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| Late 2009 southeastern Australia heat wave | |
|---|---|
| Dates | Late October – mid November 2009 |
| Areas affected | South Australia, Victoria, southern New South Wales, ACT, Tasmania |
| Casualties | Suspected but unconfirmed [1] |
The late 2009 southeastern Australia heat wave (also referred to as the November 2009 heat wave and the South Australian heat wave) was a heat wave that occurred in the southeastern Australian states of South Australia, Victoria and southern New South Wales. Daily maximum temperatures during the heat wave were roughly 10 °C (18 °F) above average in many locations. Capital cities Adelaide and Melbourne recorded temperatures over 35 °C (95 °F), and some regional towns recorded temperatures above 40 °C (104 °F). [2] Above average temperatures in the region began in late October and persisted until mid-November 2009.
A heat wave is a period of excessively hot weather, which may be accompanied by high humidity, especially in oceanic climate countries. While definitions vary, a heat wave is usually measured relative to the usual weather in the area and relative to normal temperatures for the season. Temperatures that people from a hotter climate consider normal can be termed a heat wave in a cooler area if they are outside the normal climate pattern for that area.
South Australia is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of 983,482 square kilometres (379,725 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, and fifth largest by population. It has a total of 1.7 million people, and its population is the second most highly centralised in Australia, after Western Australia, with more than 77 percent of South Australians living in the capital, Adelaide, or its environs. Other population centres in the state are relatively small; Mount Gambier, the second largest centre, has a population of 28,684.
Victoria is a state in south-eastern Australia. Victoria is Australia's smallest mainland state and its second-most populous state overall, thus making it the most densely populated state overall. Most of its population lives concentrated in the area surrounding Port Phillip Bay, which includes the metropolitan area of its state capital and largest city, Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city. Victoria is bordered by Bass Strait and Tasmania to the south, New South Wales to the north, the Tasman Sea to the east, and South Australia to the west.
Contents
- Overview
- Consequences
- Responses
- November records
- Mildura, Victoria
- Melbourne, Victoria
- Adelaide, South Australia
- Wagga Wagga, New South Wales
- Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
- Temperatures (daily maximum)[14]
- Adelaide, South Australia 2
- Mildura, Victoria 2
- Wagga Wagga, New South Wales 2
- Canberra, ACT
- Melbourne, Victoria 2
- Hobart, Tasmania
- References
Many locations through the region broke temperature records for November. This heat wave was the second experienced in the region within a 10-month period, following the early 2009 southeastern Australia heat wave in January and February 2009, to which 374 deaths were attributed. Although the earlier heat wave was far more intense, the later heat wave was more extensive and long lasting.
The heat wave was caused by a combination of factors, including hot, dry winds caused by a slow-moving high-pressure system that had settled over the Tasman Sea, an El Niño event occurring in the Pacific Ocean, and gradually rising temperatures across southern Australia, probably as a result of global warming. [3]
Atmospheric pressure, sometimes also called barometric pressure, is the pressure within the atmosphere of Earth. The standard atmosphere is a unit of pressure defined as 1013.25 mbar (101325 Pa), equivalent to 760 mmHg (torr), 29.9212 inches Hg, or 14.696 psi. The atm unit is roughly equivalent to the mean sea-level atmospheric pressure on Earth, that is, the Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level is approximately 1 atm.
The Tasman Sea is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) across and about 2,800 kilometres (1,700 mi) from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, who was the first recorded European to encounter New Zealand and Tasmania. The British explorer Captain James Cook later extensively navigated the Tasman Sea in the 1770s as part of his first voyage of exploration.
Global warming is a long-term rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system, an aspect of climate change shown by temperature measurements and by multiple effects of the warming. Though earlier geological periods also experienced episodes of warming, the term commonly refers to the observed and continuing increase in average air and ocean temperatures since 1900 caused mainly by emissions of greenhouse gasses in the modern industrial economy. In the modern context the terms global warming and climate change are commonly used interchangeably, but climate change includes both global warming and its effects, such as changes to precipitation and impacts that differ by region. Many of the observed warming changes since the 1950s are unprecedented in the instrumental temperature record, and in historical and paleoclimate proxy records of climate change over thousands to millions of years.
