The map shows relative temperature increases or decreases in 2009 compared to previous years. Dark orange areas had the highest temperatures on record, orange and yellow had above average temperatures, white had average temperatures, and blue had below average temperatures.

Credit: BOM/Australian Government

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SYDNEY: Australia has sweltered through its hottest decade on record, officials said Tuesday, linking a rise in heatwaves, drought, dust storms and extreme wildfires with global warming.

The nation’s Bureau of Meteorology also said 2009 was the second warmest year since detailed records began in 1910, with an annual mean temperature almost 1 ºC above average.

Senior climatologist Dean Collins said the average for the decade – about 22.3 ºC – was 0.48 ºC above Australia's 1961 to 1990 benchmark average and an indication of man-made global warming.

Six decades of warming

"For the past six decades, each decade has been warmer than the preceding one," Collins said. "To get six, seven decades in a row that are warmer than the previous one – it doesn't happen by chance. It's reflecting what's happening at the global level."

Collins said while the higher temperatures were partly caused by an El Nino event in the Pacific – a weather effect associated with drier conditions – they had been superimposed on human-induced global warming.

Australia experienced three record-breaking heatwaves around the country in 2009, a highly unusual event which Collins said was consistent with global warming.

"Global warming increases the chance of getting heatwaves like that but we can't categorically say it wouldn't have happened without global warming," he said. "All we can really say is that global warming has increased the chance of getting those kinds of events."

More of the same

The bureau expects more of the same in 2010, with a bias towards warm weather in the first three months of the year, Collins said.

Australia began 2009 with uncomfortably hot temperatures in the country's south with extreme heatwaves in Victoria and the island of Tasmania. The bureau said these conditions contributed to the so-called ‘Black Saturday’ bushfires in which 173 people perished as firestorms levelled entire villages, destroying more than 2,000 homes.

An unusual winter heatwave hit large parts of inland Australia mid-year and resulted in the country's warmest August on record, while another hot spell in November broke records in South Australia and New South Wales.