It’s the news that rain-weary grey nomads have been longing to hear … weather patterns this summer could be returning to normal!
After nearly three years of rain and flood events, the ABC reports that the ensemble of wet climate drivers, led by a triple La Niña, is rapidly breaking down.
ABC Meteorologist Tom Saunders says global models are leaning towards an early end to La Niña and possibly even a rapid transition to El Niño next year
“If La Niña does indeed weaken and the Southern Ocean remains near neutral, then a typical Australian summer is on the cards,” he said.
The meteorologist said that, compared to the past two summers, most regions could then expect more sunshine and warmer temperatures.
It's been a wet couple of years ... a very wet couple of years! PIC: BOM)
“A regular run-of-the-mill summer will still include thunderstorm outbreaks, tropical cyclones and bouts of flooding,” Mr Saunders said. “But the risk of widespread major flooding is greatly reduced without the aid of global and regional climate drivers.”
BOM meteorologist Jonathan How agreed.
“There is an end in sight to this La Niña, and certainly the latest climate outlook and the summer rainfall outlook as well does show that, even though we are expecting still above-average rainfall for the east coast, that signal really does weaken off heading into early next year,” he told the ABC. “Heading into January and February, the rainfall signal does decrease quite substantially across the eastern states.”
After three successive La Niñas, Mr How said a fourth in a row would be unprecedented.
“It’s really too early to say whether or not we’ll get La Niña or El Niño next summer,” he said. “Two La Niñas in a row is fairly common, three is less common, four I don’t believe we’ve had during record-keeping years.”
But Agus Santoso, a senior research associate at the University of NSW’s Climate Change Research Centre, told the ABC that a fourth La Niña was not impossible.
“We cannot completely rule out a possibility for a fourth La Niña next year,” he said. “A neutral or an El Niño would have a higher probability, I’d say, given that we’ve had three La Niñas in a row.”
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I just don’t want it to go back into the dry we had before the wet came. It has gone dry in our area now. Our lawn is virtually dead, and these dry hot winds we are getting now will wipe out our vege garden as well. We are actually a dry area normally, even though we are in the New England, where it is supposed to rain. But it has been slowly getting worse over the last 20 years.
Definitely been getting worse