New | Last year the hottest in Australia since records began in 1910
Australia experienced its hottest year on record last year, the Bureau of Meteorology said on Friday, enduring the longest heatwave ever recorded Down Under as well as destructive bushfires.
“[The year] last year was Australia’s warmest year since records began in 1910,” the bureau said in its annual climate statement, released as inland areas of the country suffer scorching heatwave conditions.
“Mean temperatures across Australia have generally been well above average since September 2012. Long periods of warmer-than-average days have been common, with a distinct lack of cold weather.”
While records are occasionally broken here and there, the amount of temperature records broken in the last year is extraordinary
The bureau said that Australia’s 2012-last year summer was the warmest on record, and included a prolonged national heatwave which ended on January 19, last year – the first day since December 31, 2012, that it did not reach 45 degrees Celsius somewhere in the nation.
Spring was also the warmest on record and winter the third warmest, meaning that overall, the annual national mean temperature was 1.20 degrees Celsius above average.
The bureau pointed to destructive fires, in the island state of Tasmania in early last year, which were followed by a record warm and dry winter across the country.
Spring appeared to arrive early and culminated in “the most destructive fires in the Sydney region since at least 1968”.
The weather authority, which last year introduced new colours on its temperature scale to cater for more extreme highs, said the Australian warming was very similar to that seen on the global scale.