Warming Takes Center Stage As Australian Drought Worsens

via Jon Sumby
With record-setting heat waves, bush fires and drought, Australians are increasingly convinced they are facing the early impacts of global warming. Their growing concern about climate change has led to a consensus that the nation must now act boldly to stave off the crisis.
By Keith Schneider, 2nd April 2009

In February, on the same day that the temperature in Melbourne reached 116° F — the hottest day ever recorded in Australia’s second-largest city — driving winds pushed a catastrophic bushfire across 1,500 square miles of eucalyptus forests in the state of Victoria, destroying 1,800 homes and farms and killing 173 people. That, too, set a record — for the most deaths from a bushfire in Australia’s history.

Adelaide and Melbourne are running out of water. The Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s prime food-growing region, is in the 12th year of a devastating drought that is putting the country’s ability to feed itself in question. The 400,000-square-mile basin, larger than France and Germany combined, has been so dry that the 1-million ton-rice crop was decimated last year, and production of wheat, lambs, and cotton are in significant decline.

Full story at: http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2137