Aussies suffer hottest ever six months
Posted by JAC on 12/9/2009, 6:57 am
| AUSTRALIA has recorded its hottest six months ever and is well on track to have the second hottest year since records began, the Bureau of Meteorology said. The World Meteorological Organisation's annual climate statement released at Copenhagen found temperatures in 2009 reached 0.44C above the 1961-1990 annual average. "The decade 2000-2009 is very likely to be the warmest on record," WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud told reporters at the Copenhagen climate summit late yesterday, Australian time. Australia was singled out for its wild weather in 2009. "Australia had the third-warmest year on record with three exceptional heatwaves," Mr Jarraud said. The WMO report said the heatwaves happened in January/February, when the hot weather contributed to the disastrous Victorian bushfires, in August and again in November. The presence of El Nino conditions underway in the Pacific saw near-record rises in sea surface temperatures and most parts of Australia experienced an exceptionally mild winter. Maximum temperatures were also well above the national average, with 3.2C above normal, the largest ever recorded in any month. Dr David Jones, head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology's national climate centre, said one of the biggest impacts in the last year had been the absence of cold, with a massive decline in sea ice in the Arctic. "The last six months have been the warmest six months on record for Australia," Dr Jones said. "We expect 2009 will be either the second warmest year on record for Australia or the third warmest." He said the results were not surprising. "Every decade's been getting warmer for the last 70 years. "Clearly climate change hasn't stopped, global warming hasn't stopped." The outlook for the summer is consistent, Dr Jones said, with warm daytime conditions in northeast Australia forecast to continue.  A spring heat wave scorched southeastern Australia in mid-November 2009, pushing the fire danger to the "catastrophic" category in parts of South Australia and New South Wales and to "extreme" in other surrounding areas. Many cities, including Melbourne and Adelaide experienced record-breaking temperatures that continued for many days. This image illustrates the impact of the heatwave on the land surface temperatures-which are different from the air temperatures reported in the daily weather report-across the continent. Based on observations from the MODIS on the Terra satellite, the maps show where temperatures from November 9-16, 2009 were warmer or cooler than the average for those same eight-day periods between 2000-2008. Around Adelaide in South Australia and Melbourne in Victoria, the land surface temperatures were up to 12 degrees Celsius (22 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in mid-November. For Adelaide, the event was the first springtime heatwave since records began in 1887, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The city had temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) for 8 consecutive days. (Five days at those temperatures constitutes a heatwave). Later in the month, some areas experienced heavy rain, which broke the heatwave in some areas, but not all. According to the weather and climate agency, the heat wave resulted from a combination of factors: gradually rising temperatures across southern Australia, probably as a result of global warming; an El Niño event in the Pacific Ocean; and a high-pressure weather system that stalled out over the Tasman Sea to the southeast, causing hot, dry winds to blow south over continent. |
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