Josh McGregor - McGregor Gourlay, Moree

Josh McGregor

McGregor Gourlay Agricultural Sevices

Climate is a significant consideration for Josh McGregor in his role as Managing Director of McGregor Gourlay Agricultural Services. Based in Moree, Josh has been building his climate literacy so he can stay ahead of the weather, ensuring he can meet his clients cropping and livestock input needs. Interpreting complex scientific information has been a challenge Josh has been well and truly up for, following extreme drought, and more recently, flooding rains across his geographical area. Agribusinesses confront similar challenges to managing staff and inputs in the same way farmers do. Janine caught up with Josh recently to hear his climate story.

As a subscriber  – what do you feel are the key benefits of Farmer Forecast to your business?

There’s so many different models available to look at these days, and you can easily find yourself getting lost in it all and unsure what to follow. So we find the Farmer Forecast newsletter is great for dissecting the data that is relevant for our part of the world and giving us the heads up to watch developments of which we would have otherwise been unaware. Every extra day that we can have up our sleeves to prepare for a rain event is a bonus.

Where else do you like to look for your climate & weather information?

I find WillyWeather is good for current info such as wind and precipitation, and YR is usually good to get an idea of the likely spread of forecast precipitation. But Meteologix has definitely become the best source for getting a cross section of all the major short term forecast models, and it’s the one that we’ll all watch for any developing event. Any further out than that we just wait for guidance from the Farmer Forecast newsletter.  

A storm brewing over the 2020-21 cotton crop

Your region was recently affected by severe flooding from a weather event that was more extreme than forecast, do you think that the extremes of droughts & flooding rains are changing the way those in rural businesses consider climate?

The 2018/19 drought saw everyone in our region having to tighten their belts, and by Christmas 2019 mentally prepare that it was going to keep going for some time to come. But then we had to go from zero to a hundred miles an hour in a matter of weeks in early 2020, and 2021 has so far been more of the same. So in our game you can plan all you like for a set of conditions, but you have to be ready to pivot quickly and sometimes dramatically. Each season we have to assume we could be facing extremes either way, and we aim to mitigate that by leveraging relationships and information sources available as much as possible to prepare for very different outcomes. I’m not sure that even the extreme events of the last few years have greatly changed the way we all consider climate, but I do feel we are getting better as using resources available to adapt to what’s ahead.      

IF 2020 winter started with a full profile, 2021 is overflowing!

While weather and seasonal climate outlooks are a major influence in yours and your clients businesses, do the underlying climate drivers often come up in client conversation? While weather and seasonal climate outlooks are a major influence in yours and your clients businesses, do the underlying climate drivers often come up in client conversation?

It can be a little like religion sometimes, as everyone can have their own sources that they follow! The drivers do come up often in conversation, but the variety of models available overlaid with broad generalisations from the media mean that there can be broad interpretations. We’ve been aiming to gradually improve climate literacy amongst our staff and customers with the help of the AgEcon team, and 2019 certainly raised awareness of the major drivers that can have an effect on our weather as we all started to watch systems such as the SAM and IOD that previously probably weren’t quite so widely understood.

Any other comments on considering climate in rural businesses?

Climate dominates everything we do, but I’m constantly amazed at how farming in Australia keeps getting better at doing more with less. There’s plenty of doom and gloom in the media about what the future holds, but I’m optimistic that we’ll keep adapting.

Like stats? Checkout www.climateapp.net.au

Any questions, feedback for Josh or Farmer Forecast?

Email us at: farmerforecast@agecon.com.au

Agronomist Greg Rummery

Greg Rummery

Farmer & Agronomist

Walgett farmer and Agronomist with Outlook Ag (an agronomic consultancy covering NW NSW), Greg Rummery recently shared with Ag Econ’s Janine Powell, how climate is considered in his role as an agronomist.

Climate knowledge or advice hasn’t been part of the traditional role for an Agronomist - how have you seen this evolve over the years. And how might this evolve in the future?

You’re right, but the weather and in particular rainfall is always a topic of conversation and probably more so when working in lower rainfall and variable rainfall environments. So climate advice has always been an underlying theme even in the early years at Walgett and becoming more of an advice topic over the recent decade that for us at least has been played by unrelenting drought. A few agronomists have links to private forecasters and subscription type climate and rainfall advice has become more popular, some with dubious understandings of the local context. I see that becoming more common into the future. Climate forecast I see as a very different subject to that of a rainfall forecast and I generally get them from different sources.

Do you provide climate commentary, advice or point your clients to sources of climate information?

A bit of both. Relaying the message or key points from forecast like AgEcon's or the Nutrien fellow Eric Snodgrass is pretty common. Advice is generally around risk management and the interface with crop choice or in-field management strategies in a proactive context.

