A review of the impacts of land cover change in southwest Western Australia

Kala, J. (2009) A review of the impacts of land cover change in southwest Western Australia. Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, 22 . pp. 37-46.

Abstract

The southwest of Western Australia (SWWA) has experienced an unprecedented reduction in rainfall and an overall warming and drying trend (Indian Ocean Climate Initiative (IOCI), 2002). This is illustrated in Figure 1 showing the trend in rainfall over SWWA. There is a decreasing trend in winter rainfall (May-October and May-July) while rainfall towards the end of winter (August-October) has actually increased. The IOCI was set up to investigate this change in rainfall regime and has concluded that the observed changes are most likely due to a combination of natural climate variability and large scale changes in the global atmosphere circulations. They expressed some degree of confidence that these global changes are a result of the enhanced greenhouse effect.