NCAR reports:
When enough raindrops fall over land instead of the ocean, they begin to add up.
New research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) shows that when three atmospheric patterns came together over the Indian and Pacific oceans, they drove so much precipitation over Australia in 2010 and 2011 that the world’s ocean levels dropped measurably. Unlike other continents, the soils and topography of Australia prevent almost all of its precipitation from running off into the ocean.
The 2010-11 event temporarily halted a long-term trend of rising sea levels caused by higher temperatures and melting ice sheets…
Oh good grief! Where did that rain run too?
All of the estimates are, of course, considerably less than a normal variation in tide levels. That will happen in the next 29 days, roughly.
And he said
Steve, you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
I don’t recall hearing much about sea levels dropping. Most of what we have been fed on the east coast has been a steady diet of unprecedented sea level rise, at least a foot in the next couple of decades or by the end of the century, or maybe some time.
No sea level raise? At last a promise that Obama was able to keep.
H’m. Our host is an Aussie. How much does that explain?
Australia – the continental sponge!
Since their climate models are so perfect, why didn’t they predict that Australia would get more rain some years than others.
For the same reasons their climate models miss almost everything else that happens–they are models based on an agenda, not based on facts.
I seem to remember that ocean/rain cycle cartoon in my 2nd grade science book. And the term cycle was emphasized, as I recall.
Guess they haven’t got that cartoon and book in their reference list.
So Australia greedily hogged the precipitation in its aquifers. Those dadgum Aussies!