“You don’t often see odds that high,” said Dr Andrew Watkins, the bureau’s manager of long-range forecasts.
“Farmers would have preferred to see an above average rainfall forecast, and we wish we could have provided one too,” said Watkins.
“Unfortunately what the farmers need is several months of above average rainfall to catch up.
“At the moment the soils across inland Australia are very dry, and that means the soils are able to heat up a lot – that is what actually drives heatwaves.
When it builds up, it has to go somewhere.” On Friday, Queensland was already sweltering through 40C temperatures, up to 10C above average for October.
High chance of El Niño in Australia, worsening heat, bushfires and drought Read more In Birdsville, in the state’s interior, the temperature hit 44.7C on Thursday, setting a new record for its hottest October day.
Watkins said the summer’s hot, dry conditions were due to a developing El Niño event combined with a positive Indian Ocean Dipole.
The bureau is currently forecasting a 70% chance of an El Niño forming before the end of the year.
“But if El Niño forms, we won’t really expect to see any rainfall until autumn.” The bureau’s report also found that the outlook was being influenced by “the long-term increasing trend in global air and ocean temperatures”.
“The temperatures have been rising bit by bit for the past 100 or 110 years, and each drought has been a bit warmer than the last.”