Dozens of Australian heat records were smashed over the weekend, as the Australian Bureau of Meteorology forecasted a warmer than average autumn ahead.
Miriam Bradbury, a senior meteorologist at the weather bureau, said that many locations in New South Wales on Sunday recorded their hottest March day ever.
“We saw dozens of temperature records broken,” she said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
On Saturday, records were set at various locations in South Australia, as well in Mildura in Victoria, Bradbury said.
“But [on Sunday] the heat really contracted into New South Wales,” she said.
Bradbury said that top temperatures reached about 44°C in parts of the southeastern states.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Records set included: 39.9°C, 39.6°C and 37.6°C in New South Wales’ Wagga Wagga, Dubbo and Goulburn respectively; 42.5°C in Mildura; and 43.3°C and 42.3°C in South Australia’s Roxby Downs and Leigh Creek respectively.
Canberra on Sunday hit 37.4°C, its hottest March day in 25 years, and 0.1°C off the March record of 37.5°C.
Sydney’s March daily high temperatures are averaging higher this year (29.1°C) than the historical March mean (24.8°C), but Bradbury said that no individual temperature records had been set in the city.
“Towards the southwest suburbs, we did have a couple of late-season maximum temperature observations for certain stations,” she said. “Basically it means this is the latest we’ve ever seen it this hot, but it’s not a record either annually or for the month.”
The hot weather arose from a combination of a high pressure system across Australia’s southeast, and a trough that extended from the Kimberley region in Western Australia toward the southeast of the country, which deepened during the week, Bradbury said.
“A lot of heat that was sitting over central parts of the country, even over parts of Western Australia, started to shift eastward and southward,” she said.
She predicted there would be a reprieve for the southeastern states over the next two weeks, with slightly below average temperatures forecast.
“But if we look further ahead, on a one-to-three-month basis, we do see that trending the opposite direction,” she said. “We’re more likely to see warmer than average conditions as we move through that April-to-June period.”
“The impact of climate change in general is a warming trend,” she added. “But on a month-to-month or even week-to-week basis, we do see this natural variation in the temperatures across the whole country.”
Joel Pippard, a meteorologist at Weatherzone, said the late blast of heat was largely driven by a negative swing in a climate driver called the southern annular mode (SAM), which refers to the north-south movement of the strong westerly winds.
“In a positive phase, cold fronts contract closer to the south pole and provide more high pressure near Australia, and during a negative phase, cold fronts more regularly cross southern Australia,” Pippard said in a statement.
“For the entirety of 2022, the SAM was in a predominantly positive phase, leading to more high pressure and increased easterly winds over the nation’s east coast,” he said.
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