CANBERRA - Australia's crippling drought, which some lawmakers have called the worst for 1,000 years, is a natural ocurrence and has no link to global warming, the country's top science organisation said on Thursday.
Australia had experienced around 30 periods of drought over a period of about 10,000 years, said Barrie Hunt, a researcher at the Melbourne-based Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO) atmospheric research centre. "I think it's probably a bit too early yet to say we're having a greenhouse effect on rainfall," Hunt told local radio.
Hunt based his research on three sites scattered from the country's mostly arid west, to the heavily populated east, which is experiencing one of the worst droughts on record.
Eastern Australia has already experienced six consecutive years of below-normal rainfall. Many towns and major cities are enduring tough restrictions on water use as dams shrink to around 20 percent or less of normal levels. In parts of southern Victoria state the dry period has lasted for 10 years.
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