Walgett 2019, It was hard to believe that from this point the land could spring back to productivity

Many farmers in the Walgett region started 2020 winter with a full profile,

La nina didn’t really kick in until aFter harvest

How does they way your clients consider the climate vary?

Some try to understand the science around forecasting down to the minute detail, others simply look at climate, mother nature, rainfall etc and use the simple analogies that we often hear such as "you either get enough or not” with reference to rainfall, "mother natures been kind" and "we have seen this all before”. The latter is more observatory rather than predictive. That said, I feel most farmers and agronomists look at what seems to be a dozen or so forecast models each morning before breakfast!  

IF 2020 winter started with a full profile, 2021 is overflowing!

Did many of your clients plan for the La Nina?

We have a couple of sayings in the west that go along the lines of “work on what you have not what you think you’re going to get” with reference to soil water and, “ if you’re forced to look up then usually you’re in for a doing over”  (typically said with a bit more slang!)  

 That said we did consider the planned wetter summer with the use of residual herbicide products in fallow etc with many clients.  Given that, we were coming from drought in 2019, very little country was fallowed through winter 2020 given the timely planting opportunity that presented in April/May 2020, so our planned summer crop area was pretty small and well short of a normal season.

Looking forward, what comments would you make on the climate considerations for the end of summer and the coming winter season?

The recent rain has topped up fallow moisture well (a bit too well in places!), the forecast looks average to slightly wetter for winter rainfall from what I can see, so our plan will be to plant what we can if the timeliness of the planting windows for the different crops presents. Our biggest risk in many paddocks is continuing wet and that may result in some planting intentions being held over to a later winter crop opportunity or summer crop. If we are forced to fallow through to a summer crop then we would have a good close look at what the summer outlook for rain and temps are prior to making a decision around summer crop choice and planting time.

Like stats? Checkout www.climateapp.net.au

Any questions, feedback for Greg or Farmer Forecast?

Email us at: farmerforecast@agecon.com.au

Farmer Forecast Podcast - 2021 Climate Outlook!

In case you missed it, Jon and Janine talk through likely scenarios and main influences this calendar year, relevant climate research relating to grain markets and discuss implications for livestock and broadacre cropping industries.

To access the 20-minute recording, click on the image below!: 👉

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Farmer Forecast Podcast - 2021 Climate Outlook for Livestock and Broadacre Cropping

With the climate models refreshing their monthly outputs this week, Jon and Janine talk through likely scenarios and main influences this calendar year, relevant climate research relating to grain markets and discuss implications for livestock and broadacre cropping industries.

To access the 20-minute recording, click on the image below!: 👉

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Holman Aspect Wi-Fi weather station - product review

Tried & tested

by Richard Beattie, “Carossa” Moree, NSW

A quick pre-Christmas visit to Bunnings with the kids resulted in a cost-effective purchase that ticks the boxes.

Three months into the purchase and Richard has found that the Holman weather station ticks most of the boxes. It tracks; wind speed & direction, temperature, rainfall, air pressure, humidity and UV.

Instead of a screen, you use your phone and the Weather Underground app or website. Richard has found this website to be quite a user friendly and relatively stable.

This model (without the screen) was around $200. Bunnings is now listing the model with the screen Holman Aspect Wi-fi Analyst for $229

Weather underground = www.wunderground.com

On this US website, settings can be changed to metric. Data can be viewed for your own station as well as a range of public and private weather stations.

Accuracy.

Richard has generally found the data to be comparable, but rainfall measurements under 5mm sometimes seem to under register.

If you want to save your weather stations historical data this might not be the option for you.

There is no simple way to download or save historical data from wunderground.com. I did find some sort of code on the internet that was supposed to save a file to my computer - but those instructions were beyond me.

Another downfall, if the internet connection is lost, the data for that period is not logged. A power outage, while Richard was off-farm (and a modem that didn’t power back on), meant the on-farm rainfall couldn’t be viewed or recorded. The times you are away are often the times you most want or need the data.

Simple set up.

The weather station was simple to install - just a post in the ground within 150m of the WiFi receiver. This enables the reading, such as wind to be out in the open, away from trees and the house perimeter.

The verdict.

A very cost-effective weather station (compared to other popular brands that can be up to $3000). A good choice, if you are happy to view the data most of the time and saving the historical data, isn’t a priority. Limited to areas where WiFi is available also.

Data graphs on wunderground.com

Holman station snapshot on wunderground.com

Want to share your experience with a weather station or app?

Email us at: farmerforecast@agecon.com.au

Farmer Forecast - listen to our story!

What motivated Jon Welsh and Janine Powell to start Farmer Forecast? Listen in to see how the e-news service evolved and the need for broad, independent model and climatology analysis, and their key tips for climate literacy.

