This is The ChangeUnderground for the 13th of March 2023.
I’m your host, Jon Moore
Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!
La Niña/El Niño
Now here’s a headline to send chills down the spine: Australia can expect an El Niño weather pattern bringing extreme dry hot weather now La Niña is over.
That’s from the ABC News site, dated 11 March 2023. And like it says on the tin things are headed for drought, basically.
A quick refresher on the dreaded La Nina/El Nino phase swap. When the eastern Pacific equatorial waters are cooler than normal, the western side is warmer, this is La Nina and leads to droughts in Peru and Chile and rains in eastern Australia. The reverse holds for El Nino. For the past three years we’ve been under a La Nina event hence the three years of flooding in eastern Australia. The la Nina has been decaying for a few months now so areas have been receiving the last few flooding events and some areas have already started to dry out. In far north Queensland floods have destroyed townships and a bushfire has burnt out some 18,000 hectares near the gold mining settlement of Hill End. Indeed a land of droughts and flooding rains. Continue reading →