Photo: Getty

More bad news on the weather.

Scientists say there’s a 75 per cent chance we will see an El Niño event, which brings extreme weather, this year.

Australia has already recently seen severe heat and bushfires plus cyclones and floods even without the impact of an El Niño event.

This new analysis of data from floating sensor nodes in the Pacific Ocean suggests that El Niño events may be predictable up to 12 months ahead.

The calculation shows an El Niño event may form, with 75 per cent likelihood, in late 2014.

“Despite its importance, conventional forecasting is still limited to six months ahead,” the international team of scientists write. “Recently, we developed an approach based on network analysis, which allows projection of an El Niño event about one year ahead.”

El Niño is an increase in water temperature off the west coast of South America which causes weather changes in the Pacific.

The article, “Very early warning of next El Niño,” by Josef Ludescher at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Giessen, Germany, and colleague was published today in PNAS (The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science) in the US.

This map shows the sensor network:

PNAS (The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science)

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