To access the 20-minute recording, click on the image below!: 👉

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Farmer climate focus - Hamish McLaren

Farmers purchasing holdings in different geographies is a common method of risk management and diversification. However, it is not always apparent or obvious that moving location will necessarily diversify climate drivers and reduce seasonal risk. Managing logistics, absentee ownership and timeliness of operations can be deterrents for climate diversification away from a farm base. In this example, two farms have located either side of the Great Dividing Range, only 110km apart - each with very different climate drivers and contrast among farm enterprises. Hamish shares his families story of how this approach evolved and has since withstood the test of time.

Hamish McLaren

Walcha, Northern NSW

Location snapshot

Catchment:   Upper Namoi Valley and Hastings Valley NSW

Altitude:        1000-1200 m

Enterprise:    Stud Merino Rams, Commercial Merinos (west), Beef cattle breeding and fattening enterprises (west and east)

Rainfall:       West - Wet season (Oct-Mar): 63% rainfall
Cool-season (Apr-Sep): 37% rainfall

East - Wet season (Oct-Mar): 65% rainfall
Cool-season (Apr-Sep): 35% rainfall

Location: New England Tablelands, NSW

Location Map (above). The two farms are situated either side of the Great Dividing Range, NSW.

Climate drivers are diversified among seasons and locations. The one to watch is ENSO Modoki, due to its influence at key decision times. The below chart shows rainfall reliability alters between east and west, shifting the peak production window across a number of months during the calendar year. December is the leading month for rain in the west and February in the east (bottom table).

“None significant” means it can rain well regardless of ENSO cycle or climate influence. Correlations are generally weaker in Autumn season. Driver analysis courtesy Risbey et al (2009) and Lim et al (2012)

Weather station data courtesy BOM

When did your family settle in the region?

It was 1963 when grandparents, Jack and Poppy bought Nerstane and moved up from Sydney.

What was the rationale behind purchasing another farm 110km east away from the home bock, instead of adding on the original farm at Nerstane?

In the 1970s, my grandfather Jack used to drive between the Yarras timber mill he owned, and in doing so, noticed it was always green and raining through Yarrowitch. Jack was a keen mathematician and must have worked out the two locations were inverse or had opposing climates. He thought it would be a safe bet to have a farm in the east and west, to then move stock between the two as the seasons changed. Looking back then, there was no internet or rainfall statistics available, so this was very forward-thinking at the time. He paid $90 acre back then for Forest Lodge and converted it to freehold for $10 / acre.

2017 Supreme Australian Merino ram, Dubbo. Sold to Uraguay For $40,000. Pictured with father John (centre) and brother Jock (far right).

How are the two farms complementary from a climate risk perspective?

Nerstane (west) is a slightly drier climate and is better suited to wool production than Forest lodge (east) and its far better to run the Merino stud where we live due to the higher management requirements and record keeping. Being able to value-add our poll Hereford cow/calf operation has been worthwhile. Instead of selling store CFA cows, we can ship them east into a “grass feedlot” and sell them fat. The cow/calf works well with the sheep, as they can utilise the long grass in the paddock rotation with the sheep coming in behind. The higher rainfall in the east is better suited to dry cattle that can achieve great weight gain performance.

With the highly variable climate we live in, and knowing livestock need a constant source of nutrition, has the system ever been exposed or forced you to shut down your business and wait for rain?

There have been some very testing years in the last decade, although we have never had to mothball the business. Towards the end of 2019, we were feeling the pinch, although we retained our numbers of both sheep and cattle. Overall the complimentary climate and enterprises have served the business very well. There are more families in this district diversifying their operations with eastern fall country - to hedge climate risk from western fall country. More frequent droughts have forced grazing operations to adapt and find ways to manage climate risks. Feeding stock for long periods is no fun!

Homebred milk-tooth poll hereford steer running on high performance pastures weighing 720 kg

What has been one of the key management levers of managing periods of dry weather in livestock production? (i.e. early weaning, lot feeding, selling dry stock early, new pasture varieties, sheep/cattle balance, agistment contacts to call on)

We have done all of those! The better pasture varieties have been the main winner. They allow livestock to do better and turnover quicker which speeds the system up and reduces risk. The new varieties also hold on better during dry times. All of those things are part of the solution when things turn for the worst.

Where are your go-to sources of climate/weather information?

Before the 2019 drought, the ABC news was the main go-to or any weather App. we could find! Farmer Forecast looks interesting and we have to get better educated on this topic for sure.

Do you have a climate risk-taking success or failure story? (e.g. speculative purchase of stock or grain in anticipation of drought/wet)

We fed our 450 cows through 2001-02 and said we’d never do it again, but did it again in2018 and 2019 but probably don’t regret it like last time. The market has been phenomenal since the drought broke so that’s been a climate success story! We have bought poor conditioned cows in droughts too and fattened them which has been a good earner as well.

