Weather Sydney Melbourne Brisbane: Why Australia is about to be hotter than ... trends now
The cold snap hitting Australia's east coast could be brief with a rare weather phenomenon set to cause unusually warm temperatures.
Just last week Sydney shivered through the coldest May morning in four years when temperatures dropped to 2.5C in the city's west.
But Tropical Cyclone Mocha, which earlier this month ripped through Myanmar and Bangladesh, has likely have set off a chain reaction in the Indian Ocean that will bring a period of hot and dry weather over the country.
The system formed in the northeastern Indian Ocean and developed into a category 5 tropical cyclone with winds up to 280km/h, before hitting the Myanmar coast on May 14.
It was the equal strongest cyclone ever recorded in the region and appears to have affected air pressure so much it has changed the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) - the equivalent of the Pacific's El Niño and La Niña climate drivers.
During the positive Indian Ocean Dipole period, Australia sees hot and dry weather over much of the country
Tropical Cyclone Mocha could have set off the process to cause a positive IOD
According to Weatherzone, a positive IOD looks likely to develop over winter that will raise temperatures and suppress rainfall leading to a particularly hot and dry spring.
'Research shows that strong tropical cyclones forming in the Bay of Bengal during April or May often leads to a positive IOD later that year,' meteorologist Joel Pippard said.
'They found that all eight positive IODs between 1958 and 1999 were preceded by a severe tropical cyclone over the Bay of Bengal.'
During positive IOD periods South Australia and the Murray-Darling Basin see the brunt of the hot and dry weather but it will likely affect much of the country.
'It appears that Tropical Cyclone Mocha has already initiated the process, increasing the likelihood that we could see a positive
