Extreme Temperature Diary- Tuesday September 19th, 2023/Main Topic: A Deadly Hot Summer Has Arrived in Australia…And Spring Has Just Started

The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉

Main Topic: A Deadly Hot Summer Has Arrived in Australia…And Spring Has Just Started

Dear Diary. Over the Southern Hemisphere winter, it seemed like traditional cold weather never arrived as show on this blog. We saw winter heat waves across Argentina and the rest of southern South America, South Africa, and in Australia. Now the other shoe is dropping in Australia. Summer temperatures are arriving during their spring.

September is equivalent to April in the Northern Hemisphere, but already we see a heat dome developing across the island continent, which will continue for much of this week:

Today I’ve noticed a stark hot area across southeastern Australia looking at Climate Reanalyzer data:

Here are some examples of records reported by Maximilliano Herrera coming from Australia recently:

Australia is living some extraordinary and unprecedented days with between 30C and 40C in the South in early spring. 34.6C Sydney Observatory tied Sept record 35.9C the Airport beat the record Dozens of records smashed (see list below) 34.6 Gabo Island record beaten.

Sidney Airport just had its hottest September day on record. As of 2pm, the airport had reached 35.9ºC, beating its previous record of 35.6ºC from 2000. Data for this site dates back to 1939.

Also according to Max: South America, Australia, Southern Africa: Southern Hemisphere is boiling with never record heat. Today 39.8C at Mababe in Botswana at 1000m asl, and 39.5C at Mfuwe in Zambia. The heat will just get worse and we should expect records falling like dominoes in Botswana and Zambia.

It will be interesting to see if Australia stops its coal mining ways since this summer may be its hottest summer get due to a combination of climate change and a strong El Niño cycle.

Here is more from Reuters:

Australia swelters in spring heat wave, temperatures set to break records | Reuters

Australia swelters in spring heat wave, temperatures set to break records

By Renju Jose

September 17, 2023

Crowds of people enjoy the beach as parts of Australia’s east reached their hottest day in more than two years amid temperatures which rose to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), in Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia, March 6, 2023. REUTERS/Jaimi Joy/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights

SYDNEY, Sept 18 (Reuters) – A spring heat wave across large parts of Australia’s southeast, including Sydney, will intensify on Monday, the weather bureau said, with temperatures expected to peak up to 16 degrees Celsius (60 Fahrenheit) above the September average.

Australia is baking through a rising heat wave which has been building in the country’s outback interior over the weekend and is likely last until Wednesday across the states of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.

The Bureau of Meteorology said it expected several early spring records were likely to be broken over the next few days, calling the heat “very uncommon for September”.

“A reprieve from the heat is not expected until Wednesday onwards, as a stronger cold front crosses the southeastern states,” the weather bureau said in a Facebook post on Sunday.

The heat took its toll on runners in the Sydney marathon on Sunday with 26 people taken to the hospital and about 40 treated for heat exhaustion by emergency services.

Temperatures in Sydney’s west are expected to hit 36 degrees Celsius (96.8 F) on Monday before dropping to about 22 degrees Celsius (71 F) on Thursday, the weather bureau forecasts showed.

The heat wave has also elevated the risks of fires with several regions given ‘high’ fire danger ratings, and authorities urging residents to prepare for bushfires. About 50 grass or bushfires are burning across New South Wales but all have been brought under control.

Australia is bracing for a hotter southern hemisphere spring and summer this year after the possibility of an El Nino strengthened and the weather forecaster said the weather event could likely develop between September and November.

El Nino can prompt extreme weather events from wildfires to cyclones and droughts in Australia, with authorities already warning of heightened bushfire risks this summer.

A thick smoke haze shrouded Sydney for several days last week as firefighters carried out hazard reduction burns to prepare for the looming bushfire season.

Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Michael Perry

And more from the New York Times:

Australia Officially Declares Arrival of El Niño – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

As El Niño Arrives, Australian Region Sees ‘Catastrophic’ Fire Conditions

The authorities ordered school closures on the south coast of New South Wales, where springtime temperatures were expected to near 100 degrees.