What’s your season looking like at the moment on both places?

The season at Nerstane is the best in 40 years and Forest Lodge is well above average too.

Have a farming climate story to share? Please contact us.

Farmer climate focus - John Hamparsum

John Hamparsum

Liverpool Plains, NSW

Location snapshot

Catchment:   Upper Namoi Valley, NSW

Altitude:        300 m

Enterprise:    Winter cropping: Durum, bread-wheat and canola
Summer cropping: Cotton and sorghum

Rainfall:        Wet season (Oct-Mar): 61% rainfall
Cool-season (Apr-Sep): 39% rainfall

Seasonal rainfall climate drivers:

El Nino-Modoki (EMI) is the key climate driver, however, little connection exists post-January to May.

Some impact from the Indian Ocean Dipole and SAM during spring in this location - strongly EMI related climate influence

What are your ‘go-to’ sources of climate/weather information? Basically the internet. I’ve got pages of bookmarks of weather sources that I go to. Predominantly for the short-term, ten day kind of stuff, I use Meteorlogixs because of the ability to look at the eight or so different models in there. That gives you an idea of both temperature forecasts and rain forecasts between the models. The Bureau of Meteorology Land and Water is also another one I’ll look at. They both go through various stages of accuracy. The European model, the ECMWF, lately seems to be the most accurate and windy.com is also a very good website. Long-term, I used to read the Bureau forecasts but the last four summers they’ve got every one of them wrong so my faith in that has gone out the window. I mean, they have forecast a wet summer for the last four years and we’ve had record lows. Even this November was a record low month when they were forecasting above average rainfalls. I guess my faith in the BOM is pretty low at the moment, they are going to have to do a lot of work to get their credibility back up to an acceptable level.

How do you consider climate in your farm management? Climate is one of the main factors impacting a farming business. I mean, a farm is a factory without a roof on it. Climate has a major impact, whether it be heat waves, cold spells, dry spells, wet, windy, all of those have an impact on the productivity of your farm. Irrigation does tend to insulate you a little bit, but we, as most irrigators in the northern valleys know, in the last three years we have had no water. I am a member of the Farmers for Climate Action group and I am quite active in that because I believe that our climate is being impacted by climate change and I think that we need to be more proactive in that space, both on individual levels and as a nation and as a planet because climate is basically what will provide food and fibre for generations to come and it’s going to determine the success or failure of being able to supply that. It’s by looking at the long term climate drivers that you make decisions on how you’re going to farm, also with our crop configuration. We use it to make decisions about how much single-skip cotton we will plant versus solid plant irrigated country we will plant. So, we will make a decision asking are we going to cover ourselves by using single-skip which doesn’t use as much water and can handle water stress better and if it’s looking like we are going into a longer dry period we might increase our percentage of single-skip from 25 percent to 35 percent just to hedge our bets.

Can you share a climate success (or failure) story with us? Going back, I remember in 1992 the forecast, from talking to Roger Stone at the time, was that we were going in to a dry pattern with an el Nino and my father and I had the opportunity to put down another irrigation bore and we thought ‘let’s go ahead and do this.’ And it paid off because 1992 right through to ‘96 was incredibly dry and having that extra bore made the big difference to our yields.

How did your winter crops pan out? The sad part about it was that we had very good rain at the early part of establishment and the crop set itself up to be very large, sort of record breaking yield type structure to the plant and then it just stopped raining and we just were not prepared. Even though we had a full storage of water - well we irrigated one field and worked out how much water it was using and decided not to keep going because our confidence we were going to have a wet summer was not strong. So, we decided not to irrigate the rest of the wheat because we might need it for our summer crop and then the wheat crop hit the wall, moisture wise. We didn’t have a completely full profile coming out of the drought, even though we’d had some good rains we probably only had an 85, 90 percent profile. So, when that dry September hit it really capped out the yield in the winter crop.

How is the climate considered in your future planning? My membership to the Farmers for Climate Action group does play a major role but we are only individuals, we can’t influence how whole nations like China and Europe behave, but we can point out to our own government that we need to be taking actions against climate change. Hopefully this, not so much for me but for my children and their children, that will have a positive impact. Looking at some of the modelling I see that the extremes are going to be a lot more amplified. and for us, living on a flood plain, that could mean that the floods could be a lot worse and the dry times could be a lot worse and the strength of the storms and the voracity of them. The way I see it is, like any chemical experiment, the more heat you put in, the more wild the reaction is.

