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IT has been a cool and wet summer across eastern Australia, and autumn is shaping up to produce more of the same.

But temperatures over the nation as a whole have been slightly warmer than normal.

"If you combine daytime and night-time temperatures, they have only been very slightly below normal, probably coming in around 0.1 or 0.2 of a degree below normal," Blair Trewin, ofthe National Climate Centre, said yesterday.

"February has been a cool month over most of the country, but January was very warm except for the east coast," Dr Trewin said.

"When you add the months together, the general picture is cool in eastern Queensland and the northeastern half of NSW, very warm in a lot of central Australia as well as in South Australia, quite warm in Victoria and fairly close to normal elsewhere."

The summer brought heavy rains along the east coast and a downpour in Western Australia as a result of Cyclone Nicholas.

Summer rainfall is likely to come in at above average for the eastern two-thirds of Queensland and most of NSW, close to normal for Victoria and South Australia, and well above normal for southern Western Australia. Central Australia was below normal, and the northern tropics probably close to normal.

The Bureau of Meteorology`s autumn rainfall outlook is for wetter than normal in northern Queensland and parts of NSW and South Australia. Below-normal falls are more likely in parts of Victoria and Tasmania.

The temperature outlook is for cooler than normal temperatures in southern Queensland and northern NSW.

Dr Trewin said the weather was largely due to the continuing La Nina pattern, which typically brings above-average rains and cooler temperatures.

He said the southern Murray-Darling Basin had not had the full benefit of La Nina.

"The forecast there is still leaning very slightly towards the wetter side, but really there is no significant signal."

The only areas showing a significant shift towards below-normal rainfall are the far south of Victoria, and northern Tasmania. Southern Victoria has been dry for the past decade.

"Southern Victoria is probably the part of Australia that has seen the most extreme dry anomalies in the past 10 to 12 years," Dr Trewin said.

"Victoria south of the divide is a region which has been consistently below normal for 11 years now, and we`re not seeing obvious signs of a change in that pattern."

Dr Trewin said the cooler temperatures in the wetter areas were "entirely consistent with the leaning towards higher rainfall and increased cloud cover".

"Some of the past La Nina summers have been extremely cool, like 1973-74 and 1975-76 - you saw statewide anomalies of -3C. We are nowhere near those summers, either in terms of temperature or in terms of rainfall."

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