YEs Crikey that has nothing to do with El Nino conditions.
Its more to do with the seasonal shift and colder water over the top end. Strong Easterlies have dried out the interior.
We have had a zonal shift this year whereby the highs and lows are in different positions relevant to last year.
This year, highs are sitting themselves over the WA region, and the lows have been barrelling over our region.
In any case, not really important as the next 6 months are when we see the effects of an El nino or La nina.
The El nino has already peaked, despite CFS insisting a massive explosion of warmth across the basin.
See here.
Compared to current conditions it would need to totally reverse the trend.
This is yesterday, and compare that with 3 weeks ago. Notice its pushing the heat Eastwards, meaning there are no westerlies present at the surface and thats why the cold upwelling is occuring on the SA coast.
3 weeks ago.
Also notice how much stronger the cold is north of the equator, consistent with a cold PDO. And this is cooling the central pacific and CFS hasnt picked it up, despite me mentioning it over a month ago.
The other indicator is upper heat content, which has also peaked, and this leads Nino 3.4 by about a month. So this months value is the top of the range, which is 0.8 and barely nino threshold. And needs to be consistently 0.8 for 3 months by definition.
Onto the IOD, it will warm rapidly within a month, all the cold is at the surface, the subsurface is warm. Once the seasonal winds disappear it will be business as usual and i expect as lot of rain throughout the country this Spring.
Will be a good test case for our forecasts, which indicate good probailiteis for higher rainfall and humidity again.