El Nino to bring record heat to Australia by Christmas, BoM warns

Australia is on track to eclipse past heat records as an el nino weather pattern peaks by Christmas.

A strengthening El Niño will bring further bushfir, such as this one south of Geeveston near the Huon Highway, Tasmania, earlier this spring. Picture Nikki Davis-Jones

An El Niño weather pattern bringing drought and bushfires is expected to reach full force in Australia by Christmas, weather officials said, and the country is on track to eclipse past heat records given an unseasonably hot spring.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology director Rob Vertessy, in an appearance before MPs today, said that while a strengthening El Niño had not yet reached levels associated with devastating droughts that gripped the country during similar weather patterns in 1982 and 1997, it was still intensifying.

“We forecast it to get there eventually around Christmas, and the phenomenon could persist well into the autumn,” Mr Vertessy said.

El Niño can alter weather patterns around the world and affect more than one billion people, bringing heavy winter rain and flooding in the western US, while triggering droughts and crop devastation in Australia and Southeast Asia. The event, which begins with warming ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific, has also been blamed for dry spells in India coinciding with weak monsoon rains.

Australia last experienced a strong El Niño in 1997 and 1998, while the 1982 event caused more than A$3 billion (US$2.2 billion) worth of damage and economic losses, including wildfires and dust storms that ravaged agriculture in the country’s main southeast food bowl areas.

Mr Vertessy said the current El Niño, while still unpredictable, was likely to result in 2015 being the hottest ever recorded year for the world, with much of Australia’s north-eastern livestock areas already experiencing drought and water storages down to just a quarter of maximum levels. Early spring temperatures above 30C have also been common along the country’s heavily-populated eastern seaboard.

“There’s quite bad drought conditions prevailing in Queensland and Victoria in particular, and these El Niño conditions look set to intensify that predicament,” Mr Vertessy said.

A study last year by Cambridge University and members of the International Monetary Fund found the most severe impact of El Niño patterns was in the Asia and Pacific region. Among Australia’s neighbours, drought is already being experienced in many areas of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, causing food shortages and crop failures.

The weather pattern reduced wheat exports and drove up global wheat and food prices, leading to inflation hitting many people in developing economies like India and Indonesia.

While Australia, Chile, Indonesia, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa faced a severe impact on their economies, the El Niño pattern could benefit other countries with wetter conditions including Argentina, Canada, Mexico and the western US, the study said.

Dow Jones