The cycle of rainfall in Eastern NSW

A recent paper by Prof Michael Asten and Prof Ken McCracken looked at the floods in the Nepean and the water levels in Lake George for the past 200 years. It shows an 80-year cyclical pattern in the rainfall. The same pattern can also be seen in the Antarctic ice core records for the past 150,000 years. It suggests that in eastern NSW the next 40 years will be wetter than the past 40, and that Lake George will come up to the road (and maybe onto it).

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The cycle of rainfall in Eastern NSW

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Prof Michael Asten and Prof Ken McCracken

Michael Asten is a Professor of geophysics, now retired after 23 years in School of Earth Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University, Melbourne. He is a past-President of the ASEG, and served a recent three-year term as the AGC representative on the Australian Academy of Sciences UNCOVER Committee. He has published 208 scientific papers and has various research awards from the ASEG, BHP and CSIRO for innovations in electromagnetic, airborne gravity gradient and passive seismic methods. Using time-series analysis methods from past work he has also been researching for nine years the role of natural cycles in centennial and millennial global climate change; this work has been subject of eight papers at international conferences, the latest being the AGU in New Orleans, December 2021. Ken McCracken, Southern Highlands resident and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, is well known to Royal Society of NSW Southern Highlands audiences, having given a number of lectures over many years. Research interests are cosmic ray modulation, solar energetic particle events, interplanetary magnetic field, geophysical techniques applied to deeply weathered terrains, and cosmogenic radionuclide studies.

Aug 2022

6:30pm

Mittagong RSL Carrington Room