On Monday and Tuesday last week the Australian-averaged maximum daily temperature rose to over 40°C. Monday’s temperature of 40.33°C set a new record, beating the previous highest Australian daily maximum of 40.17°C set in 1972.
This is according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology which recently published an article in the on-line publication The Conversation.
They say it is just not an Australian phenomenon, the summer just gone in the US was the warmest on record, with extreme heat records broken at a rate never previously seen before. Studies here and overseas are now showing that many of the recent extreme summer heat events around the world — such as the European heat wave of 2003, the Russian heat wave of 2010, and US heat waves during 2011 and 2012 — would have been very, very unlikely without the influence of global warming.
