Climate Change State of Play in Australia 2022: it's later than you think

According to a Nature Communications article published on 15 November 2022; The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the strongest and most consequential year-to-year climate fluctuation on the planet, with significant societal and environmental impacts that are felt worldwide. 

This is an Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) video explaining how the El Niño-Southern Oscillation Index (ENSO) shapes Australia's weather.

As for current ENSO conditions. BOM states that La Niña retains its strength and continues in the tropical Pacific. Atmospheric and oceanic indicators of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) reflect a mature La Niña, including tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures, the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), and tropical cloud patterns.

Its forecast for La Niña is that by December 2022 it will have weakened as ENSO begins a return to its neutral position. However, as the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is positive and likely to continue to be positive into December, this increases the chance of above average rainfall for parts of eastern New South Wales, eastern Victoria, and south-eastern Queensland, and increases the chance of below average rainfall for western Tasmania. 

Climatologists have known for some time that the ENSO has developed greater strength since the 1950s in comparison to past centuries, supporting an emerging increase in ENSO variability under greenhouse warming.

New research is disclosing why it is that to our layman's eyes this system may become more erratic and harder to predict in its response to climate change-induced ocean warming that continues unabated.  

This research has found the influence of climate change on El Niño and La Niña events, in the form of ocean surface temperature changes in the eastern Pacific, will be detectable by 2030. This is four decades earlier than previously thought. 

What this indicates for Australia is more droughts, more floods and more intense cyclones over a wider area. 

That in all probability, all three tiers of government - and communities both large and small across the country -  have less than eight years to prepare for a worsening of the climatic extremes we have already begun to experience since the start of the new millennium.