Australia should prepare for an imminent El Niño, with the Bureau of Meteorology and other agencies forecasting that the weather phenomenon is likely to develop in the coming months.
“The models are really aligning now,” Felicity Gamble, a senior BoM climatologist, said. “We are expecting a transition to El Niño sometime during winter.”
The World Meteorological Organization said on Tuesday there was a 90% chance of an El Niño developing in the Pacific before November – a phenomenon that historically has increased the likelihood of hotter and drier conditions for Australia’s east.
El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (Enso), one of the key drivers affecting global climate. During an El Niño, sea surface temperatures in a central region of the equatorial Pacific become warmer than average, resulting in a shift in atmospheric circulation.
Top News
A Sydney academic used AI to write an opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald urging students to avoid using technology to ‘cut corners’. Prime Minister called the Coalition the ‘Liberal One National party’ and Angus Taylor ‘Teemu-Abbott’ in question time. A minister dismissed Labor colleague Ed Husic’s criticism of the secondhand Aukus submarines deal as ‘disingenuous’. Sprint star Gout Gout’s under-20 200m world record was formally ratified. The Pentagon appointed a convicted January 6 rioter to a sensitive counter-terrorism role. Jill Biden recalled the pressure Joe Biden faced to drop out of the 2024 race, saying ‘Jilly, I had no choice’.
In Pictures
In Kyiv’s northern residential suburb of Vynohradar – a district of modest apartment blocks – residents were quietly and calmly getting on with salvaging, clearing and dealing with what remained of their apartments after Monday night’s massive missile attack on their city. Dozens of rockets and hundreds of drones had been let loose on the city, leaving five people dead. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has escalated Moscow’s air campaign in recent weeks in an apparent attempt to take advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of US-made air defence systems – exacerbated by the Iran war – and convince an increasingly pessimistic audience at home that Moscow is prevailing in the four-year war.
What They Said
“She’s murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.” – Former 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley on CBS News chief Bari Weiss. Scott Pelley, one of the most well-known and respected journalists in broadcast journalism, was fired after clashing with network brass over last week’s severe round of cuts at 60 Minutes, the show he has worked on since 2004, the Guardian confirmed. CBS News management shocked staffers last week by firing the network’s executive producer, executive editor and two correspondents, Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, without giving a specific reason for their terminations.
Podcast
A second tranche of documents related to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador have been released. The documents, running to more than 1,000 pages, were supposed to reveal what ministers knew about Mandelson’s links to Epstein and the security process to approve his appointment, but instead have revealed government infighting and early doubts about Keir Starmer’s premiership. Listen to the episode here.
Before Bed Read
With the constant risk of being recorded, many young people are afraid of showing enthusiasm – let alone doing something so potentially embarrassing as dancing in public. Is there a way to set themselves free from the fear of being cringe? Cringe has been identified by some working in mental health as a relatively new form of shame.
Daily Word Game
Today’s starter word is: MARG. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.
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