Warmer, drier start to 2015 forecast, Bureau of Meteorology says

MOST Australians can expect warmer and drier weather for the first three months of 2015.

DROUGHT. Weather. Tom & Jenny Small at Tottington, their sheep property near St Arnaud. Dry. Lambs. Wool. WTSocial. Pictured: Landscape. PICTURE: ZOE PHILLIPS

MOST Australians can expect warmer and drier weather for the first three months of 2015, the Bureau of Meteorology says.

Its latest three-month climate forecast, issued yesterday, says a wider area of drought-affected Queensland is likely to be drier than usual compared with the previous outlook issued in November.

Only a segment of Western Australia’s far east and southwest will have near-average rainfall, but rainfall near the average will fall across NSW, Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

Early 2015 is expected to be warmer than usual for all but coastal Western Australia, south of the Pilbara, south-western Western Australia, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and the NSW southern and central Tablelands.

Most of Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and the Northern Territory face at least a 65 per cent chance of warmer-than-average weather to the end of March.

Southern Tasmania, including Hobart, is 75 per cent certain to have higher maximum temperatures.

BOM senior climatologist Robyn Duell says warmer water in the Indian Ocean basin and southeast of Australia contributing to the trend, along with near-El Nino conditions in the central Pacific Ocean.

The BOM says there is a 70 per cent chance a full El Nino will form by the end of February.

“Most indicators are sitting right near the threshold for El Nino, and that’s the (climate) outlook that we’re seeing,” Ms Duell said.

“The warmer and drier start to the year for many is very typical of the outlook that you would see with El Nino or El Nino-like conditions in the Pacific Ocean.”

Widespread thunderstorms in Queensland and NSW have done little to ease the dry spell in those states, Ms Duell said.

“It’s great, and any rainfall there is helpful, but the rainfall deficits there are big,” she said.