Expert: Hotter Days Ahead
Sun Herald
Sunday March 7, 2004
AUSTRALIA is getting hotter and we will have more extreme and longer heat waves similar to the one we had last summer, warns the country's most senior weather expert.
Bureau of Meteorology director Geoff Love told a major planning conference last week that Australia had to prepare for a hotter climate.
Figures gathered over the past 50 years showed that the number of days hotter than 35 degrees in a year had jumped from 75 to more than 80.
Nights were warmer, too; only 45 fell below 5 degrees, compared with 50 in 1955.
``Australia is clearly getting hotter," Dr Love said after the conference, organised by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
``Part of that is due to global warming, but it could also be part of a natural cycle," he said.
Dr Love said the effect of more frequent El Nino currents in the Pacific could make Australia an even drier continent.
Heat wave records were broken across the country last summer and 2003 was the sixth hottest year on record.
In February, NSW had the most intense heat wave on record and Sydney had its fourth-hottest summer.
© 2004 Sun Herald