How is this going to affect our weather moving forward?
— Ashleigh
Day to day, we’ll barely notice it.
El Niño is a nudge on the weather, but one that adds up over time. Temperatures will be slightly warmer over winter ON AVERAGE — we’ll still get cold days and nights, but generally not quite as cold as they’d normally be.
Similarly, there will be slightly less rain than normal ON AVERAGE — don’t put away your umbrella or gumboots but maybe think twice before having that super-long shower. Also, it might not make sense at first blush, but the reduced rainfall usually means clearer skies which — despite the slightly elevated temperatures — can mean more frosty mornings.
Typically, El Niño lasts through winter and spring and starts to decay in summer, but they can last up to a year, and occasionally we can get subsequent back-to-back El Niño events for 2 years or more. That’s where things get really dangerous for Australia — multiple winters of low rainfall and warmer temperatures can significantly elevate the summer bushfire and drought risk.
It can also reduce activity in the tropics later in the year (we typically end up with fewer cyclones than the average), and it can delay the onset of the northern wet season.
The tricky thing is that no two El Niño events are the same — the weather is still the unknown variable with this climate push, and it just takes one wayward cyclone, deep cold front, or east coast low to change our fortunes significantly. To complicate things even further, there are other climate drivers — the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) that can sway the pendulum and either reinforce or combat El Niño.
Finally, how we prepare and how we behave can change things too — good fuel reduction and land management policies, water conservation and disaster preparedness can take the sting out of the tail, buy us time, or at least help us recover more quickly when things get tough.