Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

F6, yup, replenishment from rainwater is the expert consensus, though there is one scientist who disagrees ..

Renewable groundwater?

By Stuart Waters

How renewable is the water from the Great Artesian Basin? Can rainfall really replenish
the supply, or are we in danger of losing one of our greatest natural resources?


The traditional view of the Great Artesian Basin sees this swamp water as replenishable. (Source: South West Strategy)

[...]

"Professor Emeritus Lance Endersbee says that our decades-old descriptions of the Basin are completely wrong. An engineer and past Pro Vice-Chancellor at Monash University, Professor Endersbee is convinced that the Artesian Basin, for all its size, is a finite resource which we are rapidly depleting, and that removing water from this natural reservoir will destroy it."
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/02/09/2814609.htm

LOL .. re El Nino, glad you said, "a bit of" .. yep, we could do without a record hot 2013, and the rest ..

"An early recorded mention of the term "El Niño" to refer to climate occurs in 1892, when Captain Camilo Carrillo told the Geographical society congress in Lima that Peruvian sailors named the warm northerly current "El Niño" because it was most noticeable around Christmas. The phenomenon had long been of interest because of its effects on the guano industry and other enterprises that depend on biological productivity of the sea.

Charles Todd, in 1893, suggested that droughts in India and Australia tended to occur at the same time; Norman Lockyer noted the same in 1904. An El Niño connection with flooding was reported in 1895 by Pezet and Eguiguren. In 1924, Gilbert Walker (for whom the Walker circulation is named) coined the term "Southern Oscillation".

The major 1982–83 El Niño led to an upsurge of interest from the scientific community. The period from 1990–1994 was unusual in that El Niños have rarely occurred in such rapid succession. An especially intense El Niño event in 1998 caused an estimated 16% of the world's reef systems to die. The event temporarily warmed air temperature by 1.5 °C, compared to the usual increase of 0.25 °C associated with El Niño events. Since then, mass coral bleaching has become common worldwide, with all regions having suffered "severe bleaching".

Major ENSO events were recorded in the years 1790–93, 1828, 1876–78, 1891,
1925–26, 1972–73, 1982–83, and 1997–98, with 2009-2010 being one of the strongest ever."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o-Southern_Oscillation#Health_and_social_impacts_of_El_Ni.C3.B1o

Banjo Patterson, mentioned in the first link above, was a grand old Australian poet ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIiVwOy8TEA

Song Of The Artesian Water

Banjo Patterson

Now the stock have started dying, for the Lord has sent a drought,
But we're sick of prayers and Providence - we're going to do without,
With the derricks up above us and the solid earth below,
We are waiting at the lever for the word to let her go.
Sinking down, deeper down,
Oh, we'll sink it deeper down:
As the drill is plugging downward at a thousand feet of level,
If the Lord won't send us water, oh, we'll get it from the devil;
Yes, we'll get it from the devil deeper down.

Now, our engine's built in Glasgow by a very canny Scot,
And he marked it twenty horse-power, but he didn't know what is what.
When Canadian Bill is firing with the sun-dried gidgee logs,
She can equal thirty horses and a score or so of dogs.
Sinking down, deeper down
Oh, we're going deeper down:
If we fail to get the water, then it's ruin to the squatter,
For the drought is on the station and the weather's growing hotter,
But we're bound to get the water deeper down.

But the shaft has started caving and the sinking's very slow,
And the yellow rods are bending in the water down below,
And the tubes are always jamming, and they can't be made to shift
Till we nearly burst the engine with a forty horse-power lift,
Sinking down, deeper down,
Oh, we're going deeper down:
Though the shaft is always caving, and the tubes are always jamming,
Yet we'll fight our way to water while the stubborn drill is ramming-
While the stubborn drill is ramming deeper down.

But there's no artesian water, though we're passed three thousand feet,
And the contract price is growing, and the boss is nearly beat.
But it must be down beneath us, and it's down we've got to go.
Though she's bumping on the solid rock four thousand feet below,
Sinking down, deeper down,
Oh, we're going deeper down:
And it's time they heard us knocking on the roof of Satan's dwellin',
But we'll get artesian water if we cave the roof of hell in-
Oh we'll get artesian water deeper down.

But it's hark! the whistle's blowing with a wild, exultant blast,
And the boys are madly cheering, for they've struck the flow at last:
And it's rushing up the tubing from four thousand feet below,
Till it spouts above the casing in a million-gallon flow.
And it's down, deeper down-
Oh, it comes from deeper down:
It is flowing, ever flowing, in a free, unstinted measure
From the silent hidden places where the old earth hides her treasure-
Where the old earth hides her treasures deeper down.

And it's clear away the timber and it's let the water run,
How it glimmers in the shadow, how it flashes in the sun!
By the silent belts of timber, by the miles of blazing plain
It is bringing hope and comfort to the thirsty land again.
Flowing down, further down:
It is flowing further down
To the tortured thirsty cattle, bringing gladness in its going;
Through the droughty days of summer it is flowing, ever flowing-
It is flowing, ever flowing, further down.

Banjo Patterson .. https://www.connectedwaters.unsw.edu.au/resources/articles/SongOfArtesianWater.html

.. off now .. am beat .. have a good night! ..