Australia’s unpredictable weather is set to continue to confuse us all as La Niña has a strong chance of turning 2024 into another wet year, modelling by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation indicates.
Global weather models forecast a of rapid cooling sea surface temperatures across the equatorial Pacific in the coming months.
This cooling would see the expiry of the the current El Niño and turn into a rapid swing of the fourth La Niña in five years, something only seen twice since 1900.
The last La Niña saw a higher than average rainfall in many parts of the country, including South Australia.
While the model suggests February is expected to return to drier than usual weather for most of Australia, near normal rainfall is expected to fall on much of the eastern seaboard.
In the last three years, Australia saw 17% more rainfall than usual, making it the country’s wettest spell in a decade.
Australia’s weather patterns are heavily influenced by both cycles with La Niña being a wet phase for Australia and often much more prolonged than the dry phase that is El Niño.
While the La Niña will disproportionately impact the northern and eastern regions of Australia, exposing those areas to above-average rainfall, South Australia should still prepare for cooler than average ocean temperatures.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2023 was the warmest year on record, exceeding the previous record warm years of 2016 and 2020. Individually, the past 10 years have been the warmest 10 years on record.
Australia’s climate has warmed by 1.48°C between 1910, when national records began, and 2022. There has been an increase in extreme heat and fire weather associated with the warming. There has also been a trend towards a greater proportion of rainfall from high intensity, short duration rainfall events, especially across northern Australia.
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