PLEA Network

30 August 2018, The Conversation, Spring is coming, and there’s little drought relief in sight. So far, 2018 has been very warm and exceptionally dry over large parts of mainland Australia. The Bureau of Meteorology’s climate outlook for spring, released today, shows that significant widespread relief is unlikely. The chance of a spring El Niño, along with other climate drivers, is likely to mean below-average rainfall for large parts of the country in the coming months. A dry winter for most of Australia Winter rainfall has been below average over most of Australia’s eastern mainland. Large parts of New South Wales are on track to have winter rainfall in the lowest 10% of records. This has compounded drought conditions in the east after mixed rainfall last year and a dry start to 2018 for much of the country. But it’s not just the lack of rainfall that has made the impact of drought severe. Another factor was the warmer than average daytime temperatures. Warmest January-August on record for some The 2017-18 summer average temperature was Australia’s second-warmest in 108 years of records, while autumn was Australia’s fourth-warmest on record. Winter 2018 is likely to be among the five warmest winters on record in terms of maximum temperatures. Many of the above-average daytime temperatures have been focused over the country’s southeast. In fact, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria are all on track for their warmest maximum temperatures for the January to August period. The below-average rainfall combined with above-average maximum temperatures resulted in a rapid and intense drying of the landscape. This has led to unusually severe fire weather conditions in July and August – conditions more typically seen at the end of spring than the end of winter. Read more here