It comes as the bureau released its national data for March on Tuesday,showing the nation experienced unusually warm and wet conditions nationally,and abnormally dry and warm weather in NSW,Victoria and Tasmania.
The average national temperature was 1.11 degrees above the 1961-1990 average,which made it the equal-10th warmest March on record since 1910.
In NSW,the mean temperatures were the fifth-highest on record at 2.11 degrees above the long-term average,while the minimum and maximum temperatures were also higher than normal.
The average national minimum temperature was 1.79 degrees above the norm,the equal-second highest after 2016. Queensland shattered its record for the highest average minimum temperature in March at 2.49 degrees above the long-term trend.
Nationally,the rainfall total for March was 86.1 per cent above the 1961–1990 average,the third-wettest March on record since the national dataset began in 1900. The biggest deluges were in Western Australia,where it was 166.8 per cent higher than normal,followed by the Northern Territory,South Australia and Queensland.
But in south-eastern Australia,it was unusually dry. NSW had an average of 33 millimetres of rain in March,39 per cent lower than is typical for the time of year. Victoria’s rainfall was just 9.2 millimetres on average,78 per cent lower than usual.
Dr Andrew King,a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne,said there were usually differences in climate between the east and west coasts,but this was an “unusually strong contrast” thanks to cyclones hitting Western Australia.
He added that the fact Melbourne’s “remarkably dry” weather was broken by 53 millimetres of rain in two hours on the first day of April was another sign of climate change. If the rain had fallen a day earlier,it would have made the average rainfall for the month look normal.
“We generally expect with climate change that more of the rain will fall in heavy bursts and less in drizzle-type rain,” King said. “This was a good demonstration of that.”
The recent Australian summer was thethird-hottest on record,based on the average,minimum and maximum temperatures for December,January and February.
Globally,2023 was the hottest year on record,January 2024 was the hottest January on record,and February the hottest ever February. This is based on the ERA5 dataset managed by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
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