El Niño is coming and given higher background temperatures, Guy Trafford assesses what that will mean for farm management, preparation and adaption

It appears that almost every forecaster around the globe is predicting we will be going into the El Niño phase later this year.

Both US and European forecasters are predicting that the world is looking at record temperatures this coming summer and winter (Northern Hemisphere) with the El Niño cycle predicted to peak around January-February. Part of peak temperatures are due to El Niño but the growing background temperature raised by global warming also having a major influence.

Closer to home in the their winter forecast (June to August) the NIWA scientists are also forecasting we are likely to be in the El Niño phase sometime in August. However, it looks like a bit of a roller coaster ride before getting there.

June looks as though it still could provide above average rainfall before starting to get back to more normal winter levels and then potential drier weather starting in later July into August. The temperatures, although warmer than our recorded averages, are likely to feel cooler than experienced for a while. largely because we have been experiencing record or near heat record levels for the previous two years.

El Niño has always brought with it a sense of trepidation to me as the spectre of drought looms large, and the upcoming season is no different. This time however, I can understand how many, both rural and urban, will be breathing a sigh of relief if it means the heavy rainfall events of the past couple of years can be put behind us for the time being. This will allow everyone to catchup on some of the structural repairs to the damaged infrastructure that has occurred over the last two years.

Unfortunately, NIWA have put a few caveats in their forecast. The hot seas in the western Pacific that having been driving the tropical weather streams and sending the rain down to New Zealand look like they are largely going to remain, at least for some time. So, a really mixed bag to look forward to. 

However, outliers aside, a largely westerly airflow means the east of both islands get less rain than would be normally the case. The rest of the country is largely normal. When it comes to temperature NIWA’s confidence is on the high side unfortunately. When it comes to all important rainfall they hover around the low-medium confidence scale.

For livestock agriculture, El Niño largely lines up with lower overall returns to farms as the incidence of drought both lowers animal production (so both milk and meat production down) and also puts more ‘power’ in the hands of the processors about what they are able to pay for livestock. While these factors are important to both farmers and the nation in general, this year, at least initially a drying out period will be welcomed by many (outside of Southland). Flood damage may be able to be cleared away, roads repaired and paddocks worked on after being out of bounds for tractors for a large period of time. We may start to see fruit and vegetables prices start to return to more normal levels as presumable the bulk of intensive producers will have access to irrigation even if the skies remain clear.

The wetter and cooler start to the winter period is also proving to be a timely boon with the ski fields opening and bring in more tourists. They should be able to build up solid skiing bases before things dry out in the latter part of the winter. If it does start drying out in later July and August that will also fit well into livestock systems cycles with hopefully better weather for lambing and calving, and crops able to be better utilised in drier paddocks.

Unfortunately, this is perhaps where the good news starts to wane. If, as forecasted, we do go into a moderate to strong El Niño peaking in January February then with climate warming it could turn into the ‘mother of all’ droughts. We are already seeing forest wildfires spread across the northern hemisphere and it is early days of summer for these countries.

Closer to home Australia is already looking to be drier than normal, combine that with heat and wind and the possibility of another bad fire year looks on the cards.

New Zealand has been largely fortunate in not having too many fires of note, although the Twizel fires and Northland swamp fires still ring in the memories. Two things that may make this year different is the abundance of dry volatile material in the form of slash around forest boundaries and perhaps more dangerous is, as Hekia Parata pointed out, forestry has lost its “Social License” and has a hard job ahead to regain it. It doesn’t take the joining of too many dots to see the possibility of disaffected citizens trying to get their own back at forest companies and (mistakenly) believing they have public support.

Hopefully sanity prevails over this issue and a lot of the de-fusing rests with the Government response and them providing an outcome which leaves those people affected by the floods and slash in particular feeling that justice has been done, or at least how and why the outcomes were reached.

For the rest of farming systems, dams should be getting cleaned out while there is still time to fill them and that there will be enough hay and baleage etc around to ease any extreme feed shortages.

A lot of the impact with droughts depends upon how long they persist (obviously, sorry) and there is often, especially on hill country, plenty of roughage left behind in gullies and elsewhere from better times which can be utilised in a summer clean-up. It is when dry conditions persist through the autumn and perhaps have a second dry spring-summer that the proverbial hits the fan and by then stock have also lost condition and value and productivity.

In six months’ time I may look back (hopefully) and think that was a lot of scare mongering over nothing, but somehow this one coming up sounds like it could get nasty.