A talk by Dr Murray Peel, University of Melbourne.  His hydroclimatology and comparative hydrology research interests include understanding differences in inter-annual variability of annual runoff around the world, hydrologic impacts of land use change and potential climate change impacts on inter-annual runoff variability.

 

This event is only open to University of Bristol staff and students.  No booking required.

The recent Millennium Drought in South-Eastern Australia (1997 – 2009) was a 13-year extended dry period during which unusual catchment responses with significant implications for long-term streamflow projections were observed. In just over half of the catchments investigated a statistically significant downward shift in the long-term annual rainfall-runoff relationship was observed. Here I present a summary of recent results using the Millennium Drought as an observed case study of a prolonged dry period to investigate actual catchment response and hydrologic model performance during the drought. I draw conclusions from these results relevant to future long-term streamflow projections.

 

Dr Murray Peel is a Senior Research Fellow and ARC Future Fellow in the Department of Infrastructure Engineering at the University of Melbourne. He obtained his PhD (Geography) in 1999 from the University of Melbourne as part of the CRC for Catchment Hydrology. His hydrologic research and consulting activities at the University of Melbourne have produced over 85 publications, including 42 articles in international peer-reviewed journals and 8 book chapters. His research interests include catchment hydrology, hydroclimatology, hydrologic impacts of climate change and land use change, improving techniques for hydrologic prediction under changing conditions and understanding global differences in the inter-annual variability of annual runoff.