Australia has just experienced its warmest winter ever since they began keeping weather records in 1910.
During this winter, the weather in Australia was extremely hot, and there was hardly any snow. This caused a lot of trouble for the ski resorts in the country. Most of them had to close earlier than they usually do.
A news report by ABC News Australia, published on September 20th, talked about the warm and snowless conditions with skiers at Perisher before it closed for the season.
Throughout Australia, the temperatures during this winter were 1.53 degrees Celsius higher than the usual average. The previous record for the hottest winter was in 1996 when the temperatures were 1.46 degrees Celsius above the average.
The heat wasn’t spread out evenly across the country. Most of the warmth was in the eastern part of Australia. For example, New South Wales, a state with many big ski resorts like Thredbo and Perisher, had its warmest winter on record. Eastern states like Queensland and Tasmania also broke their temperature records for winter. The other states and territories in Australia were also among the top ten warmest winters.
A climate scientist named Andrew King, who has a PhD, explained in an article for ABC News Australia that the warm temperatures in 2023 were because of a mix of climate change and shorter-term weather patterns, like high-pressure systems.
Australia has been getting warmer over a long time, and this winter is part of that trend. King thinks this trend is linked to climate change. His research showed that there is at least a 60 times higher chance of having a record warm winter because of human-caused climate change.