Weekly Tropical Climate Note issued 28 January 2014 The latest Weekly Tropical Climate Note is now available from the Bureaus website. You may need to refresh your web browser to see the latest edition. For those without access to a web browser, the text can be found below. Monsoon remains active over Australia and the southwest Pacific The North Australian Monsoon has continued to bring broad-scale shower and storm activity and heavy rainfall to the tropical north of Australia this past week. The monsoon trough currently extends across the Kimberley, northern Australia, the Coral Sea and the southwest Pacific just south of Solomon Islands. A tropical low embedded in the trough in the Coral Sea is expected to strengthen as it moves towards the Queensland coast during the week. For the week ahead Northern Australia will continue to see an influence from the monsoon trough. The risk of tropical cyclone development will remain elevated while the monsoon conditions remain active. Tropical convection and wind patterns suggest the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is currently active over the western Pacific including Papua New Guinea and northern Australia. The central and eastern tropical Indian Ocean is currently experiencing a lull in tropical convection. The exact strength and position of the MJO is difficult to ascertain due to the confluence of several tropical waves in the region. Some climate models forecast the MJO signal to weaken significantly over the coming days and to remain weak for the remainder of the fortnight. When the MJO is weak it does not contribute to tropical weather. Not all models support this scenario and there is a great deal of uncertainty in the strength and position of the MJO in the coming weeks. See the Bureaus MJO Monitoring for more information on location and tracking of the MJO. ENSO state: neutral El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) remains in a neutral state. The latest NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomaly is -0.3 °C. The 30-day Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) value to 26 January is +10.0. The recent rise in the SOI is expected to be a short-term fluctuation. Climate models suggest a neutral ENSO state will persist until at least the end of the southern hemisphere autumn. Climate models suggest the tropical Pacific Ocean will warm gradually through the southern autumn and winter. Some models predict this warming will reach El Niño thresholds in early winter. However, model forecasts that span autumn have lower skill than forecasts made at other times of the year. Hence long-range model outlooks need to be used with more caution at this time of year. See the Bureaus ENSO Wrap-Up which includes a compilation of ENSO computer model predictions. bom.gov.au/climate/tropnote/tropnote.shtml
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 20:32:54 +0000
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