Antinuclear

If you thought Sydney had been warm over the past year or so, you’d be right.

Last year was the city’s equal warmest for overnight temperatures and its second-warmest for means and maximums in 156 years of record keeping at Observatory Hill.

For some temperature measures, such as for NSW heat, the previous record had been set only a year earlier.

Agata Imielska, senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology in Sydney, said it was “quite surprising” to see last year eclipse 2013 given the bar had been set so high.

“We just didn’t have the cool periods,” Ms Imielska said. “There was a real persistence in the warmth.”

Globally, 2014 was the hottest year on record, the Japan Meteorological Agency declared this week. Land and sea-surface temperatures were 0.27 degrees above the 1981-2010 average, easily eclipsing the previous highs set in 1998, 2010 and 2013.

“Global warming is contributing to these heat records, and it’s very unlikely that we would have seen the proliferation or the frequency of these heat records around the world without the influence of global warming,” Karl Braganza, head of climate monitoring at the bureau, said.

“The climate system we live in … that’s all about 1 degree warmer than it used to be,” Dr Braganza said.

Warm and dry

For NSW, 2014 was the hottest on record for mean temperatures and the equal warmest for maximums. Among the other states, only the Northern Territory failed to notch a year among the four warmest on record……….http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sydney-weather-record-warm-year-with-few-cold-spells-20150106-12ikgr.html