\n<\/p>\n
Queensland and the Northern Territory are on track for their warmest October on record against \u201cevery measure\u201d, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.<\/p>\n
Across the country it had been a \u201cpretty unusual month\u201d, a senior climatologist at the BoM, Hugh McDowell, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s looking like it\u2019s going to be the third warmest on record for the whole of Australia, and the warmest October on record by every measure for Queensland and the Northern Territory \u2013 that\u2019s by maximum, minimum and mean temperatures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sydney and Brisbane were also headed for their hottest October in terms of maximum temperatures. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the capitals,\u201d McDowell said, with heat records likely to be widespread across New South Wales and Queensland.<\/p>\n
Darwin airport experienced its hottest month on record, with maximum temperatures averaging 34.8C.<\/p>\n
Sunday 19 October kicked off a week of extreme heat that saw records tumble from coast to coast.<\/p>\n
NSW and Queensland recorded their hottest-ever October temperatures on 21 October, the highest since records began in 1910, according to the BoM.<\/p>\n
Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton\u2019s Clear Air column as a free newsletter<\/strong><\/p>\n The remote outback village of Wanaaring in north-western NSW hit 44.9C \u2013 the state\u2019s highest ever October temperature \u2013 a degree higher than the previous top of 43.9C set at Brewarrina on 31 October 1919.<\/p>\n Birdsville airport reached 46.1C, breaking the town\u2019s previous October record for the whole of Queensland of 45.1C on 31 October 1995.<\/p>\n The drier and warmer conditions were influenced by persistent high pressure allowing heat to build up on land combined with more westerly winds linked to a negative Southern Annular Mode (a climate driver that affects wind and rainfall patterns), he said. \u201cThat\u2019s all with a background of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n A contributing factor was the rare rise in stratospheric temperatures over Antarctica \u2013 called sudden stratospheric warming \u2013 that arose in September, and is now dissipating.<\/p>\n Sudden stratospheric warming events are usually associated with warmer and drier weather patterns, particularly for NSW and Victoria. There have only been three moderate to major events in the past 45 years \u2013 in 1988, 2002 and 2019 \u2013 according to the BoM, with the latter contributing to a worsening of the black summer bushfires.<\/p>\n Dr Martin Jucker, a senior lecturer in atmospheric science at the University of NSW, said the impact of the stratospheric warming event on rainfall was visible, particularly in NSW.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Clear Air Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Rainfall and soil moisture for October was below average for much of the state, despite the wet start to the year.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s interesting how it was always wet, wet, wet, wet, wet, wet. And then as soon as the sudden warming happened, it started getting less wet, and then suddenly neutral. And now we see October was actually drier in the south-east.\u201d<\/p>\n Jucker, who is based in NSW, said weather-wise it had been \u201ca horrible year\u201d for the state.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s been floods all over the place. There\u2019s been some really strong rainfall events,\u201d he said. \u201cIt had everything in it, but it also had the warmest day on record in October.\u201d<\/p>\n The above average conditions were expected to continue, according to the BoM\u2019s latest outlook, with daytime and night-time temperatures from November to January remaining above average for most of Australia.<\/p>\n Sea surface temperatures have been the warmest or second warmest on record every month since July 2024, and are forecast to remain above average.<\/p>\n Warmer oceans can provide increased moisture and energy that can enhance the severity of storms, cyclones and rain systems, according to the BoM.<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s national annual average temperature is about 1.5C higher than in 1910, according to the BoM, and the climate crisis has increased the frequency and severity of extreme weather events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Queensland and the Northern Territory are on track for their warmest October on record against \u201cevery measure\u201d, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Across the country it had been a \u201cpretty unusual month\u201d, a senior climatologist at the BoM, Hugh McDowell, said. \u201cIt\u2019s looking like it\u2019s going to be the third warmest on record for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[346,18427,104,4570,4958,2329,251,18428,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-31722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-bom","10":"tag-heat","11":"tag-hottest","12":"tag-october","13":"tag-queensland","14":"tag-records","15":"tag-tumble","16":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}