SYDNEY - Australia faced a widespread risk of bushfires and worsening water shortages after its driest August since records began in 1900 and its warmest August since 1950, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said on Monday.
Lack of rain exacerbated a very dry period that most of southern Australia had experienced since late 1996 and eastern Australia since 2002, bureau director Geoff Love said.
"Water storages are already severely stressed and many areas have not had substantial relief rainfall for many years," he said in a statement.
"If the current low rainfall and high temperatures persist, the consequences will be wide-ranging, including an elevated bushfire risk this coming summer and escalating water shortages and restrictions," he said.
The prospect of soaking rains over the next few months did not look promising, Love said.
A return to dry weather follows Australia's worst drought in 100 years in 2002, which devastated crops. With lingering bouts of very dry weather after 2003, farmers say Australia is in a five-year drought which is showing no sign of ending soon.
"Rainfall deficiencies expanded over southern Australia with record low winter falls over a large part of southern Western Australia and parts of southeastern Australia," the bureau's National Climate Centre said in a separate statement on Monday.
Australia's winter grains crops are already struggling in the dry weather, industry analysts say. Severe downgrades of the estimated size of Australia's wheat crop in recent months have already cut it to 30 percent less than last year, at around 18 million tonnes.
The 2002 drought more than halved the wheat crop for 2002/03 to 10 million tonnes, sending prices soaring and requiring emergency imports of feed grain from Britain, Canada and the United States for the first time in around 200 years.
It also triggered a large-scale liquidation of Australia's livestock.
In the three-month winter to the end of August, severe rainfall deficiencies hit most of Australia's southern regions, including Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Victoria, the weather bureau said on Monday.
Record low winter rainfall covered an extensive area in the Perth region of southwest Western Australia, as well as parts of South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania, it said.
The central-west of New South Wales, areas around the South Australia-Victoria border and coastal parts of Western Australia had their driest weather on record in Australia's autumn and winter in the the six months to August 31.
The weather bureau last week also reported early signs of a new El Nino weather condition forming from abnormal sea temperatures in the Pacific.
An El Nino is blamed for causing Australia's 2002 drought. El Ninos typically cause drought in eastern Australia and Southeast Asia because of abnormal Pacific sea surface temperatures.
Australia is normally the second-biggest wheat exporter in the world and is a major exporter of a large range of bulk farm products, all of which are affected by drought.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
