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01st Apr 2019

Australia has had more record temperatures this year

Alan Loughnane

Australia heatwave

It continues.

Australia has experienced the warmest March on record, with mean maximum and minimum temperatures above average for nearly all of the country, The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has said.

This means in the last four months, Australia has had the hottest December, January and March on record, while February was also in the top five hottest.

Blair Trewin, senior climatologist at the BOM said that temperatures are way above the norm.

“It’s come in about 2.2 degrees above the long term for the first quarter of the year,” Dr Trewin told ABC.

“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.”

“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.

The north and west of Australia received some reprieve from the heat and drought as two tropical cyclones hit the regions and brought with them some rain in early March, however, the BOM warned that more rain would be needed to reduce the deficit.

“Unfortunately, the rain needed to reduce significant rainfall deficiencies in drought-affected areas is substantial and will require above average rainfall over a prolonged period to completely remove deficits at longer timescales,” BOM said.

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