Record-warm winter gives way to an unusually hot Australian spring

Winter this year was exceptionally mild in Australia’s southeast, with Sydney and Melbourne posting mean temperatures that exceed any prior reading in the Bureau of Meteorology’s archives that begin in the 1850s, and Canberra reaching its highest winter averages on record. Adelaide and Hobart saw their second-warmest winters, while Perth’s temperatures were only marginally above long-term norms. The season lacked severe cold snaps and snowfall, leading to a poor ski season and no snow in the Blue Mountains for the fourth year running.

Scientists attribute the warmth to a strong El Niño event combined with an absence of polar air incursions, and they expect similar drivers to push early spring temperatures 5 °C above normal, with cities like Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide forecast to hit 21-22 °C on the first day of spring. The Bureau’s ACCESS-S model projects the coming three months to be the warmest spring on record for southern Australia, with averages 2-3 °C above the 1981-2018 baseline, equivalent to 3-4 °C above pre-industrial levels. This shift signals a notable climate change impact, and the probability of maximum temperatures falling in the top 20 % of years exceeds 80 % for much of the south.