A worker pauses in the heat on a roof of a building in Madrid, Spain, Aug 8, 2023. Spain is set to experience several days of extreme heat with temperatures in many parts set to rise above 40 degrees Celsius. (PHOTO / AP)

Australia is bracing for a grim summer as the northern hemisphere burns from the hottest summer ever recorded.

The country’s Bureau of Meteorology is expected to declare an El Nino weather pattern in the coming weeks. Some international weather organizations, such as the US National Ocean Atmospheric Administration and the World Meteorological Organization, have already declared that El Nino is underway.

The world, including many parts of eastern Australia which are still in winter, has just recorded the warmest July on record.

The declaration of an El Nino would mean spring and summer rainfall in eastern Australia would be less than average, and in some areas well below average.

Extreme maximum temperatures would be likely to occur, particularly through inland northeast Australia, increasing the risk of catastrophic bushfires.

Dr Karl Braganza, the BoM's national manager of climate services said hot and dry conditions are “nonetheless on the way for Australia”, adding the current record-breaking heat across the globe places the planet in unprecedented territory – and could worsen over the next year

Dr Hamish Clarke from the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences at the University of Melbourne said any additional warming because of El Nino this summer will come on top of decades of human-caused climate change that has already significantly raised temperatures and bushfire risk in many areas.

“Without much stronger climate action than we are currently taking, we can expect to see much worse conditions in the future,” he told China Daily.

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Dr Karl Braganza, the BoM's national manager of climate services, said the bureau continues to hold El Nino at “alert status”.

He told 9News the reason for not declaring an El Nino weather pattern is “largely because the atmosphere hasn't quite coupled or reinforced the pattern that we see in the ocean that's typical of an El Nio event”.

“So, conditions are still neutral in the atmosphere, and we'll wait for those conditions to lock in before we declare an event,” he said.

Braganza said hot and dry conditions are “nonetheless on the way for Australia”, adding the current record-breaking heat across the globe places the planet in unprecedented territory – and could worsen over the next year.

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At the same time, global sea surface temperatures have been warm since May.

Professor Janette Lindesay, a climatologist with the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University said weather organizations have their own criteria for declaring El Nino or La Nina events.

“The BoM uses four inter-related indicators, three of which have met El Nino thresholds. But the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), although it has been negative in recent months it has not been consistently negative to the extent required to indicate an El Nino,” she said.

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Lindesay told China Daily that this year’s phenomenon could be linked to above-average sea surface temperatures around north-eastern Australia. The SOI is a standardized index based on the observed sea level pressure differences between Tahiti and Darwin in Australia.

“This anomaly is likely related to ongoing ocean warming due to global heating,” she said.

Similar inconclusive behavior of the SOI occurred in the 1930s, early and late 1940s, 1978-81 and 1984-86 among others, when there was no development of an El Nino event.

Lindesay said it is possible that the apparently developing 2023 El Nino event may fizzle out but whether it does or not, it remains highly likely that spring and summer temperatures will be above average across eastern and south-eastern Australia.

She said the scales are weighted towards a drier spring or summer than has been the recent experience.

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“These conditions are cause for concern regarding the coming bushfire season in the east, south and south-east (which could start earlier than usual), where recent wetter years have contributed to considerable vegetation growth and a potentially dangerous fuel load in hot dry weather,” said Lindesay.

Dr Andrea Taschetto, who is with the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, told China Daily that the tropical Pacific has been warming in the past couple of months with an emerging El Nino signature.

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“But the atmosphere has been slower to respond to ocean warming,” she said.

The atmospheric pressure difference between the central and west Pacific is one of the key metrics used to monitor the coupled response between the atmosphere and ocean during El Nino events.

“In the past few weeks, this metric has shifted back and forth,” she said.

“The (BOM) not declaring an El Nino today means we are still waiting for the atmosphere to respond to the ocean warming.”

Contact the writer at karlwilson@chinadailyapac.com