Question: What sort of experiments do you do to find out how climate change might impact water availibility in the future?

Asked by chiler35 to Posty on 21 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by humpie, humpie.

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  1. Photo: David PostDavid Post
    answered on 21 Jun 2011:

    Hi chiler35,

    Mostly we look at outputs from global circulation models. These are large and very complex models that try to model the atmosphere and oceans of the Earth. Because the outputs are quite coarse, we then try to ‘downscale’ the rainfall outputs to regions of interest (Victoria, say).

    We then run these changes in rainfall through models that tell us how runoff (streamflow) is likely to change and then how much of this streamflow is likely to be used by irrigators and other farmers.

    You can see an example for Tasmania at http://www.csiro.au/science/TASSY–ci_pageNo-2.html

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