El Nino phase does not always mean drier season

And at this time of year, the accuracy for both can be the same.

Bronya Cooper, with the SARDI climate applications team, likened issuing seasonal forecasts for the weather to "pre-season talk in footy".

At this time of year, vague predictions could be made, based on specific information, but nothing was set.

By mid-season, half the games have been played, giving greater confidence, and of course, towards the end of the season, it was definitely possible to rule out some teams from making the finals.

Speaking at the Fleurieu AgFest, Ms Cooper said when considering the upcoming season, major climate drivers usually got the most attention.

El Nino and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole are connected with drier seasons and rainfall in the bottom two deciles while La Nina and a negative IOD are associated with wetter seasons.

But Ms Cooper says this is not guaranteed.

She said research showed there was an equal split between average, wetter or drier years and while these climate drivers increased the chances of wetter or drier, they did not rule out the other options completely.

"In an El Nino year, you can still have a wet year," she said.

"And in La Nina, you might expect wetter year is more likely but you can still have a dry year."

Ms Cooper said looking at the present seasonal outlooks for 2024, there was still a lot of uncertainty.

"Climate drivers don't lock in until winter/spring, so they are hard to predict at this time," she said.

She said the Bureau of Meteorology's seasonal forecast model worked by creating 99 projections of what could happen in the coming months.

"Each of those 99 outcomes is equally plausible," she said.

"The forecasts are a summation of these 99."

Australia is within a El Nino phase, but it is continuing to weaken, with the most likely scenario that it will move into a neutral phase.

"For August, only 5pc of those 99 projections say we will have La Nina, and 8pc say we might still be in El Nino, while the rest say neutral," she said.

Internationally, there are seven main models used for seasonal forecasts, with three predicting a La Nina will develop.

"When all the models point to the same thing, there is consistency and they can be trusted," Ms Cooper said.

"If there is lots of difference, it's harder to have certainty."

However, there is more consensus on the actions of the IOD with 75pc pointing towards a positive IOD phases, linked with a higher chance of dry.

Looking a little closer, Ms Cooper said about 35 models suggest April will be wetter than average but 65 suggest April will be drier.

She said there had been significant improvement on the accuracy of weather forecasting within the two to four week period, but predictability did drop outside of seven days.

She said summer was also a more difficult time to predict weather short term, as well as the longer seasonal forecasts.