In the last three years, the climate of Manilla has moved into drought. Rainfall has become lower than normal, and days have become warmer than normal.

The pattern of change

The pattern of change is clear on this graph only because the rainfall and temperature anomalies have been smoothed. Values for the last six months cannot yet be smoothed so well. Their pattern is ragged.
The first point on the graph, July 2015, is close to the Zero-Zero point of normal climate, marked by a circle in turquoise. Since then, the climate has cycled mainly along the blue line joining the two corners marked “Hot Dry ‘Droughts'” and “Cold Wet ‘Flooding Rains'”, as in Dorothea Mackellar’s poem “My Country”.
For the first seven months, to February 2016, while rainfall hardly changed, the temperature rose to above normal. Then, by August 2016, the climate became unusually cold and wet. This first cycle ended in January 2017 at the hot-dry limit of normal climate.
From February 2017, a second cycle began with movement towards cool and wet, but that ceased in May without getting as far as normal. Since May 2017, the movement has been persistently towards hot and dry.
The final smoothed data point, December 2017, is close to the 21st Century record for both low rainfall anomaly (minus 27.1 mm/month in July 2002) and high daily maximum temperature anomaly (plus 1.39 degrees in October 2013). New records seem likely to be set when values for 2018 can be smoothed.

Length of cycles

The cycles on this graph have a period close to one year. February had the highest smoothed daily maximum temperature anomaly in 2016 and in 2017. When smoothed, the same may be true in 2018.
Historically, the cycles cold-wet to hot-dry have a period of about two years (“quasi-biennial”) at Manilla and in Australia as a whole.
The climate cycles or climate trends associated with Global Warming have periods that are very much longer. They do not show on this graph. If they did, they would show as movement on the other diagonal, between the corners marked “Cold Dry ‘Glacial'” and “Hot Wet ‘Interglacial'”.

The 2002 drought

The most recent extreme drought was in 2002. A similar graph for that drought is in the post “Profile of an Extreme Drought”.

For context, see the post “Manilla’s Record of Droughts”.

Graphs of other variables

The graph in this post is one of a set of six, showing smoothed anomalies of variables versus smoothed daily maximum temperature. The variables are: rainfall, cloudiness, dew point, daily temperature range, daily minimum temperature, and subsoil temperature.
All six graphs, with further explanation, are in another post.