They’re talking about the horseshoe shaped zone of warm water basically east of the equatorial Pacific cool pool that signifies La Niña conditions. Conditions that are actually quite normal rather than “abnormally high” as the following model-driven nonsense claims.
Abnormally high ocean temperatures off the coast of northern Australia contributed to the extreme rainfall that flooded three-quarters of Queensland over the summer of 2010-11, scientists report.
A Sydney researcher, Jason Evans, ran a series of climate models and found above average sea surface temperatures throughout December 2010 increased the amount of rainfall across the state by 25 per cent on average.
While the study did not look at the cause of ocean warming in the region, a physical oceanographer, Matthew England, said climate change could not be excluded as a possible driver of this extreme rainfall event.
Between December 23 and 28 many places experienced up to 400 millimetres of rain in a few days. “That [means] 100 millimetres of rain was attributable to sea surface temperatures,” said Dr Evans, a future fellow at the University of NSW’s Climate Change Research Centre.
While the flooding occurred during one of the strongest La Nina events on record it was insufficient to produce the extreme rainfall recorded, he said.
The effect of the high sea surface temperatures coupled with the impact of a La Nina, both of which are associated with above average rainfall over eastern Australia, plus tropical cyclone Tasha, combined to create an extreme weather event, he said.
“climate change could not be excluded as a possible driver of this extreme rainfall event. …”
So then neither could a deranged Earth Mother or any of the aboriginal explainations, right?