Seasonal climate summary southern hemisphere (spring 2012): warmer and drier across much of Australia, along with a new southern hemisphere sea ice extend record

Seasonal climate summary southern hemisphere (summer 2012-13): Australia's hottest summer on record and extreme east coast rainfall

“…Weak positive OLR anomalies were evident along the equator between 160°E and 180°E, consistent with the monthly standardised anomalies discussed above. Similarly, strong negative OLR anomalies in the eastern Indian Ocean were analogous with a continued decline in the positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole that peaked in September 2012 (Reid 2013). …”

“…By the end of autumn 2012 La Niña conditions had dissipated (Martin 2013) and summer 2012-13 saw a continuation of the neutral conditions that had dominated the equatorial Pacific since mid-2012 (Pepler 2013, Reid 2013, with no region of broadscale up-or down-welling evident.…”

“…3). The influence of ENSO on Australian summer 2012-13 rainfall was minimal, with neutral ENSO conditions reached in spring 2012 following near El Niño conditions in winter (Reid 2013), which were then sustained throughout the summer (Fig. 2).…”

“…This extended period of extreme heat was exacerbated by dry conditions, which had been affecting much of Australia since the middle of 2012 (Pepler 2013, Reid 2013, and a delayed start to a weak Australian monsoon. Late December 2012 to mid-January 2013, in particular, observed a significant widespread heatwave event that affected most parts of the country, with many temperature records approached or broken across southern and central Australia (see Special Climate Statement 43, Bureau of Meteorology 2013b).…”

“…Following an abnormally hot spring 2012, particularly for daily maximum temperatures (Reid 2013), and one of the most significant spring heatwaves on record that affected large parts of eastern Australia in the last week of November 2012 (see Special Climate Statement 41, Bureau of Meteorology 2012b), the unusually hot Figure 18 shows the maximum temperature anomalies for summer 2012-13, relative to a reference period of . There was limited variation across the country with positive maximum temperature anomalies observed across almost all of the country, with the exception being a region in northwestern Western Australia.…”