As an early subscriber, what do you value most from AgEcon’s services? I value the breadth of research that AgEcon is providing and interpreting for us. I really feel like I get a far more knowledgeable interpretation of all the models. I find it really useful and a powerful tool to be able to read those reports and listen to podcasts and make heads and tails of what’s happening rather than looking at the trees and seeing if there’s new shoots on them - which I also do.

Have a farming climate story to share? Please contact us.

Windy.com a neat weather website & app

www.windy.com was a subscriber suggestions for our review… we are not quite sure why we didn’t already know about this one! A free yet comprehensive website and app - if you have time to browse through windy.com it has so much more to offer than just wind detail.

Features:     windy.com has a whopping 47 climate overlays on its maps. Temperatures, precipitation, humidity, air pressure and even paragliding spots (it that’s what you are in to) just to name a few apart from wind speed & direction.

Data is from two of the leading global climate models GFS & ECMWF. You can choose which model you are viewing and easily switch between the two for a simple comparison.

Precipitation forecasts are displayed as an accumulation for various periods; 12 hours, 24 hours, 3, 5 and 10 days.

10 day precipitation ACCUMULATION forecast by ECMWF

A neat radar that presumably uses the BOM radar network, shows rainfall and lightning activity in a modern display.

Pros: Free, detailed and accurate forecast maps from go-to leading global climate models such as ECMWF. The home page on the app gives a fantastic visualisation of what’s going on.

Cons:          Due to the immense detail, some of the menu’s are difficult to read on a device. Additionally, there does
not seem to be a way to save user preferences.

1. Windy.com on the App store
2. The home page with a simple forecast for your current location
3. Heat forecast map

Overall:        An excellent resource for current and forecast weather conditions. I’d preference the desktop version to take in the
detail, however the app is very useful too.

Cost:           FREE

All images for this review are shown for the free version. Upgrading to premium version for USD $20.89 / year gives you higher resolution 1 hour forecast maps (rather than the three hours in the free version). Data that is updated 4 time a day (rather than 2) and technical support. All versions of Windy.com are currently advertisment for free, however during 2021 you’ll start to see targeted advertising.

Not all the overlay options fit on the screen - this is most of them!!

Farmer climate focus - Nigel Burnett

Nigel and Beth Burnett run a mixed broadacre cropping farm near Emerald, QLD. With a mixture of both irrigated and rain grown cropping enterprises, the climate is a key management consideration. Nigel shares with us how he is preparing for an altered summer cropping program based on the favourable 2020-21 outlook.

Nigel Burnett

Emerald, Qld

Location snapshot

Catchment:   Fitzroy Catchment (Comet River sub basin and Nogoa River sub basin)

Altitude:        156m

Enterprise:    Broadacre cropping (irrigated & dryland).
Winter cereals and legumes, Summer (Cotton and sorghum)

Rainfall:        Wet season (Oct-Mar): 76% rainfall
Cool season (Apr-Sep): 24% rainfall

Seasonal rainfall climate drivers: Niño 4 ocean indicator seems to be the one to watch for Emerald

El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the key climate driver, however, ENSO impacts are very weak post-January to May.

Very little impact from the Indian Ocean dipole in this location - strongly ENSO related climate influences

What are your ‘go-to’ sources of climate/weather information?

OCF and OzForecast for weekly weather forecast. Jon Welsh’s seasonal climate analysis, WXMAPS (GFS) for a broad picture of what's going on and the BOM to round it all out.

How do you consider climate in your farm management? Consideration of climate plays a big part in our farm management strategy. It is a key driver in our decision making and is integral to our risk management strategy. We use it mainly to get a feel for where things are heading in terms of our seasonal outlook for our region and the rest of the Eastern cropping zone. The weather conditions we receive during fallow and in-crop are out of our control, but we can manipulate our production system to maximise the opportunity provided by a favourable seasonal outlook or manage our exposure to risk from a poor seasonal outlook. Some of the management decisions which we make to respond to the climate outlook are planting decision, planting timing, rotation, variety and maturity, fertiliser program and stubble management.

Can you share a climate success (or failure) story with us?

I was on the Cotton Industry Awards judging trip in April of 2016 and and was fortunate to spend some time discussing the seasonal outlook with Jon Welsh on our visit to Narrabri. Jon was very bullish on the rainfall outlook for winter for the whole eastern cropping zone and after analyzing other climate forecasts and considering other important management drivers, I came back to Emerald and planted wall to wall chickpeas including all of our irrigated fields. Luckily this turned out to be a very good decision as that winter was very favourable in terms of rain and temperature. It was easily our most profitable winter crop that I can remember growing ever. Now I am sure Welshy will be the first to advocate not to plant your whole farm to one particular crop on his advice of an improvement in the seasonal condition. But it was a very important consideration among other drivers such as soil moisture, commodity price, water availability for irrigation and cash flow.

