Forecasting Australian drought using Southern Hemisphere modes of sea‐surface temperature variability

Drought of 3 to 7 years' duration has devastated the flora, fauna, and regional economies in rangeland grazing districts over eastern and central Australia every 15 to 25 years throughout the 20th century, in some cases degrading the land beyond recovery. Recently, these drought and degradation episodes have been associated with a global interdecadal oscillation (IDO) of period 15 to 25 years. This IDO signal brought cooler sea‐surface temperatures (SSTs) to the western extra‐tropical South Pacific Ocean in association with reduced onshore transport of moisture over eastern/central Australia during the summer monsoon. Here, we utilize optimized canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to forecast principal components of summer precipitation (PCP) anomalies over Australia from the persistence of principal components that dominate spring SST anomalies across the Southern Hemisphere. These summer PCP forecasts are cross‐validated with the CCA forecast model for each year independent of that year's variability. Resulting cross‐validated forecasts are best over Queensland, correlating with those observed at >0.40 from 1890 through to 2001, significant at >99% confidence level. More importantly, 6 of 10 drought episodes (but only three of seven degradation episodes) observed in eastern/central Australia during the 20th century are forecast. Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society