Record temperatures in Australia....and America

Temperatures off the charts in Australia – Bureau of Meteorology adds new colors to represent record temperatures above 50°C (122°F)

Australia's "dome of heat" has become so intense that the temperatures are rising off the charts – literally

SMH,

9 January, 2013

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The air mass over the inland is still heating up - it hasn't peaked

The Bureau of Meteorology's interactive weather forecasting chart has added new colours – deep purple and pink – to extend its previous temperature range that had been capped at 50 degrees.

The range now extends to 54 degrees – well above the all-time record temperature of 50.7 degrees reached on January 2, 1960 at Oodnadatta Airport in South Australia – and, perhaps worringly, the forecast outlook is starting to deploy the new colours.

"The scale has just been increased today and I would anticipate it is because the forecast coming from the bureau's model is showing temperatures in excess of 50 degrees," David Jones, head of the bureau's climate monitoring and prediction unit, said.

While recent days have seen Australian temperature maps displaying maximums ranging from 40 degrees to 48 degrees - depicted in the colour scheme as burnt orange to black – both Sunday and Monday are now showing regions likely to hit 50 degrees or more, coloured purple.

Clicking on the prediction for 5pm AEDT next Monday, a Tasmania-sized deep purple opens up over South Australia – implying 50 degrees or above.

Aaron Coutts-Smith, the bureau's NSW head of climate monitoring, though, cautioned that the 50-degree reading is the result of just one of the bureau's models. "The indications are, from the South Australian office, that we are not looking at getting any where near that (50 degree level)."

Still, large parts of central Australia have limited monitoring, so the 50.7 degree record may be broken.

"The air mass over the inland is still heating up - it hasn't peaked," Dr Jones said.

Australia's first six days of 2013 were all among the hottest 20 days on record in terms of average maximums, with January 7 and today likely to add to the list of peaks. That would make it four of the top 10 in a little over a week.

National record smashed

And the country has set a new national average maximum of 40.33 degrees on Monday, beating the previous record - set on December 21, 1972 - by a "sizeable margin" of 0.16 degrees, Dr Jones said, adding that the figures are preliminary.

"Today is actually shaping up to be hotter - and it could be a record by a similar margin," he said.

Another record to be smashed on Monday was Australia's mean temperature. The country averaged 32.23, easily eclipsing the previous record - set on December 21, 1972 - of 31.86 degrees. Just 0.13 degrees separated the previous four highest mean temperatures, underscoring how far above average the day was.

The scorching temperatures could last into the weekend and beyond, Dr Jones said, potentially breaking the country's all-time high of 50.7 degrees.

"The heat over central Australia is not going to go anywhere," he said, noting that the northern monsoon and southern cold fronts have all been weak recently.

"We know the air mass is hot enough to challenge the Oodnadatta record."

While the national data goes all the way back to 1910, the bureau views the figures are most reliable from about 1950.

Before today, six of the 20 hottest days in Australian records have been in 2013 - with that tally likely to rise to seven out of 20 by the day's end. Here are the rankings:

Hottest national averages on record (before today).

1 January 7, 2013: 40.33 degrees

2 December 21, 1972: 40.17

3 December 20, 1972: 40.01

4 December 22, 1972: 39.82

5 January 1, 1973: 39.79

6 January 6, 2013: 39.71

7 December 17, 2002: 39.7

8 January 2, 1973: 39.65

9 January 3, 2013: 39.55

10 December 16, 2002: 39.54

11 December 30, 1972: 39.48

12 December 31, 1972: 39.43

13 January 27, 1936: 39.4

14 January 1, 1990: 39.39

15 January 4, 2013: 39.32

16 January 5, 2013: 39.26

17 January 2, 1990: 39.22

18 January 2, 2013: 39.21

19 December 18, 2002: 39.2

20 January 13, 1985: 38.98

Source: Bureau of Meteorology

Background from Radio New Zealand.

U.S. roasts to hottest year on record by landslide – ‘A picture is emerging of a world with more extreme heat’

Desdemona Despair,

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By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

8 January 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) – America set an off-the-charts heat record in 2012.

A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced Tuesday. That's a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998.

Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so.

The National Climatic Data Center's figures for the entire world won't come out until next week, but through the first 11 months of 2012, the world was on pace to have its eighth warmest year on record.

Scientists say the U.S. heat is part global warming in action and natural weather variations. The drought that struck almost two-thirds of the nation and a La Nina weather event helped push temperatures higher, along with climate change from man-made greenhouse gas emissions, said Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She said temperature increases are happening faster than scientists predicted.

"These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate," said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "And they are costing many billions of dollars."

Last year was 3.2 degrees warmer than the average for the entire 20th century. Last July was the also the hottest month on record.

Nineteen states set yearly heat records in 2012. […]

The drought was the worst since the 1950s and slightly behind the dust bowl of the 1930s, meteorologists said. During a drought, the ground is so dry that there's not enough moisture in the soil to evaporate into the atmosphere to cause rainfall. And that means hotter, drier air.

The last time the country had a record cold month was December 1983.

"A picture is emerging of a world with more extreme heat," said Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M University climate scientist. "Not every year will be hot, but when heat waves do occur, the heat will be more extreme. People need to begin to prepare for that future." .....

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