From the 1990s climate change has decreased cool season catchment precipitation reducing river heights in Australia's southern Murray-Darling Basin.

ABSTRACT: The Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) is Australia's major agricultural region. The southern MDB receives most of its annual catchment runoff during the cool season (April-September). Focusing on the Murrumbidgee River measurements at Wagga Wagga and further downstream at Hay, cool season river heights are available year to year. The 27-year period April-September Hay and Wagga Wagga river heights exhibit decreases between 1965 and 1991 and 1992-2018 not matched by declining April-September catchment rainfall. However, permutation tests of means and variances of late autumn (April-May) dam catchment precipitation and net inflows, produced p-values indicating a highly significant decline since the early 1990s. Consequently, dry catchments in late autumn, even with average cool season rainfall, hav

SUBMITTER: Speer MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8352959 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature