- Australia on Tuesday recorded its hottest day on record, with an average temperature across the country of 40.9 degrees Celsius, or 105.6 degrees Fahrenheit — passing the 2013 record of 40.3 C.
- Meteorologists predicted temperatures would increase further in the coming days and issued a health warning for people living in the southeastern part country.
- The record-breaking heat comes in the context of a difficult year in Australia that saw devastating bushfires ravage the country and the longest, farthest-reaching period of poor air quality on record.
- 2019 has been marked by a series of extreme weather events, including a record-breaking heat wave in France, unusually warm temperatures in Greenland, and an intense hurricane season in the US, which featured the strongest hurricane ever recorded.
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Australia on Tuesday recorded its hottest day ever, as the average temperature across the country peaked at 40.9 degrees Celsius, or 105.6 degrees Fahrenheit — passing the January 2013 record of 40.3 C, or 104 F.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology on Wednesday said temperatures were set to intensify further in the coming days and warned of a heightened danger of fires across the country as a result.
“We’re expecting large areas of inland South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales to experience temperatures in the mid- to high 40s,” Sarah Scully, a meteorologist at Australian Bureau of Meteorology, said in a statement.
The record-breaking heat comes in the context of a difficult year in Australia that saw devastating bushfires ravage the country and the longest, farthest-reaching period of poor air quality on record.
Extreme weather has plagued much of the planet in 2019, with Europe battling a record-breaking heat wave in June and July and the strongest hurricane in recorded history hitting the Caribbean in late August and early September, to name just two.
- Unusually warm temperatures in Greenland — 10 C, or 50 F, warmer than the years before, which have led to ice melting in the country.
- Torrential rain and devastating floods in Japan that killed at least 90 people.
- A hurricane season in the North Atlantic that saw 18 named storms, including six hurricanes and three major hurricanes — figures said to be above average, according to data from Colorado State University.
- That was capped by Hurricane Dorian, which became the strongest hurricane ever recorded before it made landfall in early September.
- Record-high temperatures of 45.9 C, or 114.6 F, in France in July.
The Bureau of Meteorology in Australia issued a health warning to people in the southeastern part of the country this week, with the heat-wave conditions and smoke from the fires expected to have a “large impact on people’s health.”
Bureau of Meteorology, Australia✔@BOM_au
Preliminary results suggest that the 17th December was Australia’s hottest day on record at 40.9 ºC, with the average maximum across the country as a whole, exceeding the previous record of 40.3 ºC on the 7th January 2013. http://ow.ly/cEwS50xCLFh
Dr. Blair Trewin, a climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said temperatures would reach extreme numbers on Wednesday and Thursday and were expected to reach at least a degree higher than the 2013 record.
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