Steph Deschamps / January 14, 2022
The mercury reached a record temperature of 50.7°C in a remote Western Australian town on Thursday, the Bureau of Meteorology announced.
Such temperatures could become commonplace due to global warming, the Australian Climate Council has warned.
The coastal town of Onslow reached an unprecedented record: 50.7 ° C, a record for Western Australia and is the warmest temperature ever recorded in Australia for 62 years. On January 2, 1960, the country had recorded a temperature of 50.7 ° C at the airport of Oodnadatta in South Australia, according to the website of the office. Climate Council director Martin Rice said the record is part of a long-term trend of global warming induced by the burning of coal, oil and gas.
According to him, these extreme temperatures are already having deadly catastrophic consequences in Australia.
Heat waves are silently killing in Australia, causing more deaths than any other extreme weather event, he said. Australia has experienced a summer of severe wildfires in the west and deadly floods on its east coast.
Rice said that without a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, such record heat could become commonplace.
In Sydney and Melbourne, by 2030, we will have 50-degree summer days, he estimated.