Australia's top weather forecasters will soon shift to a new dynamic climate model as the use of historical records becomes a less reliable guide in a warming world.

From May, the Bureau of Meteorology will issue its winter weather outlook based on its Predictive Ocean Atmosphere Model for Australia (POAMA). POAMA uses current data on ocean and atmosphere conditions - such as sub-surface sea temperatures - to create its forecasts.

History is no longer so useful a guide to future weather. Credit:Bureau of Meteorology

Until now, the bureau has relied on statistics based on historical sea surface temperatures and rainfall patterns alone.

That model searches the climate record from 1950 to 1999 to find similarities between current and past temperature patterns in the Indian and Pacific oceans. It then uses past Australian rainfall and ocean temperature relationships to generate climate outlooks.