Climate outlook vs weather forecastsA weather forecast is generally reliable for the next few days or week and gives you a sense of the likely specific temperature minimums, maximums as well as home much rain you can expect on each day. Climate data is not a forecast, rather is the average or typical weather patterns for an area over recent history. Climate information has the average minimum temperatures, average maximums temperatures and rainfall for a period of time, giving a sense of what we can typically generally expect.
This Climate outlook is actually a forecast that gives us a sense of how much to expect the weather to deviate from these normal climate conditions. It gives us the probability of it being hotter/colder or wetter/drier than normal for specific areas.
The BOM provides more details on their climate outlook pages including the significant influences on their models that impacted on the forcast, such as El Niño. These are generally sea temperature related, but we will not go into the details in these summaries.
Temperature outlook for December to FebruaryGenerally, we are looking at a warmer than typical summer days and nights for Australia.
Days are very likely to be warmer than average for most of Australia. Chances of a warmer summer are greater than 80% over of Australia, with lower chances for southern and western coastal areas closer to 70%.
Nights are also very likely to be warmer than average across most of Australia, with chances of warmer nights exceeding 80% over most of the country. Far western WA is really the only area that is more likely to have cooler than average summer nights.
Chance of exceeding the December maximum temperature
Chance of exceeding the January maximum temperature
Chance of exceeding the December minimum temperature
Chance of exceeding the January minimum temperature
Chance of exceeding median maximum temperature (%)
Chance of exceeding median minimum temperature (%)
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