ABC
News, 1 April
2019:
Blair Trewin, senior
climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), said March was a continuation
of what we saw over summer in a lot of ways.
Not only was it the
hottest March, but it has also been the hottest start to the year on record. By a lot.
"It's come in about
2.2 degrees above the long term for the first quarter of the year," Dr
Trewin said.
"That's nearly a
degree hotter than the previous hottest first quarter of the year.
"We've had
the hottest January, we've had the hottest March and
February was also in the top five."
Nearly a degree is a
very large margin to break a record by.
"Even for an
individual month that would be a very significant margin, but to be breaking a
three-month-period record by nearly a degree is something which we would see
very rarely, if ever in a continent the size of Australia," Dr Trewin
said....
It may feel like the
"hottest on record" headline is a constant these days but Dr Trewin
said it was still not exactly normal.
"We're still
getting the occasional cool months but the frequency of record warm months and
seasons has gone up quite substantially in the last decade or so with the
background long-term warming," he said.
"Whilst we've seen
a particularly extreme few months, the background warming trend we see in
Australia, as we do globally, is in the order of 0.1 to 0.2 of a degree per
decade.
"Projections are
that that's expected to continue at least at that rate," he said.
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Key points:
o
March
2019 was the warmest on record for mean, minimum and maximum temperatures in
Australia
o
Rainfall
was below average through the centre of the country but well above average where cyclones hit
o
Outlook
for the next three months suggests continued above-average temperatures
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