There was early talk of a wetter winter, however you haven’t received much rain after your wetter than average Feb/Mar. How did your winter crop pan out?

Our area certainly missed the wetter winter memo and it has been a tough winter cropping season for Central Queensland. We planted 3000Ha of wheat and chickpeas on predominantly rain grown country and a small amount of semi irrigated wheat. Our team had to chase moisture deep for planting the wheat and the chickpeas using a moisture profile from the last significant rainfall from late February/ early March. The profile wasn't consistent and plant stand wasn't ideal, further contributing to the effect of the tough season on the very average yields. However, even with the benefit hind sight, I would still plant those crops for the new crop stubble benefit. 

What are you thoughts for this summer crop?

We have received 50-60mm in the last week of October across our entire area and with the improved seasonal forecast we are feeling more and more optimistic by the day. If the rain continues and we fill our soil profile during November, we will plant a significant portion of our area to irrigated and rain grown cotton. Although August has become the preferred option to plant irrigated cotton in our region, I think there is still enough time to grow a good crop of cotton in CQ that is planted in November and harvested in May.

Have a farming climate story to share? Please contact us.

Weather Live

Cost:           $6.49 AUD / week

$40.99 AUD / year

You can download this app for free, and there is a 3 day Free trial period, however it is essentially a paid app (which does mean there are no pesky ads).

Features:     Visually appealing and easy to navigate, this app has some handy features. The usual inclusions of current weather conditions (with the ability to add a list of set locations), forecasts temperatures & wind and weather alerts or warnings. The options of changing layouts etc.

My favourite feature of the app was the forecast rain maps. With location settings on, your location is marked with a dot on the map. The third image (and the blue dot) suggests our headers are not going to get back into the paddock today :-(

If you’re all about your Apple Watch®, this app has been designed for it.

Overall:        This would be my preferred weather app so far, so I will continue to pay unless I find a better one.

Farmer climate focus - Sam Becker, Jarrah Cattle Company

Jarrah Cattle Company’s Sam Becker runs a livestock business that includes some forage cropping. The climate and managing groundcover to ensure feed budgets are met, provides the greatest challenge for management.

Sam Becker

Banana, Qld

Location snapshot

Catchment:   Lower Fitzroy Catchment

Altitude:        181 m

Enterprise:    Stud Hereford, Redford and Jarrah Red cattle and forage cropping, including sorghum and oats.

Rainfall:        Wet season (Oct-Mar): 78% rainfall
Cool season (Apr-Sep): 22% rainfall

Seasonal rainfall climate drivers: Banana, Qld

El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the key climate driver, however, ENSO impacts are very weak post-January to May.

What are your ‘go-to’ sources of climate/weather information?

BOM is a big one and we also use The Long Paddock reports supplied by DAF which allows us to see which percentiles we’re sitting in and how much groundcover we have. We also link that in with our records of past rainfall and then looking at the future rainfall as well. I also get a fair bit of information about climate change from social media to be completely honest and then when you read stuff about that and then look at your past three to five year annual rainfall, for example, we’ve been below our annual rainfall for the last five years, so, it’s looking at that to try and find trends. It’s more to find those trends to manage how heavily we stock and where we stock.

How do you consider climate in your farm management?

A big thing we do is try and link our groundcover and rainfall and look at those two things to see if we should be buying or reducing stock. That’s probably been reactive to an extent, but we have also been making decisions on the go, I guess that sort of reflects the decisions that we have made. We don’t want to start with nothing. We want to have groundcover when we go into the wet season and make sure there’s a bit of a body of feed. If there’s nothing there we would have sold. We try to de-stock before we get to that stage, or at least we keep selling off dry cattle to spread our breeders around so that we keep some level of groundcover there.

Can you share a climate success (or failure) story with us?

Probably a failure. In the last five years we were too reactive to the climate. We were selling down, but we probably weren’t doing it quick enough, so we did– particularly with one property – eat it to the ground. We sort of got trapped when the cattle became out of spec, so they became hard sell. We were definitely reactive to that. We had a set number in our heads that we knew our properties could run and we didn’t take into account the last five years with below average rainfall and then the last two which were significantly below. We still, in our minds, thought that we could run a certain amount of cattle which, in turn, lead to one property significantly suffering.  

What’s your soil moisture looking like at the moment?

We’re pretty dry, as in we have had hardly any rain to date since April. So, yes, we are very dry. Not much moisture, not much protein in the soil, we do have a good grass-cover but it’s all dry feed. Because of this we are supplementing our breeding cattle with a fair bit a custom-mix dry lick that is made with our deficiencies and our country in mind.

Do you have altered management plans for the rest of the year considering La Nina has been announced?

