Heatwaves, fires, torrential rain, fish kills: Australia’s summer of climate extremes

The Australian summer smashed temperature records yet again, fuelling climate disasters around the country, while the weather bureau has predicted a hot autumn.

The season was marked by bushfires in Victoria and Tasmania, heatwaves that stretched from Sydney to Perth, record-breaking deluges in tropical north Queensland, and marine heatwaves that killed coral and fish around the entire continent.

An early morning walker exercises in Brighton-le-Sands ahead of a sweltering January summer day.Credit: Sam Mooy

Scientia Professor Matthew England, a climate scientist at the University of NSW, said climate change had profoundly altered Australian summers over the past couple of decades.

“When I was a kid growing up, summer was the season Australians looked forward to, but these days there’s a collective trepidation about summer because it’s the season where the worst climate extremes are playing out,” England said.

“It’s the season that we’re most fearful or anxious about – what sort of heatwaves will we have, what bushfire risks will come about, where will the flooding rains be?”

There is more to come – the Bureau of Meteorology’s long-range forecast for March to May shows a high likelihood of warmer-than-average days and nights and an increased chance of unusually hot days and nights across the country. Rainfall is likely to be in the typical range for most of Australia, including NSW and Victoria.

While the weather bureau will release a more detailed climate summary next week, a spokesperson said summer had been much warmer than usual for most of Australia.

“Every state and territory had above-average daytime and night-time temperatures,” the spokesperson said. “Parts of the west and some central areas had their warmest summer on record.”

This comes after 2024 was confirmed as the hottest year on record globally, followed by news from Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service that January 2025 was the world’s hottest ever January.

For Australia, it was the second-warmest January since records began in 1910, with BoM figures showing the average temperature sitting 2.15 degrees above the 1961-90 benchmark. It followed the third-warmest December since 1910, with the national average temperature 1.88 degrees above the long-term average.

A Sydneysider shelters in the shade at Bondi on a hot day in January.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

The highest daytime temperature of the summer anywhere in the country was 49.3 degrees at Geraldton Airport in the Mid West of Western Australia on January 20, the weather bureau said. The hottest night-time temperature of the summer was at Leinster Aero in WA, which was 34.8 degrees overnight on February 9.

Summer was wetter than usual for parts of the country’s east and north-west, but drier than average across parts of the country’s south and central areas, including large parts of NSW and the Northern Territory and most of Victoria. Large areas also had summer rainfall that was close to average.

The monsoon did not reach Darwin until February 7, the latest since records began. The previous record was January 25 in 1973.

However, the monsoon trough was established over Queensland from the end of January and also briefly in northern WA. The coastal area between Townsville and Ingham in Queensland had its highest February monthly rainfall on record, with some areas receiving 1.5 metres of rain over three days, causing massive river flooding.

Flooding in Macknade in North Queensland in February.Credit: Nick Moir

The wettest day of the summer anywhere in the country was February 3 at Paluma Ivy Cottage in Queensland, which recorded 745.2mm in one day.

Australia has had seven tropical cyclones in our region so far this season. On February 14, Tropical Cyclone Zelia was the first of the season to cross Australia’s mainland, causing high rainfall in the Pilbara region of WA.

The extreme weather events and associated natural disasters also included bushfires in Victoria and Tasmania, and a marine heatwave that caused coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef in WA, the death of about 30,000 ocean fish off the Pilbara coast, and a mass mortality event in salmon farms in Tasmania.

A farmer and Country Fire Authority volunteer monitors the fire beside his property near the Grampians in December.Credit: Justin McManus

The Climate Council has released a heat map tool revealing how Australian electorates would fare under a high-emissions scenario leading to global warming of 4.4 degrees by 2100.

The electorate of Parkes in north-western NSW would face 120 days a year over 35 degrees by 2090, up from an average of 55 days now. In Sydney, north shore electorate Bradfield would have 21 hot days, up from five, while neighbouring Bennelong would increase from six to 23.

The seat of Mallee in Victoria would have 58 days over 35 degrees by 2090, up from 25. The Casey electorate in east Melbourne would increase from three hot days to 14, while bayside Goldstein would increase from seven to 20 hot days.

The hottest electorate in Queensland would be Kennedy, with an increase from 110 days above 35 degrees on average to 214, while the electorate of Brisbane would face an increase in hot days from two to 24, and hot nights above 25 degrees from one to 33.