Are you hot enough yet?

In July of this year, four of Australia’s senior meteorologists, David Jones [Head of Climate Monitoring and Prediction Services] , Blair Trewin [Climatologist, National Climate Centre ], Karl Braganza [Manager, Climate Monitoring Section] and Rob Smalley [Climatologist] co-authored an article for “The Conversation” highlighting 2013 as potentially one of the “hottest” on record.

Warming and its associated effects is clearly the single most significant public policy issue facing all governments, yet the scale [breadth and depth] of coordination required to respond appears to leave policy makers motion-less, in the headlights…..

In summary, at the mid point of 2013 we can be quite confident that the current year will be one of Australia’s warmest years on record. It is possible that 2013 will set a new record high if the remainder of the year tracks slightly warmer than the first six months have been.

Sea Temperatures

Mean Temperature Anomaly for Australia

Of note in their article was the following:

The last 10 months have been abnormally warm across Australia and we’ve seen a notable lack of unusually cold weather this winter. Are we heading for the hottest year on record?

• The more significant records for this period include:
• Australia’s hottest day on record
• Australia’s hottest week on record
• Australia’s hottest month on record
• Australia’s hottest summer on record
• Australia’s hottest September to June (10 months) on record

A feature of the last 10 months has been the persistence of unusually warm temperatures. Every calendar month since September 2012 has had temperatures 0.5°C or more above normal. The result has been a national mean temperature anomaly of +1.03°C for the past 10 months, well ahead of the previous record of +0.94 °C set in 1997-98.

Notes:

The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community, delivered direct to the public via their blog and funded by CSIRO, Melbourne, Monash, RMIT, UTS, UWA, Canberra, CDU, Curtin, Deakin, Flinders, Griffith, JCU, La Trobe, Massey, Murdoch, Newcastle, QUT, Swinburne, UniSA, USC, USQ, UTAS, UWS and VU.

Links:

• Article – 2013 shaping up to be one of Australia’s hottest on record – The Conversation
• Australian Bureau of Meteorology
• Bureau of Meteorology – Climate Change
• Article – Media still overlooks 90% of Global Warming – Washington Post Still Won’t act-Check Columnists – thinkprogress.org