After the flood: what an El Niño might mean for Australia’s ecosystems

A ferry passes by the Sydney Opera House as smoke haze from bushfires blankets the city in 2019. The drying and heating impacts of El Niños are being superimposed on human-caused global heating, Dr Wenju Cai says. Photograph: Joel Carrett/EPA

Australia’s weather – dominated for three years by La Niña conditions in the Pacific that soaked the east of the country – could be about to flip into a hotter and drier phase.

But what might the potential arrival of La Niña’s hotter and drier cousin, El Niño, mean for Australians still recovering from the floods of recent years, and our ecosystems?