Wildfires and hot weather are common in Australia's December-February summer months, but the current event is unusual because it is occurring in what is supposed to be a
neutral period in the El Nino pattern bringing average conditions.
Superimposed on these five-year moving averaged is the long-term two-step downward shift in labour productivity, which is shown in Chart 2 for six cyclically
neutral periods, defined on a output peak to output peak basis.
They also found that eruptions cause atypical warming during
neutral periods.