We are definitely considering it. It’s now when we consider these trigger points we have that prompt us, depending on how much feed we’ve got, to start selling off dry cattle. This is so we can spread our breeders around so that we keep that good body of feed and then wait until rain comes before we increase our numbers. We’ve made a big effort this year to make sure we start off with good ground cover for the wet season. We definitely aren’t going to start buying in cattle thinking we are going to get good rain, we are going to wait until we’ve had decent rain, the grass has got away and then we would look to build our numbers again.

Have a farming climate story to share? Please contact us.

The co-efficient of variation (CoV) for rainfall helps understand which months are more reliable than others. The chart shows a generally reliable monsoon rainfall, with November as the most reliable month and July as the least reliable month.

El Niño-Southern Oscillation is the major climate driver in the region. An analysis of Oct-Jan rainfall shows some broad trends towards average or better in La Niña years, low rainfall years in most El Niño years and neutral years as completely random.

Developed by the International centre for applied climate sciences https://climateapp.net.au/ has some handy tools to understand the climate for your area.

A summer-dominant rainfall at Banana, Qld. An output of https://climateapp.net.au/

Tracking close to average rainfall for 2020. An output of https://climateapp.net.au/

Meet the researcher

Prof. Toshio Yamagata

Principal Research Scientist, Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology JAMSTEC

Professor Toshio Yamagata is one of the worlds leading climate scientists, his research findings include the discovery of the Indian Ocean Dipole. We had the pleasure of talking to Toshio last week. Here is his fascinating story.

Toshio, how did you end up becoming interested in climate science?

My hometown is about 100 kilometers north of Tokyo, and in the winter strong monsoon blows down from the mountainous areas. When I was a child, the dust from the fields was amazing. Thunderclouds come down with lightning from the mountainous areas every summer in the afternoons every day. In the spring, flowers bloomed in the gardens of each family, and in autumn, the foliage of deciduous trees was beautiful. My parents liked gardening, and I naturally became interested in the changing seasons.
At the University of Tokyo, I majored geophysics as a field where research can be done while enjoying nature. My supervisor was Professor Kozo Yoshida, who is famous for his research on coastal upwelling in the field of physical oceanography. I was interested in mathematical physics, so I chose the field of geophysical fluid dynamics (GFD), which treats fluid phenomena that occur on a rotating, stratified planet.

My younger work at that time includes the weak non-linear theory that explains why anticyclonic vortices keep longevity in the ocean and Jupiter, and the mechanism by which planetary waves become unstable to form vortices. In 1976, the GFD program of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution approved me to stay there for three months as a GFD fellow. This was an amazing opportunity to meet many giants in the field, such as Drs. Joe Pedlosky, Peter Rhines, Melvin Stern, Jack Whitehead, Geroge Veronis, Andrew Ingersoll, Willem Malkus, Louis Howard etc. They opened my young eyes to the world. In particular, main lecturer was Dr. Dick Lindzen; I was impressed by his simple Albedo-feedback model for climate. I didn't understand it well at the time, but I think it may have shaped the deep psychology of becoming a climate researcher.

After turning the age 30, I gradually wanted to deal with real phenomena that occur in the atmosphere and the ocean to understand the meaning of seasons, I daringly sent a letter with my articles to Dr. Kirk Bryan of GFDL at Princeton University in the United States, asking possibility of staying a couple of years as a visiting researcher.  He immediately accepted me.  There I met Dr. George Philander, and decided to go deeper into the study of tropical climate. This set the course of my life in science; it was in my early 30s. I moved to the US with my wife and my three-year-old son. At that time, I thought that the United States might become a place for my research. In retrospect, I think there are decisive moments in life that determine what follows.

When did you become suspicious that the Indian Ocean had a see-saw condition similar to the El Niño - La Niña phases in the Pacific Oceans?

The summer of 1994 was extremely hot in Japan, and a research team investigating the cause was formed by meteorologists. I had been studying El Niño model since I was in Princeton, so I joined the group. A little later, the AGU Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting was held in Brisbane, and I had the opportunity to exchange ideas with Dr. Gary Meyers of CSIRO. He informed me that there were abnormally dry conditions in Australia, and, according to his XBT section data, the eastern Indian Ocean was also colder than normal. We checked the oceanic semiannual Yoshida-Wyrtki Jet (which is trapped along the equator and flows eastward only during the monsoon break season: spring and fall) using the satellite data (SST and altimetry data) and found there was almost no eastward Yoshida-Wyrtki Jet in fall of 1994. It was amazing!  This is the beginning of the story. It turned out that the unusual westward winds along the equator from early summer to late fall hindered the evolution of the fall Yoshida-Wyrtki Jet. By the way, the Yoshida-Wyrtki Jet (equatorial long Kelvin wave) was predicted theoretically by my supervisor Prof. Kozo Yoshida in the late 1950s and reported by Prof. Klaus Wyrtki in 1973 using the ship drift data. I was excited at finding this unusual event similar to El Nino in the Pacific and started checking all available atmospheric and oceanic data with my young postdocs from India. Those are Saji, Vinay and Behera. I named this Indian Ocean Dipole Mode and introduced the IOD index. There is another interesting story behind the scene just prior to publishing our paper in NATURE, but this will enter the realm of science historians.

