Professor grim on drought grip

Speaking at a producer forum hosted by Suncorp Agribusiness in Roma last week, Professor Roger Stone from the University of Southern Queensland's International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences said two respected US models pointed to the alarming trend.

He cautioned against panic but said producers should be wary of making large investments based on the El Nino breaking in autumn.

"We hope that the El Nino will break next autumn but two models out of the US are showing this continuing beyond that stage," he said.

"Those models are from the Florida State University and the US Government.

"Most other models aren't showing that but if I owned a property and I was armed with that information I would be a little bit cautious until we get to autumn to see which way it is going to swing. It is very early days yet and the main thing to do is to watch this pattern very closely."

Professor Stone said models from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) were not showing the trend at present however he said the BOM models were forecasting mostly dry conditions for the coming months and seasons.

"If there is something serious going on than the other models will catch up and when we get to autumn there will be a better indication of which way it's going to go for the following 10-12 months," he said.

"I would have to say that having had discussions with other climatologists around the world, the conversation in the corridors is about some potential for this event to be longer lasting."

Professor Stone said it was a difficult pattern to forecast because there had been so few similar types of events in the past.

"We have had so few of these really long lasting protracted El Nino events - maybe three a century - so we haven't got a lot of data to work with," he said.

"If you put the statistics to one side and just look at the physical processes that are going on in the ocean (Pacific) at the moment then that's what a couple of those models are suggesting.

"It's only a couple of models at this stage but they happen to be two of the better models so I would tread carefully."

THE El Nino, in the shorter term, should result in lower than average rainfall across much of Queensland with the exception of far western Queensland which, along with central Australia, has a higher probability of above average rainfall, Professor Roger Stone said.

He said the trend was due to the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) having moved to a more favourable easterly phase.

“If we didn’t have an El Nino we would be jumping for joy this summer but now we have an El Nino coming to take the place of the QBO except in the far west of the state and central Australia which is coming up with a fair bit of rain on the forecast,” he said.

Professor Stone said the QBO had a significant impact on weather conditions in southern Queensland but said it wasn’t yet being used in most of the major computer modelling.

He said he believed the failure of authorities to incorporate the QBO into modelling was partly to blame for the mis-forecasting of the 2012-2013 drought.

“In 2011 every agency put out forecasts that were full of high rainfall probabilities, including us, but it didn’t turn out that way,” he said.

“I think the QBO had an opportunity to dominate in 2012 and that was the main reason the forecasting was seen as being wrong.

“The new models that the BOM is developing in collaboration with key overseas agencies should, in the future, include the QBO in their formulation.”