Ocean Temperatures Show Winter Rains May Fail Australia

[hatrack]

"THE winter rainfall outlook is grim, according to the National Climate Centre, which yesterday released its latest three-month forecast. Only a small part of central and coastal Queensland can expect a wetter-than-average winter, it predicts. and even there the chances are slight – just 50 to 55 per cent.

Across almost all of the Northern Territory and South Australia and in the northern half of Victoria and southwest NSW, the chances of a drier-than-normal winter are 55 to 60 per cent. The remainder of NSW and most of Queensland is neutral. The worst-hit areas are predicted to be in southern Victoria, southeastern South Australia and the vital wheat-belt region of southwestern Western Australia, where the likelihood of a drier June, July and August is as high as 60-65 per cent. Tasmania is also likely to have a drier-than-average season, forecasters say.

National Climate Centre senior climatologist Grant Beard said warmer-than-average surface temperatures in the Pacific and Indian oceans pointed to a warmer and drier season ahead.

The warmer oceans could force high-pressure systems into a more southerly track than normal, blocking southwesterly fronts and pushing warm easterlies across Western Australia."

EDIT

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15322262%255E30417,00.html

[Warpy]

1. There was an article last week about how the Gulf Stream

is moving much more slowly and starting to weaken.

I'm afraid we're about to see that massive climate change that the scientists Bush has thrown out of the government have warned us about.

I don't think there's any way to predict which areas will become more habitable and which will become less so, although moving to the Sahara and staking out a claim for farmland would probably be a good plan.