Why Australia was not wet during spring 2020 despite La Niña

Abstract

The austral spring climate of 2020 was characterised by the occurrence of La Niña, which is the most predictable climate driver of Australian springtime rainfall. Consistent with this La Niña, the Bureau of Meteorology’s dynamical sub-seasonal to seasonal forecast system, ACCESS-S1, made highly confident predictions of wetter-than-normal conditions over central and eastern Australia for spring when initialised in July 2020 and thereafter. However, many areas of Australia received near average to severely below average rainfall, particularly during November. Possible causes of the deviation of rainfall from its historical response to La Niña and causes of the forecast error are explored with observational and reanalysis data for the period 1979–2020 and real-time forecasts of ACCESS-S1 initialised in July to November 2020. Several compounding factors were identified as key contributors to the drier-than-anticipated spring conditions. Although the ocean surface to the north of Australia was warmer than normal, which would have acted to promote rainfall over northern Australia, it was not as warm as expected from its historical relationship with La Niña and its long-term warming trend. Moreover, a negative phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole mode, which typically acts to increase spring rainfall in southern Australia, decayed earlier than normal in October. Finally, the Madden–Julian Oscillation activity over the equatorial Indian Ocean acted to suppress rainfall across northern and eastern Australia during November. While ACCESS-S1 accurately predicted the strength of La Niña over the Niño3.4 region, it over-predicted the ocean warming to the north of Australia and under-predicted the strength of the November MJO event, leading to an over-prediction of the Australian spring rainfall and especially the November-mean rainfall.