SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia just sweltered through its warmest August on record, meteorologists have confirmed, with temperatures smashing the long-term average by more than three degrees Celsius.
Bureau of Meteorology data showed that last month was the hottest August since records began in 1910, with several parts of the continent logging their highest-ever maximum and minimum temperatures.
The area-averaged mean temperature across Australia was 3.03 degrees Celsius (5.5 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the long-term average, the bureau said.
From the west coast to the east, record temperatures were recorded, including an all-time winter high of 41.6 degrees Celsius (106.7 degrees Fahrenheit) at a military base on the rugged and remote northwest coast.
The antipodean winter runs from the beginning of June until the end of August.
In all, this winter was Australia’s second-warmest on record, after 2023.
The Bureau of Meteorology said Australia’s mean winter temperature was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) above average.
“Both daytime and night-time temperatures were more than 10 degrees Celsius above August average for large parts of the country,” the bureau said Monday.
About 18 per cent of Australia is desert, and searing heat is common year-round away from temperate zones.
But data shows average temperatures for Australia steadily rising, with climate change fuelling more intense bushfires, floods, drought and heatwaves.
Australia’s climate is heavily influenced by three cyclical climate patterns: changes in Indian Ocean temperatures, changes in a belt of wind that moves between Australia and Antarctica, and changes in Pacific weather patterns known as El Nino and La Nina.
All three of these phenomena are affected by human-induced climate change, according to research by Australia’s state-backed Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
Climate scientists have already predicted that 2024 will be the Earth’s hottest year on record.
Temperature records have tumbled worldwide as human-caused carbon emissions have risen.
This week alone, record temperatures have been recorded in Finland’s Lapland, Shanghai and Japan.
