A model for forecasting drought from teleconnections

Strong relationships have been developed between both global and local phen omena in one season and precipitation in the next four seasons for years wh en the precipitation is likely to be low (drought years). The relations exp lain more than 65% of the variance in the precipitation for regions of up t o 500,000 km(2) and more than 35% of the variance for up to 1.3 x 10(6) km( 2) in eastern Australia. The strong relationships occurred when precipitati on was regressed against one of the variables in years that were selected o n the basis of the magnitude of a third, so-called partitioning, variable. The relations are shown to be able to provide forecasts of low precipitatio n in all seasons of the year. Statistical tests show that the strong foreca sting relations could not occur by chance.