Skip to main content

Hi all. After reading the blogs since the announcement of El Nino which also coincided with one of the strongest positive Indian Ocean Dipole in June last year, I am anticipating for drier and warmer than normal weather conditions to occur as these are the typical impacts of co-occurrence of El Nino and positive Indian Ocean Dipole towards Malaysia or Maritime Continent as a whole. However, when I read the sub-seasonal monthly weather reviews since June 2023 until January 2024 issued by the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC), I noticed that the rainfall anomalies in Malaysia is either near or above average throughout this period (only September and October showed below average rainfall anomalies for most part of the country) and in fact, Malaysia even experienced prolonged heavy rainfall that leads to big floods in November and December 2023. I also noticed that it rained a bit more frequent where I live (near Kuala Lumpur, west coast of Peninsular Malaysia), the same way it rained during the triple dip La Nina we had recently but it was hot even though it rained frequently. The temperature has been unbearably hot during the day and warm at night since late February. So my question is does these two climate variability phenomenon give minimal impacts to Malaysia in terms of rainfall distribution when they are at a strong level or does this caused by the unprecedented warming of SST around the globe including in the Malaysian waters?

Thank you.

Amirul Hakimi,

a young Malaysian meteorologist in the making.