Australian heatwave just "natural variation" - BoM

It only took a few hours for the predictable, Pavlov's-dog-like response of the slavering environmental journalists at The Age, linking the recent warm weather to "climate change". But the Bureau of Meteorology seems to think differently (for once). AAP (as published in The Australian) can't resist a bit of hysteria, though:

AUSTRALIA just sweated through its hottest August on record.

But it's not climate change, it's just hot.

The Bureau of Meteorology says August was almost 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer than normal across the country.

The bureau boffins described it as "most extraordinary" as temperatures crept above 38 degrees in some areas.

And winter as a whole came within a whisker of being the warmest of record - it was just 0.01 of a degree cooler than the record-holder, 1996.

Blair Trewin, a climate scientist with the bureau, said the warm weather was caused by a lack of large frontal systems sweeping up from the southern oceans, which would have brought cool air.

Instead, persistent high pressure systems hung about the subtropics.

Dr Trewin said the heatwaves were caused more by natural variability than by climate change.

Climate change [as a result of natural warming after the Little Ice Age, since most of it occurred before 1940, before carbon dioxide emissions were significant - Ed] had pushed up temperatures by about 0.8 of a degree over the past century but August came in at more than two degrees above average.

"The set-up we had this month would have given us an extremely warm month whether it happened 100 years ago or it happened now," Dr Trewin said.

"There's a lot of natural variability but you've got a climate change signal on top of that."

And there's no end in sight to the warm weather - the Bureau is forecasting a hot, dry spring.

That's because of warm conditions in the Pacific and Indian oceans.

What, not because of evil SUVs? Surely some mistake? An almost balanced article - ACM editor falls off chair in amazement.

Read it here.