The BOM outlook for the weather over the next three months is ‘neutral’ – here’s what that really means.

Today the Bureau of Meteorology releases its end-of-month seasonal outlook for April to June, updating the initial outlook released on March 15. But you might not have seen much media coverage of it, because we’re not seeing big swings towards the attention-grabbing climate drivers like El Niño or the Indian Ocean Dipole, which can dominate Australia’s climate.

The rainfall outlook map for April–June 2018, issued March 15 (left), shows
most of Australia in the neutral/50:50 range (so coloured white). In contrast, the rainfall outlook map for October 2015 (right) shows a low chance of exceeding the
median (so brown dominates the map).

There are times when the main drivers of our climate are not strong enough to push us towards a season dominated by unusually wet or dry, or hot or cool, weather. This can also happen if different climate drivers are having opposite impacts – they can cancel each other out.

Without a strong push one way or another, our outlook maps are often white. This is a neutral or “50:50” outlook map.

Read the piece on The Conversation - “The BOM outlook for the weather over the next three months is ‘neutral’ – here’s what that really means.”

'Turn in the weather': Dry, hot start to summer points to fire season ramping up

Australia is heading for a relatively hot and dry start to summer as key climate drivers combine to raise the fire threat in many parts of the country.

The odds point to about a 70 to 80 per cent chance of below-average rainfall for eastern Australia, extending dry conditions that have set in over much of the region in November, according to the latest climate outlook from the Bureau of Meteorology.

"We are seeing a turn in the weather," said Robyn Duell, a senior climatologist at the bureau, noting that much of the country had an exceptionally wet winter. "If we see a hot December, it will raise the risk [of bushfires] because there's a lot of vegetation around."

The outlook for heightened fire threats matches forecasts made in August that Australia's second-wettest winters on record would lead to a delayed start to the bushfire season before conditions ramped up.

Read the Melbourne Age story - “'Turn in the weather': Dry, hot start to summer points to fire season ramping up.”