2017 brought wild, wacky and even deadly weather. Australia was hit by heatwaves and torrential rains, plus some surprisingly cool spells. Hurricanes hit America, and a killer monsoon lashed Asia.
Cape Town’s drought and associated water shortage has escalated disaster level.
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Cape Town promised alternative water sources with the ongoing drought being declared a disaster. Its main strategy is water rationing but climate models are also being used.
The dolphin population in parts of Western Australia more than halved one year, just as an El Niño event hit over in the Pacific. So what's the connection?
There have been successive large scale droughts in East Africa.
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Two atmospheric scientists explain how they weigh evidence such as ocean temperatures, wind speeds and other climate patterns to predict how many Atlantic hurricanes are likely to form this year.
Lismore received a drenching from the tail end of Tropical Cyclone Debbie.
AAP Image/Dave Hunt
The record floods of 1954 and 1974 still stand as Lismore's high-water marks. But Tropical Cyclone Debbie delivered her deluge far more abruptly than the rains that triggered those historic floods.
Climate change is already delivering more extremes of wet and dry to the Pacific region.
EPA/FRANCIS R. MALASIG
Researchers ran computer simulations that take into account environmental variability and geographical setting to investigate how early explorers made it to these tiny, remote islands in the Pacific.
Eventually reduced rainfall hit much of Australia thanks to El Niño.
Andrew Watkins
Australia is the land of drought of flooding rains, driven by events such as El Nino. But despite this variability, some parts of Australia are clearly drying out.
The land may be dry, but Western Australia’s waters are full of life.
Russ Babcock
The Great Barrier Reef might get all the attention, but what about our western coral reefs? Warmer waters and human impacts mean these reefs are in trouble.
Lake Kariba’s water evel is down to under 30% – and it may worsen.
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Willem Landman, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
The upcoming El Niño event may see an even bigger drop in the water level of Lake Kariba. This will have terrible consequences for the people using the river.
When the Indian Ocean combines with El Niño dry conditions come to Australia.
Drought images from www.shutterstock.com