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".
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.
Homes flooded as rain keeps coming..video embedded.. More than 50 homes are inundated by floodwaters in Dalby with towns cut off in the Lockyer Valley and a possible cyclone on the way to north Queensland.
UPDATED
The big wet is far from over, with central Queensland bracing for more flooding and the state’s north on cyclone watch.
Four rural fire crews have arrived in Dalby to help residents wash out their flooded homes.
Flooding at Dalby. Photo: Seven News
At least 37 homes in the southern Queensland town were flooded over the weekend.
But the full extent of the damage will be assessed on Monday afternoon. A team of firefighters from Brisbane has travelled to the town to help assess the damage to up to 240 affected properties.
Mayor Ray Brown said the area’s second flood in five weeks had also hit farmers who were preparing to harvest summer crops.
Weatherzone: Brisbane storm tracker .. darn the live image didn't copy .. see it here ..
"It’s gouged a lot of areas across the region with erosion. I think that’s probably the one that’s most disheartening for farmers," he told 612 ABC Brisbane.
It is estimated a number of residents in the nearby townships of Kogan, Warra and Jandowae have also had water on their properties. Fortunately, the floodwater didn’t reach floorboard level.
Meanwhile more flooding is expected in Bundaberg, which is still in the grip of a clean-up after ex-tropical cyclone Oswald last month.
The Burnett River is expected to peak at five metres between 4pm and 5pm on Monday.
The river was at 4.95 metres and rising at midday, according to the bureau.
The prediction is fortunately significantly lower than ast month's record 9.6 metres.
Bundaberg Mayor Mal Forman said no houses were expected to be affected by the rising river.
‘‘We could expect a peak of five metres during the day - it will cause some low-lying flooding in some streets and roads around the CBD and the sports fields,’’ he told 612 ABC Brisbane.
‘‘There are also a couple of businesses in low-lying areas that will have inundation into those.’’
The Bureau of Meteorology has warned there is a moderate possibility a tropical cyclone will form in the Coral Sea from Wednesday.
"We've got the south-easterly winds coming into the Coral Sea, and then we've got the monsoonal north-westerly winds to the north," Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Ken Kato said.
A cyclone could form where the two winds meet.
Brisbane should escape the worst of the bad weather this week, but the rain will continue.
"We're expecting passing showers for much of this week," Mr Kato said.
"But it's not going to be raining all day every day, so you might see some glimpses of sun and blue sky."
In the 24 hours to 9am Sunday, Brisbane received 92 millimetres of rain.
Deception Bay, north of Brisbane, received 168 millimetres in the same period.
Brisbane has already received half its average yearly rainfall.
In the past two days, the city has received 106.4 millimetres of rain – that's about 10 millimetres more than the average rainfall for the entire month of March.
Since 9am on Sunday, nearly 100 millimetres has fallen in Kenmore Hills.
Over the weekend, an upper-level low and a surface trough sitting off the east coast lashed the central and northern parts of the state.
A gauge on Munburra Road, south of Mackay, recorded 325 millimetres of rain from 9am on Sunday.
Mackay received 139 millimetres of rain.
On the Gold Coast, council crews are busy clearing debris from sand cliffs up to four metres high that line much of the shore.
Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate has estimated the repair bill will top about $30 million and has asked for the state government to pitch in.
====== .. re world could be hottest ever in 2013 ..
Up to eleven
An uncomfortable time for Australians, especially climate-change sceptics
Jan 12th 2013 | SYDNEY |From the print edition
So hot, they invented a new colour for it
IN OODNADATTA, an outback town in South Australia, the roads melted. Sydney, Australia’s biggest city, sweltered through heat of 42.3°C (108.1°F). In Tasmania, a Dunkirk-style flotilla of small craft swung into operation to rescue locals and tourists stranded by fires on the isolated Tasman peninsula. Australia’s summer-holiday season has barely begun. Yet a heatwave has swept across the country, smashing temperature records and raising questions both about the impact on annual weather patterns of global warming, and about Australia’s vulnerability to the changes.
Heat is part of the national mythology. It killed some of the country’s first white explorers, and has sparked many devastating fires. The worst, “Black Saturday” in Victoria, killed 173 people four years ago. Thanks to better preparation, firefighting skills and a good dose of luck, fires raging in four states in the latest heatwave have spared humans. Yet Australia is getting ever hotter. The 2013 heatwave has set a new record, 40.3°C, for the highest national average temperature. So far, Leonora, a town in Western Australia, has been the hottest place of all, at 49°C on January 9th. That is still below the highest temperature ever recorded in Australia, 50.7°C at Oodnadatta 53 years ago.
The authorities are preparing for such recordings as the new normal. On January 8th the Bureau of Meteorology added new colours, purple and pink, to its weather map to denote temperatures once considered off the scale: 50-52°C and 52-54°C respectively. (In “Spinal Tap” parlance, it turned the knob up to 11.) The bureau says more “significant records” are likely to be set, with no end to the heatwave in sight.
The heat rolled into Western Australia in late December, then moved east. Cloud-free skies over the central Australian desert intensified the effect, along with weak monsoon rains farther north. This produced what Alasdair Hainsworth, of the bureau, calls an “incredible build-up of heat”. Winds from the north drove the heat into south-east Australia, where most of the population lives. At least 20 places including Hobart, Tasmania’s capital, have set new heat records since December 30th.
Some climate experts are convinced the 2013 heatwave will prove a turning-point in how Australians respond to warnings about human-induced climate change. In a country that relies on fossil fuels for much of its well-being (coal is the second-biggest export and produces about four-fifths of electricity), climate-change sceptics have often swayed political debate.
When she visited areas devastated by fire in Tasmania, the prime minister, Julia Gillard, avoided blaming global warming directly. But she added that climate change would, over time, bring “more extreme weather events”. Aaron Coutts-Smith, of the Australian meteorology bureau, is less equivocal about the prospects. He says all six of the nation’s states over the past decade have had a “predominance” of new record temperatures.
North Burnett Mayor Don Waugh says he is extremely concerned about a large sinkhole that has formed near Gayndah as a result of the floods.
A 10-metre section of causeway next to Scanlans Road, 10 kilometres north of Gayndah, washed away this morning.
Councillor Waugh says council crews are assessing the damage.
"There's a drop of 10 metres down beside the road and everything else has just gone," he said.
"It's just a massive erosion of the ground and it's just because [of the] fact the water and the grounds are totally sodden because of the amount of rain we've had."
Cr Waugh says he is worried about the stability of many of the roads after the floods.
"Well there's a few that could be like that, we haven't got to them all at this stage," he said.
"There's another one up at East Creek, there's another one at Dalgangal Road and that's just in this area of the shire."
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