 Good morning and welcome to the October seasonal outlook. My name is Moosa Killink from the predictive services at CFA. So we're just going to start off by providing some guidance around the products that you guys might be able to have a look at your own time. So a good link is the Climate Dogs website. So if you Google Climate Dogs you should be able to see some links to that website and it will provide you with some good guidance and interpretation of the products. The other good ones are anything to do with the Bureau of Meteorology. So soil, moisture or climate outlook will also give you some good guidance. So in terms of today what we are going to talk about is the recent rainfall patterns over Victoria and then the current soil moisture conditions and try to relate that to the the fuel conditions on the ground. And then we're going to have a look at some of the forecast climate patterns and then followed by looking at the how that forecast climate relates to past bushfire seasons. So just to start off with the Australian context what we can see from this diagram is firstly that most of eastern and northern Victoria as well as most of eastern Australia as well as western Australia are currently under serious rainfall deficiency which basically means that if bushfires do occur in Victoria over a prolonged period then it's likely that we won't actually be able to rely on other states for firefighting services. And then on the right of the presentation is the AFAC bushfire seasonal outlook which again reflects the current conditions and bushfire seasonal forecast which is pretty dominant along the east coast of Australia. So what we can have see from this diagram is the recent rainfall patterns over Victoria. So starting from the bottom so that's looking at the last six months and as we go to the top of those images that's looking at the last month over September. What we can see from these diagrams is that there's quite a large rainfall deficit over most of Victoria over the last six months which has expanded over the last three months and then into the last month where rainfall patterns have been quite consistently low over most of northern eastern central Victoria. But what we can see is that over the last month that continued dryness has gone over west and south west Victoria as well where essentially showing that over western and southwestern Victoria there are record low rainfall patterns which essentially means that it's at the historical low period. So what the diagram also shows is that September was the second lowest month of rainfall over the last 100 years which is quite significant. If we have a look at the soil moisture conditions over a current period so this is October 4th again it really shows the underlying dryness caused by rainfall deficits over most of Victoria. So the information is presented again as desiles where the red or maroon colour is lowest on record whereas the blue is highest on record. Over Victoria most of the soil moisture deficits are at the very much below to record lows meaning that the soil moisture is quite low which is affecting the vegetation growth especially at the understory meaning that the fuels in the understory vegetation are becoming drier and more available to burn. The other prominent features from this diagram is that the out of Melbourne and Barbon Oatways is showing significant drying trends which is a cause for concern. So in the next diagram we've zoomed into the Oatways region and again looking at the root zone soil moisture which is the depth of soil moisture to 1 metre. What this diagram shows is a comparison between the 2015-16 season at the bottom and the 2018 year and if we remember in 2015 on December 25th there was a wide river fires which was caused by a very sudden shift in drying during the September-October-November period which essentially the root zone moisture collapsed which caused the underlying vegetation to become fully available. Currently the same thing has happened again where there has been a very sudden decline in soil moisture and we'll need to really follow the soil moisture as well as the rainfall patterns over the next couple of months to have a look at the signals to see if the Oatways regions will become available to burn again. In terms of looking at the long range temperature and rainfall patterns so this is the Bureau of Meteorology forecast. Again what we can sort of see from these diagrams so looking at the bottom so that's temperature the forecast is for higher daytime temperatures on average over October as well as November and I guess the chance of this occurring is quite high so there is quite a high model confidence in the temperature forecast. In terms of rainfall again during October where the model confidence is high much drier conditions forecast throughout Victoria especially over the south-west as well as central highlands of Victoria so again a bit of a cause for concern over the Oatways and central highlands especially if these drying trends continue. If we have a look at the El Nino so we're trying to understand or unpack some of those climate signals so what the global climate models have forecast an increasing likelihood of El Nino occurring especially over early summer to late summer period so the El Nino hasn't really activated yet but the forecast is that it will activate with high likelihood with nearly all climate models globally signifying a high chance of El Nino conditions so what El Nino essentially means is that typically it is associated with lower rainfall patterns over south-east Australia In terms of the Indian Ocean Dipole so that's the other large climate influencer in Australia especially south-east Australia and so what's happened over the last month is that the Indian Ocean Dipole has turned positive which again was forecast by the global climate models what this has caused is again a drying trend over much of Victoria which I guess was associated with the low rainfall patterns over Victoria so I guess the reason for that was the change in pressure patterns over interior Australia which has essentially decreased the chance of rainfall triggers over Victoria but with the Indian Ocean Dipole it's not likely to last beyond summer so that's when the subtropical systems will really fire up and decrease any further enhancement of the positive Indian Ocean Dipole when we compare the current season with past season so this graph essentially shows essentially 100 years worth of seasonal data that's been linked with really bad bushfire season so the examples that we have here is really around the severe forest fire season so that's the green dashed line and the black line is essentially where we currently at and the dashed black line is what the forecast is from the Bureau of Meteorology so over the next three months the forecast is in terms of bushfire seasons is that it's likely to be in line with the worst seasons that we've encountered in South East Australia I guess there is still some uncertainty behind this so it really depends on what happens in terms of rainfall patterns over October and November but because the forecast for rainfall is quite low from the Bureau of Meteorology it is likely something like that will eventually which will essentially mean that it will be a major or a serious bushfire season in Victoria in terms of issues or risks to consider over Victoria remembering that in August or early September the bushfire seasonal outlook map had East Gippsland as above average now again depending on what the rainfall patterns look like over October it is likely that the above average forecast for the bushfire seasonal outlook is likely to be extended beyond East Gippsland perhaps to out of Melbourne all the way up to the Otways again just depending on what that rainfall pattern looks like during September again as we observed record low rainfalls over much of Victoria especially Gippsland again so the messaging over Gippsland is that if we do get lightning activity it is likely to cause campaign level fires which were experienced during 2006-07 or 2002-2003 seasons the other considerations is really around the fire danger period because of the low rainfall patterns over that has occurred over September and likely to occur over October really need to start thinking about declaration of fire danger periods and preparation of and around houses by communities so to ensure that the preparedness levels are right as we approach the season that's all from me and next month in November we will be giving another seasonal outlook thanks