Likelihood of a major El Niño this year

There have been increasing indications that there is likely to be a major El Niño event this year.  A week ago scientists from the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology confirmed that we are in an El Niño event, reporting that:

El Niño has arrived, it’s getting stronger, and it’s not about to go away soon. And already there are rumblings that this could be a big one. El Niño in Australia means warmer temperatures, and sometimes, but not always, drier conditions.

In 2014, some climatologists thought a big El Niño might have been on the cards. Ultimately, after some vigorous early warming in the Pacific, conditions only touched on El Niño thresholds. This year, with an event already established, climatologists are suggesting the odds are rising of an El Niño rivalling the record events of 1982 and 1997. [read the full article here].

In The Conversation today CSIRO and UNSW researchers pointed to indications that the 2015-2016 El Niño event will be a major one:

The anticipation is growing that this year’s newly formed El Niño will turn out to be very big. All climate models surveyed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology are currently predicting a strong event later this year.

In terms of intensity and the growth rate up to July, the 2015 El Niño is second only to corresponding time of the 1997 event, and looks set to outpower the 1982 event. However, the eventual intensity of the 2015 El Niño is still hard to predict. What seems more certain is a La Niña in 2016.

For Australia, the extent and strength of the impact of the 2015 El Niño to a large extent depends on whether there is a concurrent positive Indian Ocean Dipole. In 2014, there was no positive Indian Ocean Dipole. To date, most models are predicting a positive dipole this year, raising the prospect of a strong El Niño preceded by a positive Indian Ocean Dipole and followed by a La Niña event – exactly as occurred in 1982-84 and 1997-99
For Australia, the impacts of this sequence could be significant, as attested by the devastating Ash Wednesday bushfire in 1983 over southern Australia and the floods that hit the country’s northeast in early 1984.[read the full article here].


 All of this suggests that we are in for a bad fire season, after some years of very little fire activity in the Helidon Hills.

If you haven't already done your fire season preparations now is definitely the time to do them.  And if you are a smokespotter, make sure you have your compass handy as well as your list of phone numbers for Coordinators.