The culprit behind east Australia's big dry.

When leading climate scientist Matthew England began work at a lab in Hobart in the mid-1980s, visitors were greeted by a huge graphic depicting a tight correlation between El Ninos and Australia's farm yields.

Climate scientists and meteorologists increasingly pay attention to what's
happening in the Indian Ocean to help predict rainfall in south-eastern Australia.

Any government minister would leave understanding that "we’ve got a tremendous amount of economic wealth" dependent on Pacific climate influences, making El Nino research "iconic", England says.

It turns out more attention should have been paid to the Indian Ocean.

Read the story from The Age by Peter Hannam - “The culprit behind east Australia's big dry.”