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Will I (my generation) see day zero some time?

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Will I (my generation) see day zero some time?

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I wish I could see into the future and answer this, but the answer is 'who knows'. If climate change, global warming, water wars, drought, and the over-use of water keep happening, it very well may happen sooner then you think.
I do hope you don't see day zero, but just like our rural communities in Australia that day came in 2018-2019 before we got heavy rainfall. We should be doing our part, even now, while we have a good amount of water in our dams and rivers to ensure we are saving water, because one day we may just run out.

What do you think?

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Do only the hotter states of Australian experience water stress?

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Do only the hotter states of Australian experience water stress?

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The answer to this question is no. The 'hotter' states of Australia are more likely to experience water stress FIRST and MORE OFTEN but other states, particularly with global warming and climate change are also experiencing times of water stress.

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For about 3000 litres of salt water, the process of desalination costs $3-4, depending on electricity costs where the desalination is.
This price does not include the set up of station (a medium station costs about $80 million to set up, a large station up to $250 million), station maintenance cost, and operating costs (eg employment of workers)

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Do only farm land and rural properties experience water stress in Australia? or do towns experience it as well?

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Do only farm land and rural properties experience water stress in Australia? or do towns experience it as well?

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Farm land and rural properties are not the only communities that experience water stress in Australia - do you remember when you were little and we had really tight water restrictions? You couldn't wash your car, or water your garden at certain times in the day.
Rural Australia seems to experience water stress a bit more than our coastal communities, due to their geographical location (less rainfall), and because it's harder to get water supplies to them - a lot of piping networks under the ground (water instructure).
So no, rural communities are not the only ones that experience water stress. They are more likely to experience it first.

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Check out this video to tell you some ways :)

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Water conservation tips - How to conserve water at home

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You can save water in many ways. Check out the photo for some ideas

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To solve water scarcity and a range of factors and levels of society need to work together. Reducing global warming and climate change will help stabilise the climate, and allow for rainfall to fall where it needs to be - this will make for a stable water supply into our dams, and rivers. To stop or reduce global warming and climate change, everyone needs to work together across global and local scales. The united nations, governments, communities, non-government organisations and individuals need to work together to do their part. Check out the video, in how you can save water!

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When were the dams the emptiest? What was happening then?

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When were the dams the emptiest? What was happening then?

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In 2019 the dams in Australia were the emptiest with some sitting at 7% capacity. Check out the news article about it!

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It's not good. Not good at all.

The hot dry summer has stripped the soils of moisture, water storages are down in every state and territory, and New South Wales is drowning in dust.

Water stores are down in every state and territory

Keepit dam is empty and Dubbo's dam could be empty by 2020

A hot and dry summer has exacerbated low soil moisture, with a dry autumn forecast

So far this drought has been short but hard-hitting. The coming cold season will be a test of that descriptor.

Last year's national farm production was down on the bumper year of 2016, but a good year in the west, decent prices and some moisture last summer softened the blow.

But with widespread low soil moisture, the pressure is on the arrival of cool-season rain.

The heat is making things worse

Lynette Bettio, a climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said the big dry was affecting large parts of NSW, eastern South Australia and parts of the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia.

And despite the flooding rains in the north, even Queensland isn't off the hook.

"The floods largely missed those areas of drought that we were covering," Dr Bettio said.

"It did relieve some of those areas; those large totals of rainfall meant that some areas near the border with the NT are no longer in that bottom 10 per cent for those [drought-measuring] periods.

"But there's still large parts of southern Queensland that are in that bottom 10 per cent of rainfall and lowest-on-record rainfall for those 11-month and 23-month periods."

She said the dry was the result of intense high pressure over Australia that made frontal systems weaker and less frequent than usual.

"We've just come off a record-warm summer, and that extreme heat that we saw, especially those heatwaves in December and January, certainly exacerbated those drought conditions and really added to the intensity of the impacts."

And the coming months aren't looking good, Dr Bettio added.

