Positive Indian Ocean Dipoles (IOD) that caused the current severe Australian-wide drought and subsequent bushfires are happening more often, according to this paper … https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/2007JCLI1945.1
To summarise, the IOD is the sea temperature difference between the east and west Indian Ocean. When it is strongly “positive”, which means colder on the Australian side, parts of Africa tend to flood and Australia suffers severe drought.
The year 2019 was a record positive IOD, and with it Australia had record fires (satellite image shown above).
Sadly, the paper notes a trend away from the “wet” negative dipoles of early last century to the positive dipoles of recent times.
The IOD is also possibly linked to the dry, hot and damaging El Nino events, the most recent of which have killed Australian coral reefs.
The trend towards positive IODs does not bode well for Australia.
Here is discussion about the current IOD which led to the fires … https://www.researchgate.net/project/Realtime-monitoring-of-the-Indian-Ocean-Dipole
Meanwhile, Australia’s political capital of Canberra currently has the worst air pollution of all the world’s cities.
EDIT: Canberra air was so bad an elderly woman died immediately after getting off her plane … https://www.news.com.au/national/elderly-woman-dies-from-smoke-exposure-in-canberra/video/1853d3b0affb19d46d75e891b88d3baa
The image shown below is from here … https://www.airvisual.com/world-air-quality-ranking
