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Parts of Sydney have shivered through the coldest June morning in 13 years while the rest of the region struggled to make it above 10 degrees.
Weatherzone meteorologist James Rout said the cold weather had been driven by a cold front sweeping through the area, leaving clear skies and a high-pressure system in its wake – the perfect ingredients for a chilly morning.
Sydney has shivered through its coldest June morning in 13 years.Credit: Louise Kennerley
Sydney Observatory Hill recorded 5.2 degrees on Wednesday morning – the coldest June in 13 years. The coldest June morning on record was 2.1 degrees in 1932.
There will be some respite later in the day: the city is likely to warm to 16 degrees and bring with it some sun and light winds.
Campbelltown and Penrith also recorded their coldest mornings in 13 years, reaching -1.6 degrees and -0.2 degrees respectively. If you think that’s cold, spare a thought for Canberra which hit a low of -7.2 degrees.
Rout said Thursday morning won’t be as cold thanks to likely cloud cover overnight. He added that despite an El Nino weather pattern looming – which drives warmer and drier temperatures – it can mean that mornings are cooler.
While it will be a few months before the Bureau of Meteorology can formally declare an El Nino event, it’s one of the most important drivers of unusual weather over the entire globe. For most of Australia, El Nino brings dry weather, while its “sister” climate driver La Nina is wetter.
The European Union’s climate change monitoring unit has indicated that global-mean surface air temperatures have accelerated to record levels this month, sparking fears that this could be our warmest year on record.
The unit found that the global-mean temperature breached the 1.5-degree limit in the first week of June. How often, for how long, and by how much the limit was exceeded would need to be monitored over the coming year to see if the annual record was broken.
The unit’s deputy director Samantha Burgess said that the month of May was less than 0.1 degrees cooler than the warmest May on record.
“Monitoring our climate is more important than ever to determine how often and for how long global temperatures are exceeding 1.5 degrees. Every single fraction of a degree matters to avoid even more severe consequences of the climate crisis,” she said.
The Australian continent warmed by about 1.47 degrees between 1907 and 2021. There has also been a trend towards a greater proportion of rainfall from high-intensity but short storms, especially across northern Australia. Southern Australia has had a 10 to 20 per cent reduction in cool season rainfall in recent decades.
The coming El Nino season has put Australian emergency authorities on edge. Hazard reduction efforts have been significantly impacted by the past three years of wet weather – only 20 per cent of scheduled works were completed in the past 12 months.
NSW Rural Fire Service data shows that between July last year to June this year, only 58,591 hectares across the state have undergone hazard reduction – well short of the 280,072-hectare target. That figure includes hazard reduction burning and clearing.
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