Northern Rivers 12-month Rainfall Forecast

10 5 0
No forecast available for this district.
Rainfall deciles
10 Well above normal
8-9 Above normal
4-7 Near normal
2-3 Below normal
1 Well below normal

Issue Notes

ENSO status: La Niņa Watch.
IOD status: Neutral.
SAM status: Negative. Trending slightly negative.

The El Niņo Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is in a La Niņa Watch, meaning there is approximately a 50% chance of a La Niņa developing this year. Overall, models are now starting to look more like La Niņa, with more widespread ocean cooling occurring in the South Pacific, helped by the consistently strong trade winds. While these are good signs that La Niņa is starting to develop, a declaration would likely happen no earlier than November, meaning this is more likely to be a late and weaker event if it does eventuate. A La Niņa typically increases rainfall over northern and southeastern Australia during spring, but has little effect for southwestern WA.

The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is in a neutral phase and is now unlikely to develop into either phase this spring. Conditions are closer to a negative IOD at the moment, so there may be some minor increases in the frequency of northwest cloudbands impacting Australia. A neutral IOD tends to bring a small increase in spring rainfall for southwest WA, but has little effect elsewhere.

The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is in a negative phase, continuing on from the initial sudden Stratospheric Warming (SW) events over Antarctica since mid-July. These events increase the chances of negative SAM events, but are having a lesser effect moving forward in October. A negative SAM increases the frequency of cold fronts. During spring, this increases rainfall over western Tas and southern Vic, but decreases rainfall over eastern Australia.

Rainfall outlooks are showing close to average for most of the country during October, with a higher chance of above average rainfall for northern and eastern Australia, increasing further into November and December. Models are also hinting that rainfall is more likely to arrive in the form of showers and thunderstorms, rather than broad rainbands, meaning rainfall in practice will likely be hit-and-miss for most of Australia this spring.

Issued Oct 1

Forecast Explanation

Notes on the concept of deciles

If all the data in a record are ranked from lowest to highest they can then be divided into 100 equal blocks. These blocks are known as percentiles. The values that fall into the lowest 10% range (from 0 to 10%) are said to be in the first decile, those in the group 10+% to 20% are in the second decile, and so on. Those in the group 90+% to the maximum value recorded are in the 10th decile. The 50% value is a special one known as the 'median'. It is noteworthy since there is the same number of records above and below its value.

Deciles have been found to be very useful for analysing rainfall in particular as its distribution is not the normal bell-shape distribution but is skewed towards many low values with only a few high values. The deciles can be described in qualitative terms. A table is provided in the accompanying results.

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