT

http://www.france24.com/france24Public/en/administration/afp-news.html?id=070420085030.zf4pa6as&cat=null