Also let us not forget, Australia set a new continent-wide low temperature just a few short months ago
Australia records hottest winter on record, summer tipped to be hotter
Cathy Alexander The Herald Sun, Australia
September 01, 2009 12:53pm
UPDATE 5.11pm: BELIEVE it or not, the nation has just sweated through its hottest August on record … but don’t blame climate change.
The bureau boffins described it as most extraordinary” as temperatures crept above 38 degrees in some areas.
And winter as a whole came within a whisker of being the warmest of record – it was just 0.01 of a degree cooler than the record-holder, 1996.
Blair Trewin, a climate scientist with the bureau, said the warm weather was caused by a lack of large frontal systems sweeping up from the southern oceans, which would have brought cool air.
Instead, persistent high pressure systems hung about the subtropics.
Dr Trewin said the heatwaves were caused more by natural variability than by climate change.
Climate change had pushed up temperatures by about 0.8 of a degree over the past century but August came in at more than two degrees above average.
“The set-up we had this month would have given us an extremely warm month whether it happened 100 years ago or it happened now,” Dr Trewin told AAP.
“There’s a lot of natural variability but you’ve got a climate change signal on top of that.”
And there’s no end in sight to the warm weather – the Bureau is forecasting a hot, dry spring because of warm conditions in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Australia’s east coast suffered an unusual lack of frontal systems during August, which usually blow cooler air into the region.
Areas of south-east Queensland and northern NSW have been regularly breaking August records, with Evans Head on the far north NSW coast sweltering through a state record of 36.8 degrees last week.
“Hot air has just built up and built up … without any breaks,” Dr Trewin said, adding it could mean Australia is in for more above-average temperatures during spring and summer.
“It’s suggesting a fairly high chance of dry conditions in northern Queensland, Victoria and South Australia.”
“There’s a high risk of a hot spring and early summer over the east of Australia, that obviously has implications for fire weather.”
Tuesday 01 September 2009
CLIMATE SUMMARY – NT REGIONAL OFFICE
Record breaking hot August.
The Northern Territory last month recorded its hottest August on record, with several long-term climate records broken. “Every weather reporting station in the Alice Springs district exceeded its previous hottest August, many by several degrees”, said Sam Cleland, manager of the Bureau of Meteorology’s Northern Territory Climate Services Centre.
“Furthermore, the hot August followed from warmer than usual June and July, and many stations in southern parts of the Territory also reported their warmest winter on record.” Mr Cleland said.
Further details can be found on the Bureau’s Climate Summaries page, at:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/index.shtml
A direct link to the NT Summary is at: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/nt/summary.shtml
“So Dr Jones is considered an alarmist because he states the factual situation.”
No , He was being alarmist.
That wheat crops will fail because of ~6 hours of 34-35C temperature on one day in August when they survive much more than that in September through to Nov/December when it it harvested.
http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/nsw/nsw-observations-map.shtml
http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/qld/qld-observations-map.shtml
They grow a lot of wheat at Mullewa as well.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_008095_All.shtml
Check it out.
A note from my patch –
High pressures might have had a hand in these August high temperatures but locally they were accompanied by pressures in the 100X mb region.
The previous August high was 1995 and I need to check the subsequent rainfall
The report fairly states the hot weather can not be attributed categorically to AGW.
It also needs to be pointed out that many Australian weather stations are of recent origin (20 years is the minimum whereby records can be accepted) many are at airports and historically some were given little credence for their accuracy. (See G S Callendar archives who studied Austraian records and was dismissive of many- He had some hair raising tales of where some were located in order to make it easier for the operator to read them easily.)
As an example NSW records go back to 1910.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/index.shtml
So we do need to keep these ‘records’ in a historic perspective
tonyb
Wheat crops? If it is too hot, why not grow soy beans? People ain’t dumb, you know.
TonyB-good point. And then there is the issue of the “stevenson screen” adjustments to the Australian data which cooling the early parts of all the records.
Patrick Davis-I have to take accounts of the weather down under on faith, because I don’t live there. But thanks for that. Either goes to show the under recognized importance of micro climates, or raises so serious eyebrows about this whole story.
Well in the southern hemisphere it looks like summer is making an early start. Today in my town in South Africa the mercury is also at 38 degrees. It’s like an oven here, I wish for the Gore effect!
Absolute BS from NASA:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=40042&src=eorss-nnews
More BS from Nasa:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=40043&src=eorss-nnews
Ron de Haan (09:58:56) : Has anyone actually observed increased snowfall in Antarctica ? The report didn’t say …
From the BoM;
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20090901.shtml
“The outlook for the coming spring suggests that above average temperatures are likely across the whole of Australia. This is a result of recent warm conditions in the Indian Ocean as well as warming in the Pacific.”
