In brief
- Australian farmers are waiting to hear whether meteorological organisations declare an El Niño event in the coming weeks.
- An El Niño cycle typically means a dry outlook and a heightened chance of bushfires.
Fourth-generation farmer Sophie Nichols would usually be enjoying a hard-earned holiday in late autumn.
Instead, she spent the usually temperate period on flood watch.
"I can't really leave the farm when there's that sort of risk," she told the Australian Associated Press.
She was particularly concerned as the heavy rainfall warnings followed a protracted dry stint for the Singleton property in NSW's Hunter Valley, leaving the landscape prone to flooding.
While the property, which has an organic orchard and runs beef cattle and sheep, escaped inundation, Nichols is bracing for more extreme conditions.
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A formal El Niño declaration, which could arrive from meteorological organisations in the coming weeks, has the potential to pivot the region back into dry.
Australia's climate is driven by more than just the El Niño–Southern Oscillation patterns that cycle in the Pacific Ocean periodically, and its status for the latter part of the year is yet to be confirmed.
Yet El Niño patterns are typically associated with less rainfall than usual over much of eastern Australia, and warmer-than-average temperatures throughout the south.
The latest update from the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) says there are signs of El Niño development based on warming oceans in the Pacific.
Other atmospheric indicators, such as trade winds, pressure and cloud patterns in the tropical Pacific, remain consistent with an ENSO-neutral pattern, and the Indian Ocean Dipole — another influential driver of Australia's weather — is presently neutral.
Were an El Niño to eventuate and bring with it less rainfall and higher temperatures, drought and bushfire risk worries Nichols the most.
"Like a lot of regional towns, Singleton is about half national park," she said.
After destocking before the rain to give pastures a chance to recover, the risk of a dry winter complicated restocking decisions, along with elevated cattle prices.
Compared with when her grandfather was farming the same patch of land, Nichols says the swings between dry and wet are more pronounced due to climate change, leaving less time to prepare for climate events like El Niño.
"There would have been a few seasons that he could have built up a bit more of a buffer between these kind of extreme weather events," she said.
Climate whiplash, characterised by swings between weather extremes, has been accelerating due to higher concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to the Climate Council.
Climate councillor Andrew Watkins, formerly of the Australian Climate Service and BoM, said climate change and El Niño were a concerning combination.
The warming climate is already gearing the climate towards fire, drought and heatwave, and an El Niño had the potential to intensify those impacts.
"Climate change has already loaded the dice," Watkins told AAP.
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