"For autumn, for rainfall, there's really an increased chance of below-average rainfall across much of eastern Australia."

The dams and the damned

A mostly dry northern wet season (torrential flooding in Queensland notwithstanding) and last winter's dismal rain in the south, has resulted in depleted water storages in every state and territory compared with this time last year.

New South Wales is the lowest at just 27.8 per cent of capacity overall, which is grim, but it gets worse when you look at individual dams.

Tony Webber from WaterNSW said it was a "very serious situation".

"I've been in the water sector for 11 years; I've never seen a dam run dry and that's the situation in Keepit," he said.

Keepit Dam on the Namoi River, north-west of Tamworth, all but ran dry at the end of 2018.

"Menindee Lakes in the far west is in a similar predicament," Mr Webber said.

"Releases into the Lower Darling have ceased. In fact, the Barwon-Darling River system itself has all but ceased to flow."

The pipeline to supply water to Broken Hill directly from the Murray, rather than the Menindee Lakes, got switched on last month.

The problem is widespread.

"Most northern dam storages are in single figures. Pindari, for example, is 3 per cent in the centre of the state," Mr Webber said.

"Burrendong Dam on the Macquarie River, servicing communities like Wellington, Dubbo, Nyngan and Cobar, is down to almost 7 per cent of capacity.

"It's scheduled, under a continuation of this worst-case scenario, to run dry by as soon as early 2020."

Around 40,000 people live in Dubbo.

Mr Webber said it was not only economically damaging but also exacted an emotional toll on the communities reliant on that surface water.

"Many of those small communities are now dependent on groundwater where that's available, but the situation for landholders not on regulated systems has been very, very dire for quite some time," he said.

"Now we're seeing a similar situation for even stock and domestic entitlement holders on rivers that are served by a dam."

At least the more metropolitan areas of New South Wales are doing better - Sydney is sitting around 57 per cent of capacity and its desalination plant is up and running.

Moisture buffer gone

Obviously the situation depends on where you are. Some areas in Western Australia had a record crop in 2018.

Department of Primary Industries agronomist and farmer Rohan Brill got a crop out of his property in the NSW Riverina last year, thanks mainly to moisture already in the soil.

Rain in December 2017 gave Mr Brill a buffer that, when combined with good prices, compensated for the dry winter and spring.

But the hot summer means that soils are dry and that buffer is gone.

"I think in general, most of southern New South Wales would be behind this time last year," Mr Brill said.

Northern New South Wales, he said, was probably at a similar level as last year, but only because last year was equally bad.

So what do you do, sitting on dry land with a bad forecast?

Step one is to hope for rain.

Remembering past years that looked bad but came good is probably beneficial for morale, given the current bad outlook.

"I know in 2016, it was very dry through autumn and quite hot and we took a long time hanging on for rain," Mr Brill said.

"It rained probably toward the end of autumn in 2016 but then it just kept on raining, so I think that's the hope of everyone around."

Then, there is lots of contingency planning - what to plant when, and if, it rains.

"I've heard people talk about not growing crops like canola because they're higher risk, but in some ways, a crop like canola can actually be cheaper to grow," he said.

"If you've got a lot of weeds it's quite expensive to control in a wheat crop, but in canola it's much cheaper to control the weeds."

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Finding savings elsewhere is also important. Mr Brill said doing soil tests to know what was really needed could be beneficial.

"Historically my grandfather and my father have been putting out a lot of phosphorus into the soil," he said.

"The virgin country has very low phosphorus, but we are actually at a point now where the phosphorus reserves have been built up quite well.

"So it's one of those inputs that we could potentially cut back on this year."

Tests done by some of Mr Brill's colleagues suggest that soils where phosphorus has built up over generations can comfortably handle phosphorus fertiliser being cut back by two-thirds.

"If a grower puts, say, 100 hundred kilos of MAP [fertiliser] on their crop, you're talking $75 a hectare ... so cutting back by fifty-odd dollars a hectare on phosphorus alone. It's those types of things."

