El Nino is over, but future La Nina uncertain, Bureau of Meteorology says

The El Nino weather pattern has officially ended, but record high global sea surface temperatures are making it hard to predict what will come next.

Australia experienced its driest August to October on record in 2023. Picture: AFP

The El Nino weather pattern has officially ended seven months after it began, according to the weather bureau, but record high global sea surface temperatures are making it hard to predict what will come next.

When the Bureau of Meteorology declared El Nino was in effect in September, Australians braced for hot and dry con­ditions for spring and the early summer.

The country experienced its driest August to October on record, and livestock farmers, fearing months of drought, flooded the market, causing prices to tumble.

By late spring, significant rain began to fall across the eastern states, and a wetter than average summer took hold across much of the country.

On Tuesday afternoon, the bureau said the oceanic and atmospheric indicators determining the state of the El Nino–Southern Oscillation had returned to a neutral phase following “substantial cooling” in sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean over the past two weeks.

“International climate models suggest ENSO will likely continue to be neutral until at least July 2024,” the bureau said.

Three of seven international forecasting models have predicted a state of La Nina, which typically brings greater rainfall to eastern Australia, in July, but the bureau tempered the prediction.

“El Nino and La Nina predictions made in mid-autumn tend to have lower accuracy than predictions made at other times of the year,” it said. “This means that current forecasts of the ENSO state beyond July should be used with caution.”

The BOM said global sea surface temperatures had been the warmest on record each month since April last year and that the warmer pattern had made it difficult to predict whether the La Nina pattern would eventuate.

“As the current global ocean conditions have not been observed before, inferences of how ENSO may develop in 2024 that are based on past events may not be reliable,” the bureau said.