El Nino event on the cards for spring and summer in Australia

Aussies should prepare for “heatwaves and bushfires” this summer as the Bureau of Meteorology declares a high likelihood of an El Nino event.

Aussies should prepare for “heatwaves and bushfires” this summer as the Bureau of Meteorology declares a high likelihood of an El Nino event. (Photo by Brook Mitchell/Getty Images)

Australians should be prepared for blistering weather conditions this summer despite an El Nino event not being yet declared.

The Bureau of Meteorology has remained at an El Nino alert, meaning there is a 70 per cent chance the weather phenomenon will come to create dry and hot conditions this spring and summer.

An El Nino event is “on the cards” according to the BOM’s national manager of climate services Karl Braganza.

El Nino would bring drought, heatwaves and bushfires to Australia, largely in the southeast. (Photo by Brook Mitchell/Getty Images)

“Our rainfall and temperature outlook strongly reflect that kind of a forecast with dry conditions on the horizon,” he said on Wednesday.

“So compared to the last three years, where we had the opposite of an El Nino or La Nina event in the Pacific, and quite heavy rainfall over Australia, we‘re now looking at summer of below average rainfall and possibly heatwaves and bushfires.”

With a possible El Nino on the cards, there are concerns that the dry and hot conditions could bring a scorching fire season to many parts of Australia.

Australia continues to “get drier and drier” according to former Fire and Rescue NSW Commissioner and Councillor with the Climate Council Greg Mullins who argues that “we’re set for a bad year”.

The rainy conditions experienced in the last three years due to El Nino appear to be over. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw

“I’m not a betting man, but if I was a betting man, I’d say we’re going to get big fires this year,” he told the Climate Council’s El Nino media briefing on Monday.

According to Mr Mullins, the three years of rain from La Nina have meant that there are prime conditions for fires.

“We get a lot of grass growth in areas that don’t normally have coverage of biofuel,” he said.

“The plants are a few centimetres apart, you can’t walk through it, it’s just so incredibly thick.”

Dr Braganza said that the BOM is looking closely at rainfall in certain areas to try and predict the ferocity of future fires.

“We’re watching on a weekly basis how much rainfall we get over some of the fire prone forested regions where there has been some fuel growth and also the grassland regions,” he said.

The BOM and other organisations are watching for potential fire hotspots as we approach a potential El Nino summer .NCA NewsWire / Tony McDonough

Dr Braganza flagged that other organisations, including the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation, have declared that El Nino is already underway and that there is a 90 per cent chance it will persist for the rest of 2023.

He said that not all of the BOM’s thresholds for El Nino have been met, with the atmosphere not responding to the El Nino conditions found in the ocean.

“El Nino is quite a complex phenomenon, it involves both an atmosphere component and an ocean component,” he said.

“Looking at the ocean components, you could say that we‘re in an event already, however, the atmosphere needs to come to the party and it hasn’t quite done that yet.”