In dry years Mr Brill said it was important not to forget the basics.

"I think it's fairly important too that we still stick to the plans and to the rotation, so we don't dig ourselves into a bigger hole for future years.

"It's just making sure we don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

A state drowning in dust

In the meantime there is another problem.

"The dust is our worst thing at the moment. It is just horrible," Mr Brill said.

"As soon as we get a change of weather coming in from the west, it just whips up a heap of dust from paddocks west of here and it just rolls in on dust storms.

The long-term issue is the loss of top soil.

"Just tonnes of soil being blown out to sea," Mr Brill said.

"Topsoil doesn't recover overnight, that's for sure. It takes decades to build up.

"You can see paddocks around here now, even some of the areas that are fairly safe really look awful because it's been so intense and come on so fast, they haven't really destocked quick enough.

"So yeah, let's hope for gentle, soaking rain for a few days, about anytime now, things will pick up."

Let's hope.

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State of the drought: Dams are empty and NSW is drowning in dust

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It's not good. Not good at all. The hot dry summer has stripped the soils of moisture, water storages are down in every state and territory, and New South Wales is drowning in dust.

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What will happen if we keep running out of water?

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What will happen if we keep running out of water?

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Our planet as a whole may never run out of water, it's important to remember that clean freshwater is not always available where and when humans need it. We have all the water we need to survive, but it is not always available when we need it.
More than a billion people live without enough safe, clean water. Also, every drop of water that we use continues through the water cycle.

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No we can not 'get' more water. All the water we have on Earth is the water we have. Water moves through the water cycle. You will often hear of 'desalinating' water - meaning using ocean water, and removing the salt from it so we can use it for drinking/cooking purposes. Or 'drilling' for water from our Earth's underground water source. However, all these types of water are already on our Earth.

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A lack of water can damage the world in many ways:
- It can leave people without drinking water. We need water to survive. If we have no water, all of us will die.
- It can leave communities into 'water wars', as groups or countries fight to have a stable water supply in the country. This usually means water having a high price - leaving those who are poor, no water availability.
- The increase of global warming is melting the ice caps in the Antarctica, and this can lead to rising sea levels. This means small island countries or people who live near the coast will experience major flooding and destruction.

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Water can do more trouble then you think. If we don't have water we can't:
- Use water for drinking. We need water to survive.
- Use water for food. We would not be able to water crops, and feed animals
- Use water for clothing. We would not be able to make any clothes - no cotton for your t-shirts.

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Does the water go in a circle? Does that mean all the water on this Earth has been here since Dinosaur times?

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Does the water go in a circle? Does that mean all the water on this Earth has been here since Dinosaur times?

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Yes the water goes in the circle around the globe - it's called the water cycle. Yes that means the water you may see today could of been here since Dinosaur times. Watch the video to remember how the water cycle works.

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How much will it cost to desalinate enough water to have a steady resource?

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How much will it cost to desalinate enough water to have a steady resource?

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Desalination is an expensive process. It may give a steady resource, particularly when a place is in drought.  But many places, including Australia only use desalinated water when in severe drought, due to the expensive cost.

For about 3000 litres of salt water, the process of desalination costs $3-4, depending on electricity costs where the desalination is.
This price does not include the set up of station (a medium station costs about $80 million to set up, a large station up to $250 million), station maintenance cost, and operating costs (eg employment of workers)

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How much rain a year do we need to have a steady supply of water?

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How much rain a year do we need to have a steady supply of water?

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We need a nice consistent amount of rain across the country to ensure that our dams are full enough for our cities and towns to use, and to keep our rivers and lakes flowing. There is not a magic number. However, with the increase of global warming and climate change happening in Australia we are seeing warmer days for longer each year - this means less rainfall, and that means less water in our dams, rivers and lakes. If we don't look after water now, and store it so we can use it when we are in need - we will run out of water if climate change and global warming keep happening at the same rate currently.