BOM declares strong El Niño: What Australians should expect

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has reportedly proclaimed that an active El Niño could become a historic event in the modern era. The phenomenon is characterized by warmer than normal water temperatures in the central tropical Pacific.

The El Niño coincided with what is rapidly transitioning into a wet month across much of Australia. This week marks a major extratropical cloudband is dropping rain over the southern two-thirds of the nation. The central point is to understand this anomaly by remembering that El Niño is an observation, not a forecast.

The current conditions over Australia or any country are inapplicable in determining whether or not El Niño is present.

El Niño is not only the primary driver of our weather patterns for Australia, but a continent also surrounded by three oceans.

The Indian Ocean and Southern Ocean both play a significant role in influencing our weather, and they are shifting the balance in favor of rainfall. This also influences cloud formation ultimately leading to warmer daytime temperatures across southern Australia.

On the other hand, cooler night temperatures in winter, along with increased frost are also compounding this impact.

For those unversed, El Niño does not peak until November to January-as early as June meaning that an event starting as early as June has around six months to deepen.

The rate of warming in the Nino 3.4 is already the fastest since 1943, and the dominant forecast predicts that temperatures in the equatorial Pacific will continue to climb over the coming months.

Furthermore, from a statistical standpoint, 2026 is now on track to be the 7th consecutive year of either El Niño or La Nina. This comes at a time when about 50 percent of years are neither, a state known as a neutral Pacific.