Abnormal autumn CLIMATE COUNCIL

You might have seen us in the news this morning launching our latest seasonal update: Abnormal Autumn.

Autumn has seen a spell of abnormally warm weather across Australia. This comes off the back of a record-breaking summer that saw an extraordinary 156 extreme weather records broken. In fact, the last 2 years (May 2012 – April 2014) have been the hottest in Australia’s recorded history

Here’s a snapshot of some of the extreme weather records that tumbled this autumn:

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Sydney had 19 consecutive days of 22 °C or above from 10 to 28 May – 10 days longer than the previous record. While Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide also broke records for number of consecutive days of 20°C or above.  Sydney had 28 days, Melbourne 13 days and Adelaide 16 days.

The question a lot of people are asking is: what is the influence of climate change?

While we’ve always experienced some extreme weather in Australia, climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. 

Download our latest seasonal update for more answers

It’s also likely we will experience an El Niño event in the second half of the year, which has the potential to exacerbate the climate-change driven warming trend.

The evidence is clear, avoiding more extreme weather requires urgent and deep reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases. The decisions we make this decade will largely determine the severity of climate change and its influence on extreme events for our grandchildren.

Thanks for your support to help us get the word out about this important development.