Southern Hemisphere spring starts in 20 days (for other New Zealand readers just ignore the uninformed pronouncements of the overpaid TV meteorologists that spring started on Sep 1st. Astronomers tell us when the seasons start. Meteorologists tell us how the seasons go!), and just to remind us of that fact a nasty little polar blast is sweeping up the country from Antarctica right now. The temperature has dropped 6 degrees C in 90 minutes. This is the first such significant southerly blow to hit the North Island since mid July.
My own records show that it is not a totally unusual occurance to have a six week gap in mountain snowfall events in the middle of winter. Strangely enough, although the figures state that N.Z. has just experienced the warmest August on record, locally we still had our usual number of frosts. The six frosts brought the years total so far to a three decade record high of 27. With this current cold blast, and an expected stationary anti-cyclone to park itself over us for the coming week, the frost count could continue.
For me this year has proven once again that no two years are identical, or even close in all respects when it comes to the vagaries of the weather.
Ron De Haan:
Loved that stuff from the Great Fire of London. Speaking of fires, aren’t the current L.A. fires earlier than normal? I understood that the Santa Ana winds were usually in October.
Cheers
Coops
Seems as though NSW did get above 100F.
The abnormal warmth became particularly notable during the last ten days of the month, with many stations setting record high maximum or minimum temperatures (or both) for August, in some cases by large margins. This included new state records for both maximum and minimum temperature for NSW and Queensland. In NSW these were 37.8°C at Mungindi on the 24th and 23.3°C at Lismore on the 25th respectively, while the Queensland equivalents were 38.5°C at Bedourie on the 29th and 26.5°C at Urandangi on the 25th. The month’s highest temperature, 39.7°C at Wyndham Airport on the 31st, fell only 0.3°C short of the Australian record for August.
Ron de Haan (09:58:56) – Could you you outline the problems with these for us?
Jakers (12:34:16) :
Just goes to show one should check thoroughly before shooting one’s mouth off… Mungindi did in fact have a +100 degree day and the average max temperature there for August 2009 was nearly 5degrees C higher than the 1915-2008 average max. The average low was 45.5F, still above normal. There is a truly neat weather chart here:
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/station.jsp?lt=site&lc=52020&list=ds&of=of_a&ot=ot_a&mm=08&yyyy=2009&submit=go
I haven’t checked NSW as a whole, but September 2009 (all three days of it!) is currently in the normal range at Mungindi.
R.E. Phelan
Mystifying reports. Every time I spoke to our daughter, who lives in Victoria north of the Divide, she said how cold it was. She has seen a lot of frosts and there was a lot of snow nearby in the skiing areas. It has become mild recently, but hello?! …it is technically Spring there now. She was fed up with the cold but somewhat dreading the next fire season.
During the last century, Australia and New Zealand have had more urban growth than most of the developed world. Just a couple of centuries ago they had no cities at all. It doesn’t take a genius to see the growth of urban heat island effects there. So all talk of highest temps on record are a moot point when they are starting from almost no urban heat island at all.
OK, so I had a bit of leisure today to check Mungindi and other selected spots in Australia.
Aron (03:14:40) :
I am not sure UHI is really applicable to Mungindi since it seems to have a current population of only 800. It does represent a neat piece of cherry-picking, however. I spent almost 30 minutes starting from the weatherzone.com.au home page trying to navigate to the Mungindi page and just couldn’t do it. It would have taken real diligence or a listing under “recent extremes” to find it. The town itself is located so far north that it is barely in NSW at all, right on the border with Queensland.
Picking a few other examples from NSW and Victoria, the CanberraAP station in NSW had an average high of 14.5 C with a range of 19.0 to 11.1 and an average low of 2.4 C with a range of 12.0 to -4.9.
In Victoria, the Frankston Station near Melbourne reported an average high of 14.5 and an average low of 11.5. Mildurra Station in Northern Victoria reported 19.6 and 6.4 as its high and low averages.
Annei (09:38:34) :
Some parts of NSW are still actually getting frost warnings, so yes, your daughter could very easily be reporting a chilly season. Dr. David Jones was not being entirely honest when he said:
Wheat crops in parts of Australia have suffered damage due to extreme temperatures which widely approach 100F in winter (something unheard of previously).
Southern Australia, Victoria and NSW did not suffer through a 100 degree winter. To find that anomally, he had to go practically to subtropical Queensland to find an alarming temperature he could ascribe to temperate NSW. One station does not make a trend. Neither do four stations. All that being said, it does appear that August in the southern portion of Australia was somewhat warmer than normal. Here in the US, New England has had a cooler August than normal. Go figger.