Australia, affected by the El Niño phenomenon, recorded the driest October since 2002

Australia, which is suffering the impact of El Niño – a phenomenon that will raise temperatures and cause less rain until next February in the oceanic country – recorded the driest October since 2002, according to official sources reported this Wednesday.

According to the monthly report of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), the national average rainfall for October was 65.4% less than the average recorded between the years 1961-1990, creating favorable conditions for forest fires to start.

With 83.5% below average rainfall, the state of Western Australia – which is the country’s main grain producer, as well as a major source of meat, wine, dairy and horticultural products – recorded the third month of October driest in its history.

The BOM also indicated that the national average temperature in October – in the middle of the southern spring – was 1.05 degrees Celsius higher than the average recorded between 1961 and 1990.

“Hot, dry weather, with strong and gusty winds, caused extreme to catastrophic fire danger conditions in parts of Australia during the month“said the BOM report.

The most affected by these conditions were the states of Queensland and New South Wales, both on the east coast of the oceanic country, where forest fires in recent weeks killed three people and burned dozens of homes.

Authorities fear that these hot and dry conditions, exacerbated by El Niño, will repeat a situation similar to the catastrophic “Black Summer” of 2019-2020 when hundreds of wildfires destroyed an area the size of Turkey, claiming 33 lives and affecting billions of animals.

Australia, whose wildfire season normally begins on the east coast in November, will face drier than usual weather this year due to El Niño, a natural phenomenon caused by currents in the Pacific Ocean that, aggravated by global warming , could cause devastating disasters.

El Niño, named in Peru as it is related to the Christmas season, occurs when the central and eastern parts of the tropical Pacific Ocean warm, which usually causes more rainfall in some areas of South America and droughts in Australia and the Southeast Asia, among other effects.

The opposite phenomenon is La Niña, which involves the cooling of the central and eastern parts of the tropical Pacific and generates more humidity in areas such as Australia, Southeast Asia and northeastern Brazil and dryness in parts of Argentina, the coast of Ecuador and the northwest of Peru.