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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person