How much do you really understand about the ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation), the IOD (Indian Ocean Dipole, also known as Indy), and the Sub-tropical Ridge?

A fun, easy-to-follow explanation of these terms (and a few others, that are often used in long-range forecasts) has been developed. The website Climate Kelpie has been designed to connect Australian farmers and their advisors to tools and information about climate to help make better decisions about farm business.

However, the clever use of various dog breeds as representations of these climate processes is a great device which helps everyone understand how these processes act and interact.

CLIMATE DOGS
The Climatedogs are a representation of some of the climate processes that drive rainfall variability across Australia. Different Climatedogs affect different parts of the country.

There are four major Climatedogs (Enso, Indy, Ridgy and Sam), and two smaller Climatedogs (Eastie and Mojo) who affect weather on a smaller scale. It’s important to remember that the Climatedogs work together to drive the climate, so we need to look at the combined effect of all of the indicators to get a good picture of what we expect to happen in the future.

Short videos are used to introduce each of the Climatedogs:

THE ROUNDUP – INTRODUCING THE CLIMATEDOGS

Enjoy!!

 

WANT TO LEARN MORE?
The Bureau of Meteorology has great resources for learning more about climate.