Australia has just sweated through its warmest and driest year on record with the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) officially declaring 2019 the warmest and driest year on record for Australia.
The BoM made the call as part of its Annual Climate Statement, presented today, calling last year the country’s hottest year with a mean temperature of 1.52 degrees Celsius above average.
Australia’s average maximum daytime temperatures really sizzled, last year was 2.09 degrees Celsius above the 1961-to-1990 average, smashing the previous record by half a degree.
At the same time Australia’s national average rainfall total was just 277mm, the lowest recorded ever.
The Bureau’s head of climate monitoring Dr Karl Braganza said the concerning signs pointed towards increased catastrophic fire weather.
“For maximum temperatures, it was a larger departure. It was plus two degrees. So that is the first time we have seen an anomaly that’s two degrees above average and about half a degree warmer than the previous record,” he said.
“We also saw the six hottest days on record peaking at 41.9 and that is temperature averaged over the whole continent.
“I think we saw 11 such days where the national daily temperature went over 40 degrees this summer and that is really quite stark.”
Nation-wide, Australia is experiencing catastrophic bushfires conditions with dangerous blazes burning in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
The BoM report said the link between the fires and record low rainfall and increased temperatures was clear.
“We were lucky last summer that we didn’t get the sort of fire activity that we’ve seen this year, but this year we weren’t so lucky,” Dr Braganza said.
The main climate drivers this year were the strongest positive India Ocean Dipole (IOD) on record, with a strong negative burst of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) late in the year.
Both contributed to the hot dry conditions, but this natural variability happens on the foundation of rising temperatures and increasing fire danger for Australia, Dr Braganza said.
The report also revealed that evidence pointing to the unprecedented duration of this season’s bushfire became clear two years ago.
“So certainly, the combination of extended drought, very low soil moistures in some regions, drier fuels, higher temperatures on most of the outlooks and no meaningful rainfall meant that we had quite early indications that the fire season was likely to be, or include, quite frequent severe fire weather,” Dr Braganza said.
The National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) said the record warm temperatures were severely impacting the livelihoods of farmers.
“The conditions in 2019 really turned what were tough conditions into almost unbearable conditions for some farmers,” general manager of NFF’s trade and economics department Dr Pru Gordon said.
She said many farmers were facing as many as six years of no income.
“So, we’re just seeing really a tipping point for a lot of farmers where the drought has so far impacted them really significantly, but we’re finding a lot are hitting a crisis point.”
Western Australian and the Northern Territory are both experiencing changing weather conditions, with cyclones hitting both regions.
However, climate scientist Professor Will Steffen from the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society said that would not be enough to solve the dry and fire-prone conditions.
“We can’t actually count on cyclones pulling us out of this mess. In general, they don’t have a strong influence on the south-east of the continent,” he said.
“We depend, particularly in the cool seasons on fronts coming off the Southern Ocean and we know that those are very likely affected by climate change.”
While it was still early in the new year, Dr Braganza said it is unlikely the weather conditions were going to improve.
“There’s nothing really indicating things will cool down too much over the next few months.
“We are starting to see some signs that the monsoon is starting to get active.
“At this point I think I’d optimistically say less dry rather than wet if that makes sense so I don’t think we’re seeing an indication that we’ll see significant above-average rainfall.”
He said the science is clear on a link between a warming climate and Australia’s bushfire season over the years.
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