Australia counts the cost of adverse weather and climate in billions of dollars. Much of this can be attributed to any deviation from an average wet or dry season and the irregular climate phenomenon El Nino is a primary culprit.
Scientists have been studying the collection of climate phenomena now called the “El Niño – Southern Oscillation” for more than 130 years. Australian scientists were involved from the earliest days of its discovery, and are now very closely involved in its monitoring and prediction.
On August 5, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society’s Hobart Centre (AMOS) will host a presentation at the University of Tasmania examining the impacts of El Nino – economic, agricultural, health and oceanic.
El Ninos’ warming and drying impact is mostly felt economically in the primary industries through drought. The consequences also flow to households through issues such as limiting town water supplies and increased risk of bushfire.
Governments are responding. For example, since the big dry of 1967 there has been substantial investment in on-farm and regional water storages, the latest being Tasmania’s Midlands and South-East irrigation schemes.
Thankfully, today, scientists can monitor the onset of El Nino in the tropical Pacific Ocean through ocean and satellite-born sensors. At present, the Bureau of Meteorology estimates there is a 70% chance Australia will feel the effects of El Nino in the next nine months.
What can’t be predicted is how strong the developing El Nino will be or the severity of its impacts?
“We’ve seen particularly strong El Ninos have very little impact,” says Prof Neville Nicholls “and we’ve seen other smaller events devastate parts of Australia, ruining lives on the land, taking a toll in farmed and natural wildlife and costing the country billions in lost production.
“The climate research focus now is how much variation in El Nino’s impacts will occur as the Earth’s temperature continues to rise.”
For 35 years a climate scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology, a past National President of AMOS and more recently a researcher and lecturer at Monash University, El Nino has been at the centre of Prof Nicholls’ lifetime work.
Prof Nicholls’s presentation, El Nino: History, Impacts, Prediction, will include an assessment of whether Australia will see an El Niño in 2014/15, the history of its discovery, how it allows scientists to predict climate variations, how global warming is affecting the phenomenon, and what the immediate future holds for the next El Nino event.
The presentation will be at the Stanley Burbury Theatre, University of Tasmania on Tuesday, August 5 from 6-7.30 pm, with Master of Ceremonies CSIRO climate scientist Dr Jaci Brown.
For more information, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/el-nino-history-impacts-and-prediction-tickets-12072335681
Melissa Lyne Australian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society, Web: www.amos.org.au Facebook & Twitter: /AMOSupdates
