CANBERRA, Australia – Australia brewed through its fourth hottest year on record last year, despite the recent return of La Nina’s generally cooling climate pattern, the nation’s weather agency said Friday.
The wetter-than-average 2020 followed Australia’s hottest and driest year in 2019, which came to a catastrophic conclusion with drought-fueled forest fires killing at least 33 people, destroying more than 3,000 homes and leaving 19 million acres to the ground made right.
Globally, 2020 will likely be recognized as the world’s third hottest on record once climate data for December is calculated, said Andrew Watkins, chief of climate operations at the Bureau of Meteorology.
La Nina, the cooler flip side of the more famous El Nino, was proclaimed in the Pacific in September. La Nina occurs when equatorial trade winds get stronger, change the ocean surface currents and suck in cooler deep water. Waikins said the La Nina cycle usually starts between March and May, but the weather pattern didn’t affect temperatures in Australia until October.
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“You could say that the fourth warmest year on record is our warmest La Nina year,” said Watkins.
“But this year started very hot and dry and ended more like La Nina. So it’s debatable whether you would say it really affected enough of the year to expect it to be cooler, ”he added.
The highest temperature in Australia for 2020 was 48.9 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit), measured at the height of the Penrith wildfire emergency in New South Wales on January 4. It was the highest temperature ever recorded in the Sydney area.
Australia’s other hottest years were 2013 and 2005.
The daily temperature in Australia was 1.15 degrees Celsius (2.07 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average last year, and rainfall was 4 percent above the average, despite a parched start to the year.