SYDNEY – Australia just sweltered through its warmest August on record, meteorologists have confirmed, with temperatures smashing the long-term average by more than 3 deg C.
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 deg C higher than the long-term average, the bureau said.
From the west coast to the east, record temperatures were registered, including an all-time winter high of 41.6 deg C at a military base on the rugged and remote north-west 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 meteorology bureau said Australia’s mean temperature for winter was 1.48 deg C above average.
“Both daytime and night-time temperatures were more than 10 deg C above August average for large parts of the country,” the bureau said on Sept 2.
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.
Separately, in the Northern Hemisphere, Spain saw its hottest August in 2024 since records began, with the average temperature at 25 deg C, the national weather agency said.
The average temperature was 20 per cent higher than that in 2003 and 2023, which were previously the warmest Augusts in the country, the AEMET meteorological agency said in a post on social media platform X on Sept 2 evening.
Judging by temperatures recorded so far this year, 2024 could end up being the warmest year in Spain since records began, tying with 2022, the agency said.
Up until now, 2022 was the hottest year on record, with the average temperature at 15.7 deg C.
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 noted in Shanghai, Japan and Finland’s Lapland. AFP
