Melbourne records its warmest winter on record, as bushfire season looms
Melbourne has officially recorded the warmest winter since records began in 1855, with a mean temperature of 12.8 degrees – just above the 2013 record of 12.7 degrees.
On Tuesday, the first day of spring, Melbourne reached a top of 23 degrees – well above the average September maximum of 17.3 degrees – before forecast showers in the evening.
Winter weather records show warm conditions extended up the eastern seaboard, smashing temperature records.
Sydney experienced its warmest winter in 167 years of records, according to Weatherzone meteorologist Ben Domensino, and Sydneysiders can expect the warmest start to spring in more than 50 years, with temperatures predicted to reach between 24 and 27 degrees this week.
Temperatures are also expected to soar in Brisbane over coming days, potentially reaching 33 by Thursday and staying within a few degrees of that maximum at the weekend.
Domensino attributes the immediate cause to a large high-pressure system passing over southern Australia that is allowing a hot air mass to build up over the country’s interior and north-west, spilling towards the east and south.
He said the mean seasonal temperature for this winter stood at 15.27 degrees – about 2.25 degrees above the long-term winter average – and was on track to beat the previous record of 14.95 degrees set in 2013.
Temperatures have been elevated by a lack of strong cold fronts and east-coast lows, which in turn had an impact on the snow season.
Snow resorts in Victoria and NSW closed early this year after a season of low snow cover, which also led to the value of Thredbo alpine resort being written down from $292 million to $143 million.
“I grew up skiing at Selwyn snowfields and remember having to dig our front doors out at Cabramurra,” said Mia “Miff” Rennie, a member of the advocacy group Protect Our Winters.
“That’s now a thing of the past. I have seen firsthand how quickly our winters are changing and how quickly we need to respond so future generations can continue to experience the magic of winter that I grew up with.”
The broader cause of the warmer weather is climate change.
Australia’s area-averaged mean temperature in July was 1.14 degrees above the 1961-90 average, the warmest since 2023. All states and territories had above-average mean temperatures in July. Tasmania and Queensland were within their top seventh- and 10th-warmest July months on record since 1910, respectively.
Western Europe enters autumn having been battered by a rolling series of heatwaves and its hottest ever June and July period.
The Mediterranean Sea has been supercharged with so much heat that it is expected to keep regional temperatures higher than average over coming months, prompting warnings of increased flood risk in some countries.
“September and October are the Mediterranean’s flash-flood season: the sea is at its annual warmest after three months of heating and the first cold troughs arrive overhead,” Ioanna Vergini, founder of the forecasting platform WFY24, told Euronews Earth.
Over the northern summer, 634,022 hectares of land burnt across the EU, more than double the long-term average, prompting the evacuation of more than 300,000 people and shattering heat records.
In the United States and Canada, wildfires burnt at least 25 per cent more land than the 10-year average and more than double the land area decades ago.
Scientists are exploring how the thawing of permafrost may have contributed to the landslide and flood disaster that cost thousands of lives in Nepal and China last week.
The most intense El Nino event so far recorded is brewing in the Pacific Ocean, charging waters with intense heat that will be released into the atmosphere over coming months, potentially leading to even higher temperatures in Australia this summer and next.
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported last month that the highest sea-surface temperatures ever recorded for July in oceans outside the polar regions were recorded in July.
This, it said, was partly driven by the looming El Nino, which is expected to contribute to one of the most dangerous bushfire seasons since Black Summer.
Australia’s bushfire chiefs last month warned of increased bushfire risk among parts of Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia, northern and south-eastern NSW, south-east Queensland, north-eastern Tasmania, and large parts of the Northern Territory.
But the higher-than-usual temperatures experienced in Australia over winter and forecast for spring are unlikely to have yet been significantly altered by the El Nino, according to Professor Mark Howden, director of the Australian National University’s Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions.
“What’s going on in Australia [so far] fundamentally is the underlying temperature increase due to climate change.”
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