Australian cities forecast to nudge close to record August heat amid unseasonably warm weather | Australia weather

Unseasonably warm weather will blanket large parts of the country through to next week, with some areas recording temperatures up to 12C above their August average.

Sydney experienced spring-like temperatures on Wednesday. In the early afternoon the temperature at Observatory Hill hit 25.8C, close to the city’s all-time August heat record of 27.5C, which was set last year.

Modelling from the Bureau of Meteorology predicted that Monday would be a new all-time August record with a top of 28C. However, a spokesperson for the bureau said this would be revised later to forecast another 25C day.

It comes as the southern hemisphere has experienced three weeks of record-breaking warmth.

Central Australia has been heating up with clear skies and lots of sunshine, BoM senior meteorologist Rohan Smyth said. A low pressure system moving towards Western Australia was forecast to concentrate the heat and “drag it to parts of the country that don’t normally have as warm temperatures”.

Brisbane was expected to reach 26C on Wednesday as warm temperatures covered much of the east coast. Melbourne was forecast to see a few showers with a top of 19C.

Smyth said the widespread warmth “doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere anytime soon” with forecasts through to the middle of next week still showing temperatures well above average for August.

Through the weekend, hot weather is expected to spread into western NSW, south-west Queensland, western Victoria and even to Tasmania by Sunday.

Parts of northern South Australia, southern Northern Territory and western Victoria – as far south as Portland – are expected to near or break their August temperature records on Sunday.

Melbourne is tipped to reach 22C on Sunday, close to its all-time August heat record of 23.8C which was set in 2013.

Moomba in South Australia is forecast to reach 36C across the weekend, well surpassing its August mean maximum temperature of 22.5. Meanwhile, the remote outback town of Oodnadatta could reach up to 38C on Friday – also well above its monthly mean of 22.3.

“The areas most affected … will be 12C above average for this time of year,” Smyth said. Into next week, the heat was expected to shift slightly to cover the east coast.

“[It will remain] warm through much of the country,” Smyth said. “In fact, the east coast – including Sydney – will probably have its warmest days as we move into parts of the new week.”

The warmer temperatures come as the southern hemisphere recorded a 23-day run of record-breaking warmth from 19 July to 10 August. As Weatherzone reports, air temperatures were about 1C above average and at levels more typical of mid-spring than the middle of winter during this time.

This was driven by the warming influence of climate change and abnormally warm air sitting above and near Antarctica, Weatherzone reported, with further stratospheric warming anticipated above the south pole towards the end of August.

Meanwhile, an unprecedented number of heat records have been broken across the world this year, according to an influential climate historian.

“This amount of extreme heat events is beyond anything ever seen or even thought possible before,” Maximiliano Herrera told the Guardian earlier this month. “The months from February 2024 to July 2024 have been the most record-breaking for every statistic.”