HOW DO WE USE THE EL NIÑO – SOUTHERN OSCILLATION TO FORECAST AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE?
The Bureau’s National Climate Centre began preparing and issuing official monthly “Seasonal Climate Outlooks” in 1989. My group in the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre (BMRC) develops models and systems for operational prediction of the El Nio – Southern Oscillation and its impacts on Australian climate – these are then used by the National Climate Centre to produce Seasonal Climate Outlooks which are disseminated through the media, by mail and fax, and over the WWW. Simple linear lagged regression, and similar statistical techniques, between the SOI and subsequent rainfall provide the basis for the Seasonal Climate Outlooks. These now provide forecasts over a wide area. For instance, the forecasts include early wet season rainfall over northern Australia – I developed techniques in the early 1980s to predict the onset of the wet-season. Wasyl Drosdowsky, one of my BMRC colleagues, now has developed sophisticated time-series methods to project the SOI into the future. These projec