A controlled burn in Sydney, Australia, this month. The area is experiencing temperatures far above normal. Credit…Cordelia Hsu/Reuters

By Yan Zhuang

Reporting from Sydney, Australia

Sept. 19, 2023, 4:54 a.m. ET

Less than three weeks after the official start of spring in Australia, temperatures in many towns have set records, some as high as 60 degrees above normal. Ski resorts have closed weeks ahead of schedule. At the Sydney Marathon over the weekend, dozens of people were hospitalized after running in a heat wave.

On Tuesday, the authorities said the state of New South Wales was experiencing “catastrophic” fire conditions on its southern coast, with high winds and temperatures approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit. They ordered 20 schools to close and residents in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, not to light fires outdoors. Firefighters were already battling dozens of blazes across the country.

And in a possible omen for the months ahead, they also officially declared the arrival of the El Niño weather pattern, heralding the first hot and dry summer in the continent in three years.

Australia is bracing for a particularly dangerous fire season four years after the deadly Black Summer, when wildfires killed or were blamed for the deaths of nearly 500 people and scorched more than 60 million acres. The previous few seasons have had cooler and wetter La Niña conditions.

“We are already seeing extreme conditions in some parts of the continent, particularly in the duration of heat,” said Karl Braganza, a spokesman for the national Bureau of Meteorology. “We’ve had an extended period of warm and dry weather to start spring.”

Conditions have not been deemed as high-risk yet as those that led to the Black Summer, which had been preceded by several years of drought, Mr. Braganza said. Still, he said, parts of New South Wales where vegetation had dried out faced elevated risk.

A blanket of smoke hanging over Sydney last week, when the Australian city experienced some of the worst air quality in the world. Credit…Mark Baker/Associated Press

The area most at risk currently is the far south coast — an area which burned during the Black Summer fires — where 20 schools were closed on Tuesday. A “catastrophic” fire danger rating was announced for the region because of the combination of the high temperatures, abundance of dry vegetation and strong winds.

“For your survival, avoid being in bush and grass fire risk areas today,” the New South Wales Rural Fire Service said on Facebook on Tuesday. “These are the most dangerous conditions for a fire.”

Last week, Sydney experienced some of the worst air quality in the world as firefighters raced to conduct controlled burns across swathes of New South Wales before conditions became too hot.

Experts say that the vegetation that grew and flourished during three years of wet and cool La Niña conditions is now drying out as Australia experiences El Niño conditions, creating potential fuel for the fires. At the same time, a warming planet means that firefighters have an ever-narrower window to do controlled burns.

The authorities are struggling to adjust to these conditions, said David Bowman, a University of Tasmania professor and one of Australia’s leading fire management experts.

“We’re absolutely not prepared,” for the fire season ahead, he said. “We’re not doing the necessary work at the speed we need to do the work, relative to the rate of climate change.”

He added that outside his window, in the distance, “I’m watching a fire developing as we speak, and it’s quite interesting.”

Several other wildfires were also burning in Tasmania on Tuesday, including an uncontrolled blaze on the east side of the island state, near the popular tourist area of Coles Bay, where authorities had asked residents to evacuate.

In the state of Queensland, emergency evacuation warnings were issued for the towns of Emerald and Beerwah on Sunday as large fires raged. Both blazes were under control by Monday, and no property damage was reported. But authorities warn that the fire risk will increase on Thursday and Friday, with temperatures in some parts of the state expected to reach 97 degrees.

The death toll from the Black Summer wildfires included 33 direct deaths and almost 450 more through smoke inhalation.

Yan Zhuang is a reporter in The New York Times’s Australia bureau, based in Melbourne. More about Yan Zhuang

Here are some other “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:

Here is some more brand-new August and Summer 2023 climatology:

Here is more climate and weather news from Tuesday:

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)

Today’s News on Sustainable and Traditional Polluting Energy from Fossil Fuel:

More on the Environment:

More from the Weather Department:

More on other science and the beauty of Earth and this universe:

If you like these posts and my work on record temperature ratios, please contribute via my PayPal widget on this site. Thanks in advance for any support. 

Guy Walton… “The Climate Guy”

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