India broke the record average temperature in August and Australia experienced the hottest winter ever recorded, the meteorological authorities of both countries, located in opposite hemispheres, announced this Friday.
India registered the highest average temperature in its history in August, 28.4 degrees Celsius, 0.84 degrees Celsius above the normal average temperature.
This is the highest average value since 1901, when records began, said the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), quoted by the French agency AFP.
The IDM attributed the record mainly to “low rainfall and a weak monsoon,” according to AFP.
The month of August in India falls in the middle of the monsoon season, which normally brings 80 percent of the annual rainfall in the world’s most populous country (more than 1.4 billion people).
This year, the monsoon brought much less rainfall, contributing to a rise in temperature, with average August rainfall of 161.7mm, 30.1mm less than the previous low recorded in 2005.
Summer rains are vital for food security in India, where millions of farmers depend on the monsoon to ensure the viability of crops.
The monsoon occurs when heat raises the temperature of the Indian land mass, causing warm air to rise and meet cooler winds carried by the Indian Ocean, causing heavy rain.
Also in the Northern Hemisphere, Japan today announced that average summer temperatures were the highest since statistics were established in 1898, with an average anomaly of +1.76°C.
China, for its part, admitted today that Super Typhoon Saola could be the strongest since 1949 to hit the Pearl River Delta, which includes the Macao and Hong Kong regions.
Record temperatures were observed in several countries in the summer of this year and July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth, according to the European Copernicus service.
In several regions of the northern hemisphere, particularly in southern Europe, heat waves of great intensity and extent occurred, with average air temperature anomalies of around +4ºC in Italy, Greece and Spain.
High temperatures were also recorded in Portugal, such as 45.6ºC on August 22, when half of the continental territory registered temperatures equal to or higher than 40ºC.
In the south, the Australian winter was the warmest on record, with an average temperature of 16.75°C between June and August, just slightly above the previous record set in 1996.
Australia’s earliest weather records date back to 1910.
Australian researchers have repeatedly warned that climate change is increasing the risk of natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and cyclones.
After several years of wet summers, experts expect next summer to be the most intense in terms of wildfires in the oceanic country since 2019-2020.
Earlier this year, Australia also recorded the strongest winds ever seen in the country, when a violent tropical cyclone hit the northwest with gusts of 289 kilometers per hour.
Source: TSF
