Number 111 - December 2009
November’s climate
• The South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) was displaced southwest of normal near Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
• Suppressed convection in the central part of the Southwest Pacific near Fiji and Samoa.
• Mostly well below normal rainfall for many parts of Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga.
El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), seasonal rainfall, and sea surface temperature forecasts
• El Niño conditions exist in the equatorial Pacific. Many dynamical climate models project the continuation of El Niño into early autumn 2010.
• Below normal rainfall is forecast for New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Niue, and Tonga.
• Above normal rainfall is expected for Western Kiribati, Eastern Kiribati and Tokelau.
• Above normal SSTs are forecast for Eastern Kiribati. Normal or above normal SSTs are forecast for the Northern Cook Islands, Marquesas, the Tuamotu Archipelago, Western Kiribati, the Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea. SSTs are expected to be near or below normal around Fiji, and near normal elsewhere in the southwest Pacific.
A complete copy of The Island Climate Update is available as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. This does not contain any extra information over that obtained by clicking on the individual items above.
To view the PDF file, you'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can download free from Adobe.