Australia registers record high winter temperature

SYDNEY: Australia registered a record-high winter temperature on Monday, with the mercury hitting 41.6 degrees Celsius (106.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in part of its rugged and remote northwest coast.

The Bureau of Meteorology said it logged the scorching reading from a military training facility at Yampi Sound at 3:37 pm local time -- apparently smashing the previous record by 0.4 C. The reading was “the hottest August temperature for any location in Australia” and “the new Australia-wide maximum temperature record for any winter month”, a Bureau of Meteorology spokesperson told AFP.

Official data shows average temperatures for Australia steadily rising, with climate change fuelling more intense bushfires, floods, drought and heatwaves. While the record is “provisionally confirmed”, scientists still have to make sure the recording was not the result of some local anomaly or instrument failure before it officially enters the record books.

The previous record of 41.2C (106.2F) was set in August 2020 at nearby West Roebuck. The antipodean winter runs from the beginning of June until the end of August. About 18 percent of Australia is desert and searing heat is common year-round away from temperate zones.

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 -- the so-called Southern Annular Mode -- and changes in Pacific weather patterns known as El Nino and La Nina.

Certain combinations of these three climate conditions can cause exceptionally hot, dry or wet conditions in different parts of Australia. All three of Australia´s major climate-influencing phenomena are believed to be affected by human-induced climate change, according to research by Australia´s state-backed Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

The Bureau of Meteorology believes that “the combination of (these) major climate influences with global warming” contributed to make the winter of 2023 Australia´s hottest winter on record.

Climate scientists have already predicted that 2024 will be the hottest year for the Earth on record. From January to July, global temperatures were 0.7C above the 1991-2020 average, according to the European Union´s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Temperature records have tumbled worldwide in recent decades as human-caused carbon emissions have risen. Record temperatures have been recorded in the Mediterranean Sea, Norway´s Arctic Svalbard archipelago and the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in the past few weeks alone.