Positive IOD - weaker westerly winds, cooler ocean temperatures and less convection reducing the moisture in the atmosphere over nort west australia

So a casual conversation led you to look at linkages with Australian rainfall?

Yes, the role of my old friend Gary’s suggestion at an early stage was very important.

How important was computing power in data analysis when these discoveries were made?

Negative IOD - Intensified westerly winds, warmer waters around australia, increased convection and increased chance of rain

At that time of the discovery, we started the big supercomputer project called the <Earth Simulator> with the Science and Technology Agency and NEC. However, it was not completed. We just adopted a very simple analysis using an ordinary computer.  What is most important is the curiosity to notice strange things based on solid knowledge of GFD.  Dr. David Anderson described our work in Nature in such the way that it was amazing we still can discover things with a simple method.

Farmers are curious as to how the size of the IOD regions and locations are chosen – can you explain in broad terms how this was done?

The IOD is an Indian version of El Nino/La Nina. Since I developed a simple theory of El Nino in the early 1980s in Princeton, I immediately recognized that the IOD is a “basin-wide” “equatorial” phenomenon. One problem which annoyed me was the existence of the monsoonal Somali Jet as the western boundary current. The mechanism of this oceanic current is totally different.  So, we deliberately excluded the region off Somalia.

Do you think an air pressure measurement, like the SOI would help communicate the Indian Ocean?

We prepared the atmospheric component of IOD, but we could not include that part in our Nature paper. We tried to publish it in the journal of Royal Meteorological Society but it was declined because the editor thought that the IOD was a dubious concept. So, I published it with Dr. Behera in Journal of Meteorological Society of Japan with a slightly shocking title to show how the pressure at Darwin is disturbed by the IOD. Some skeptics still thought IOD in the Indian Ocean was just a response to El Nino/Southern Oscillation in the Pacific. Later on, we, and many others, published so many papers on how IOD influences the climate in many places on the globe.

Saji, N.H, Goswami, B.N, Vinayachandran, P.N & Yamagata, T. (1999) A dipole mode in the tropical indian ocean

The first IOD scientific paper, published in 1999 of which you co-authored has been cited an incredible 4,400 times, yet this climate driver was not acknowledged by the Australian Bureau of Met in communications until around 2012. Can you remember some of the debate in the scientific community about the reality of IOD?

There was a tough time.  But almost all my highly cited papers in my career were originally rejected.  I know the originality denies common sense (Please see my address from Dean’s office in 2011 (right after the Tohoku disaster) ). I forgot the exact date. Perhaps, it was the early 2000s when BMRC (at that time) organized a special session and invite me, perhaps to ask me to retreat from the IOD concept. However, I was prepared well with carrying more than 200 OHP sheets (so heavy!) to respond to all questions expected. Almost every week, I had a strategic meeting at FRSGC with my young postdocs and they helped me a lot.  I remember I said at the opening of my talk at the BMRC conference that “this is a boxing game and I am afraid of the home town decision. However, I find one lucky aspect; the judge is my friend Gary Meyers who understands my work.” One of the skeptics Dr. Neville Nicholls was there.  He was very close to the concept of IOD but, unfortunately, he mixed up several phenomena and retreated his idea on the Nichols’ dipole. After the conference, he, with his wife, invited me to a nice restaurant and I remember we had a wonderful evening.  He said, “Toshi, as you know, I cannot support your IOD explicitly but I never criticize it anymore.” I admired his attitude and said,” You have a real knight spirit.  He replied, “ You have a real Samurai spirit.” I was really happy to be a scientist.

How do you think technology can help better predict the IOD, as it’s a fairly tricky driver to nail down from an Australian climate point of view – would more comprehensive ocean monitoring help?

IOD is more difficult to predict than El Nino/Southern Oscillation because of many players of different time and space scales at one stage.  However, our predicting skill is improving day by day thanks to efforts of climate research agencies and institutions. We have just published a paper which discussed why we were successful in predicting the 2019 super IOD; we have realized the El Nino Modoki (another important climate mode in the Pacific) played an important role in triggering as well as strengthening the IOD. Efforts to develop the Ind-Pacific Ocean observing system are very important and we need to support the international partnership fostered by IO GOOS and WCRP.