For a warmer future, Australia employs Aboriginal wisdom

Faced with its worst drought in history, meteorologists are plumbing the Aborigines' 40,000 years of lore.

from the May 9, 2007 edition

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For example, in the Simpson Desert of central Australia, the appearance of wading birds called plovers is associated with the onset of seasonal rains.

In the humid north of the Northern Territory, the arrival of the brolga crane was traditionally seen as heralding the beginning of the monsoon season. The flowering of rough-barked gum trees indicates that winds will blow from the southeast, bringing in the dry season.

Aboriginal expertise is also challenging the European concept of four seasons, an axiom the British imported to Australia when they arrived in 1788.

The Northern Hemisphere pattern of spring, summer, fall, and winter sits uncomfortably with the reality of Australia's climate. Aboriginal tribes, in contrast, recognize up to seven distinct seasons. In the Sydney region, for instance, September and October are known by Aboriginal people as Murrai'yunggoray, the time when the red waratah flower blooms.

It is followed by Goraymurrai, a period of warm, wet weather during which Aborigines would not camp near rivers for fear of flooding.

Australia faces climate change's worst

These days, Australians need all the help they can get. Last month, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said the country faced an "unprecedentedly dangerous" drought.

Without significant rain in the next few weeks, farmers in the nation's breadbasket states of New South Wales and Victoria will be denied water for irrigation, consigning millions of acres of crops to wither and die. Tim Flannery, one of Australia's best-known environmentalists, has warned that Australia confronts "the most dangerous situation arising from climate change facing any country in the world right now."

But Australia isn't the only nation to recognize indigenous meteorological knowledge. Experts studying the effects of global warming in the Arctic are looking to Inuit expertise, and South American Indians' knowledge of weather patterns, such as El Niño, has long been recognized.

"The Indians knew that when the ocean was warm they'd get rain from El Niño, so they'd plant potatoes," says Dr. Stern. "When it was cold, there'd be no rain, but the anchovies would be plentiful, so they'd feed on fish."

In the years to come, the Bureau of Meteorology hopes to recruit more Aboriginal communities to the project. To the relief of a parched nation in the midst of its worst-ever "big dry," indigenous weather-watchers and the bureau's climatologists are both predicting rain over the next several months.

"For most parts of Australia there's at least a 50 percent chance of above-average rainfall over the next three months," Stern says. "We have some confidence that the very dry conditions we've been experiencing may be coming to an end."

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