I failed Year 10 Physics and gave up on becoming a rocket scientist. I staggered through Year 12 Chemistry mostly because I wanted to make homemade fireworks—only to discover chemistry was more about formulas than fire. So I’m hardly qualified to lecture on atmospheric thermodynamics. Which is why, when a PhD once told me weather was just gases spinning around the globe, I stopped watching the local forecast and switched to admiring the weather girl on Italian TV.
Not that I was interested in the weather—because who cares about how hot it was yesterday? I want to know what’s coming tomorrow. Problem is every time someone mentions the Southern Oscillation Index or the Indian Ocean Dipole, I nod along and drift off. But a recent chat with an old boarding school mate gave me hope that some of the Wheatbelt’s amateur forecasters might actually have a clue.
David Syme, a former Esperance farmer and now grain buyer for Milne Feeds, has become a bit of a weather savant. When he’s not on the phone buying grain, he’s tracking sea surface temperatures, satellite feeds, and southern Indian Ocean data to work out whether he or the rain will be feeding WA’s sheep next month.
Syme reckons the biggest leap in forecasting hasn’t come from BOM’s slicker apps or prettier maps—but from the steady accumulation of ocean data, particularly sub-surface temperatures, combined with supercomputer modelling.
He first twigged to the sea–rainfall link in the 1980s, talking to Esperance fishers who could read the ocean like a diary. Warm patch offshore? Expect fish to move—and rain to follow. Back then, the federal government wasn’t listening.
Australia didn’t start seriously tracking sub-surface ocean temperatures until 2006 with the launch of IMOS. The real game-changer was the early-2000s arrival of Argo floats—autonomous buoys that dive to 2,000 metres every 10 days to measure ocean temperature and salinity. The first Southern Ocean deployments came in 2001, backed by CSIRO. Today, Australia operates 50–60 active floats across the Indian and Southern Oceans. Combined with moored buoys, volunteer ship data and satellites, we now have a 3D picture of ocean heat—replacing the old surface-only guesswork.
This data became powerful when BOM plugged in its first supercomputer, a Cray T3E, around 2000. Its successors, like the Cray XC40 “Australis,” run complex models simulating the planet’s atmosphere with increasing resolution. The ACCESS model that powers today’s forecasts digests terabytes of data to produce rainfall maps and seasonal outlooks.
Still, as Syme puts it, you can have all the computing grunt in the world, but if the inputs are crook, the output’s not worth a hail event during harvest. WA’s weather models remain good at temperature, poor at much beyond when the next front is due.
Interestingly it seems we do get a bit better each decade or two at understanding what drives the states rainfall systems. The ’50s and ’60s gave us El Niño and La Niña; the ’80s turned south to the Southern Annular Mode; the ’90s finally gave the Indian Ocean Dipole its due. The 2000s brought satellite imagery and early supercomputing; the 2010s taught us to track ocean heat below the surface.
Yet for all that progress, there are gaps. We don’t know why a negative IOD suddenly flips mid-season. We haven’t nailed rainfall triggers over dry soils. We don’t track the temperature contrasts between Exmouth and Albany closely enough—contrasts that often decide whether the next front delivers or dies. We haven’t properly modelled how land clearing or continuous cropping have changed local convection. And fringe theories—cosmic rays, solar cycles, submarine volcanoes—remain just that.
Then there’s the local stuff every farmer knows but BOM can’t model. Why does the back paddock get an inch more than the front? Why does the neighbour’s granite outcrop draw rain while your sandy ridge misses out? We still don’t understand micro-influences of topography and soil on rainfall, especially across the Wheatbelt’s undulating ridges and valleys. A cold front might slide in from the southwest, but whether it drops its bundle over your place or skips to the next gully can come down to a few degrees of ground temperature, a bit of wind shear, or how dry the soil is when the moisture hits.
Soil type matters too. Sandy soils heat and cool faster than heavy clays, influencing the lift that kickstarts rain. Ground cover, stubble, even the fallow angle—all shape how the landscape talks back to the sky. Meteorologists call it “boundary-layer turbulence” or “mesoscale variation.” Farmers call it the mystery of the paddock.
While there’s been research—some at UWA or buried in a GRDC report—little of it feeds into operational models. For now, you still learn more walking the paddock at dawn than refreshing the 7-day radar.
Add the Leeuwin Current, the warm ocean flow hugging WA’s coast. Without it, our climate would resemble Namibia’s—cold, dry, and foggy. Its strength changes yearly and shapes the autumn cloud bands. Want to forecast the break? Watch the hot strip from Broome down past Cape Leeuwin. Warm water fuels the atmosphere; cool water means a slow start.
The good news: Murdoch University is now leading a climate research initiative to provide detailed projections for WA up to 2100. Using the Setonix supercomputer—one of the world’s most powerful—the CSI is producing high-resolution models at 4 km and 20 km scales, compared to BOM’s current 250–500 km grids.
The first 20 km projections for all of WA should be available in 2025, with 4 km models for the South West due in early 2026 and for the North West later that year. An online climate viewer is expected by mid-2026.
Sure, the funding may be driven by climate hysteria, but if it improves our short-term forecasts, so be it. Forecasters like Syme need every data point they can get. This isn’t just about better computer models—it’s about investing in more submersibles to collect deep-sea data.
In the meantime, DPIRD and GRDC should collaborate on research linking topography and soil to rainfall patterns. They could map the most reliable paddocks and districts in dry years to help farmers identify where rain is most likely when it matters most.
It’s exactly the sort of project Captain JJ should champion—because if anyone knows how politics mirrors the weather, it’s her. The seas can turn dark quickly, and the smart ones prepare before the next drought or storm hits. As for GRDC, with $700 million in reserves, they could spare 1 per cent for the next generation of weather modelling for WA farmers. Now that’s an idea for the good captain to pursue.
