Climate change ‘loading the dice’ ahead of El Nino risk
Fourth-generation farmer Sophie Nichols would often enjoy a hard-earned vacation in late autumn.
Instead, it spent the usually mild period on flood watch.
“I really can’t leave the farm with that kind of risk,” he told AAP.
He was particularly concerned that heavy rainfall warnings for the Singleton property in NSW’s Hunter Valley had left the land prone to flooding following a prolonged dry spell.
As the property, which has an organic orchard and raises cattle and sheep, recovers from being flooded, Ms Nichols is preparing for tougher conditions.
An official El Niño declaration that may come from meteorological institutions in the coming weeks has the potential to plunge the region into drought again.
Australia’s climate is driven by more than El Niño-Southern Oscillation patterns that rotate periodically in the Pacific Ocean, and its status in the second half of the year has not yet been confirmed.
However, El Niño patterns are generally associated with less than normal rainfall across much of eastern Australia and above-average temperatures in the south.
Latest update Officials from the Bureau of Meteorology say there are signs that El Nino is developing due to warming oceans in the Pacific.
Other atmospheric indicators such as trade winds, pressure and cloud patterns in the tropical Pacific remain consistent with the ENSO-neutral pattern, and the Indian Ocean Dipole, another driver of Australian weather, is currently neutral.
If an El Niño occurs, bringing with it less precipitation and typically warmer temperatures, Ms. Nichols is most concerned about the risk of drought and wildfire.
“Singleton, like many regional towns, is about half the size of the national park,” he said.
The risk of a dry winter, along with rising cattle prices, has complicated restocking decisions after stockings were thawed ahead of rain to give pastures a chance to recover.
Compared to when her grandfather farmed the same piece of land, Ms. Nichols says the fluctuations between dry and wet due to climate change are more pronounced, providing less time to prepare for climatic events such as El Niño.
“There would be a couple of seasons where it could provide a little bit more of a buffer between these types of extreme weather events,” he said.
Climate change, characterized by fluctuations between extreme weather conditions, is accelerating According to the Climate Council, due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Former Australian Climate Service and Climate Council Member Andrew Watkins from the BoM said climate change and El Niño were a worrying combination.
The warming climate is already driving the climate towards fire, drought and heatwaves, and El Niño had the potential to intensify these effects.
“Climate change has already loaded the dice,” Dr Watkins told AAP.
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