‘Killer combo' of heat and humidity lining up for Melbourne this weekend

Melbourne is set for an "insufferable" weekend, particularly on Sunday, as a combination of high temperatures and rising humidity lift heat stress to levels rarely seen in the city.

Temperatures in the sun could become particularly intense on Sunday.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, humid conditions will make the maximums for Friday though to Sunday feel considerably warmer than the temperatures suggest.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “‘Killer combo' of heat and humidity lining up for Melbourne this weekend."

Unusual climate mix has experts baffled as summer set for warmer, drier conditions

An unusual combination of climate conditions is confounding climate experts, with the possibility that Australia could post a warmer and drier than average summer even with a La Nina event being declared in the Pacific.

Conditions are tilting back towards favouring warmer than
 average conditions for much of the nation during summer.

The Bureau of Meteorology on Thursday released its summer outlook, indicating the odds have shifted back from favouring cooler and wetter than average weather in the coming three months.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Unusual climate mix has experts baffled as summer set for warmer, drier conditions.”

Climate Change Fingerprints Confirmed in Lucifer’s Wicked Heat: Europe’s Record Hot Summer Made Much Worse by Human Activity.

Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, senior
researcher at the Royal Netherlands
 Meteorological Institute (KNMI).

Scientists with World Weather Attribution (WWA), using a combination of observed temperature data and climate models, have concluded that human-caused climate change made the record-breaking 2017 summer temperatures in the Euro-Mediterranean region at least 10 times more likely. WWA is an international coalition of scientists focused on assessing possible climate change in uences on extreme weather events.

“We found clear evidence of human influence on this summer’s record warmth — both in the overall summer temperatures and in the heat wave dubbed Lucifer,” said Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, senior researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). "In many towns and cities across Southern Europe, there is now a one in 10 chance of seeing a heat wave as hot as we saw during this past summer every summer,” van Oldenborgh added. “In the early 1900s, a summer like the one we just experienced would have been extremely rare.”

Read the World Weather Attribution story “Climate Change Fingerprints Confirmed in Lucifer’s Wicked Heat: Europe’s Record Hot Summer Made Much Worse by Human Activity.”