Browsing by Author "Jones, R"

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    Building a future on knowledge from the past: what paleo-science can reveal about climate change and its potential impacts in Australia
    (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, 2005-06) Harle, KJ; Etheridge, DM; Whetton, P; Jones, R; Hennessy, K; Goodwin, ID; Brooke, BP; van Ommen, TD; Barbetti, M; Barrows, TT; Chappell, J; De Deckker, P; Fink, D; Gagan, MK; Haberle, SG; Heijnis, H; Henderson-Sellers, A; Hesse, PP; Hope, GS; Kershaw, P; Nicholls, N
    In Australia, high quality instrumental climate records only extend back to the late 19th century and therefore only provide us with a brief snapshot of our climate, its mean state and its short-term variability. Palaeo-records extend our knowledge of climate back beyond the instrumental record, providing us with the means of testing and improving our understanding of the nature and impacts of climate change and variability in Australia. There is a vast body of palaeo-records available for the Australian region (including Antarctica), ranging from continuous records of sub-decadal up to millennial scale (such as those derived from tree rings, speleothems, corals, ice cores, and lake and marine sediments) through to discontinuous records representing key periods in time (such as coastal deposits, palaeo-channels, glacial deposits and dunes). These records provide a large array of evidence of past atmospheric, terrestrial and marine environments and their varying interactions through time. There are a number of key ways in which this evidence can, in turn, be used to constrain uncertainties about climate change and its potential impacts in Australia.
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    Paleoclimate studies and natural-resource management in the Murray-Darling Basin I: past, present and future climates
    (Taylor & Francis, 2013-06-19) Mills, K; Gell, PA; Hesse, PP; Jones, R; Kershaw, P; Drysdale, RN; McDonald, J
    This paper provides an incisive review of paleoclimate science and its relevance to natural-resource management within the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB). The drought of 1997–2010 focussed scientific, public and media attention on intrinsic climate variability and the confounding effect of human activity, especially in terms of water-resource management. Many policy and research reviews make statements about future planning with little consideration of climate change and without useful actionable knowledge. In order to understand future climate changes, modellers need, and demand, better paleoclimate data to constrain their model projections. Here, we present an insight into a number of existing long-term paleoclimate studies relevant to the MDB. Past records of climate, in response to orbital forcing (glacial–interglacial cycles) are found within, and immediately outside, the MDB. High-resolution temperature records, spanning the last 105 years, exist from floodplains and cave speleothems, as well as evidence from lakes and their associated lunettes. More recently, historical climate records show major changes in relation to El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycles and decadal shifts in rainfall regimes. A considerable body of research currently exists on the past climates of southeastern Australia but, this has not been collated and validated over large spatial scales. It is clear that a number of knowledge gaps still exist, and there is a pressing need for the establishment of new paleoclimatic research within the MDB catchment and within adjacent, sensitive catchments if past climate science is to fulfil its potential to provide policy-relevant information to natural-resource management into the future. © 2013, Taylor & Francis.
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    Paleoclimate studies and natural-resource management in the Murray-Darling Basin II: unravelling human impacts and climate variability
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2013-08-09) Mills, K; Gell, PA; Gergis, J; Baker, PJ; Finlayson, CM; Hesse, PP; Jones, R; Kershaw, P; Pearson, S; Treble, PC; Barr, C; Brookhouse, MT; Drysdale, RN; McDonald, J; Haberle, SG; Reid, M; Thoms, M; Tibby, J
    The management of the water resources of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) has long been contested, and the effects of the recent Millennium drought and subsequent flooding events have generated acute contests over the appropriate allocation of water supplies to agricultural, domestic and environmental uses. This water-availability crisis has driven demand for improved knowledge of climate change trends, cycles of variability, the range of historical climates experienced by natural systems and the ecological health of the system relative to a past benchmark. A considerable volume of research on the past climates of southeastern Australia has been produced over recent decades, but much of this work has focused on longer geological time-scales, and is of low temporal resolution. Less evidence has been generated of recent climate change at the level of resolution that accesses the cycles of change relevant to management. Intra-decadal and near-annual resolution (high-resolution) records do exist and provide evidence of climate change and variability, and of human impact on systems, relevant to natural-resource management. There exist now many research groups using a range of proxy indicators of climate that will rapidly escalate our knowledge of management-relevant, climate change and variability. This review assembles available climate and catchment change research within, and in the vicinity of, the MDB and portrays the research activities that are responding to the knowledge need. It also discusses how paleoclimate scientists may better integrate their pursuits into the resource-management realm to enhance the utility of the science, the effectiveness of the management measures and the outcomes for the end users. © 2020 Informa UK Limited