Australia posts hottest autumn on record

Autumn heat records throughout Australia.
tumbled during autumn this year.

Australia has posted its hottest autumn on record, with Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane among the cities to post their warmest temperatures for the season, as the giant El Nino in the Pacific wound down.

Nationally, this autumn also marked the biggest departure from the norm for any season in records going back to 1910, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Autumn mean temperatures were 1.86 degrees above the 1961-90 average, easily eclipsing the previous largest seasonal anomaly of 1.67 degrees recorded for the spring of 2014.

"Around 50 per cent of the country had its highest on record mean temperatures," Karl Braganza, head of climate monitoring for the bureau, said.

The key influences for the abnormal heat were "the impact of the El Nino and the increasing temperatures due to global warming," Dr Braganza said. "You've just seen a spike in a lot of the global and regional indicators."

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Temperature records tumble in Australia as autumn marks biggest seasonal anomaly.”