Australia goes purple as temperature goes off the charts

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology adds deep purple to its maps in response to off the charts heat / Australian Bureau of Meteorology

"Off the charts" is a phrase that gets thrown around liberally when it comes to temperature. But in the case of Australia's current heat wave and raging wildfires, temperatures are literally higher than the government's charts were designed to go. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has had to introduce a new color -- deep purple -- to account for the record-breaking heat.

The bureau's interactive weather forecasting chart previously capped at 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit.) The model now goes all the way to 54 degrees (129 degrees F), higher than Australia's all-time record temperature of 50.7 degrees (123 degrees F) from 1960.

"The scale has just been increased today and I would anticipate it is because the forecast coming from the bureau's model is showing temperatures in excess of 50 degrees," David Jones, head of the bureau's monitoring and prediction unit, told Australian newspaper The Age.

The scorching heat over central Australia has yet to cross the 50 degree barrier, but Dr. Jones believes it is only a matter of time.

"The air mass over the inland is still heating up -- it hasn't peaked," he told The Age.

Monday saw the highest average temperatures ever recorded in the country at 104.59 degrees Fahrenheit. Six of the twenty hottest days ever recorded in Australia have been in 2013, with that number expected to rise.

"The heat over central Australia is not going to go anywhere," Dr. Jones said.

[marycurious]

I grew up in Sydney Australia. my annual visit this year was from December and January. It became very very hot with a totally new weather pattern. A perfectly gorgeous Sydney summer day. next day hotter, and third day overheated to 38degrees on the breezy harbor side, then southerly change overnite with strong winds, then a cool overcast day, then next three days heating up again to heatwave and so on. exhausting. Meanwhile there were over a hundred wild fires raging at once in NSW and Victoria alone. I was actually glad to leave and come back to rainy dark winter in Oregon. The overall temperature of central Australia has risen one degree. this has many reper cusions on plants ans animals. The days of soaking up the sun and sunbaking all day long on the beach (As we did in the good old surfing days of the 60's) are long over. Children have to wear special long sleaved beach gear ffor swimming in to protect them and sun screen sales are booming as well as large brimmed sunhats being a must when you walk out the door.

[DEA_Agent_Smith]

Its the end of summer of course its going to get hot. The earth is also closer to the sun. There will be a global warming, Then it'll get cooler, Then warmer again. Its a big cycle.. We may be speeding it up a bit but nature could do that on its own too.

[enlightenu]

haha, where in the south did you go to school? The orbit around the sun is almost a perfect circle, distance has nothing to do with seasons. It's the tilt that matters, allowing longer days and steeper angle of incidence of sunlight.

[enlightenu]

haha, where in the south did you go to school? The orbit around the sun is almost a perfect circle, distance has nothing to do with seasons. It's the tilt that matters, allowing longer days and steeper angle of incidence of sunlight.

[Scimajor]

Judging "Global Warming" from a single area on the Earth from such a small data set is useless.

The trick is, however, that there is a much larger data set available to scientists covering most of the Earth and it DOES point to the average temperature of the Earth rising much faster than can be accounted for naturally.

[dman6015]

104.5? Come to Phoenix in July or August, they'll beat that by 10 degrees, easy.

[rrbarnes]

That also averages in the nightly low temperatures

[JimboLimbo]

I agree. 110-112 is common for summer heat, in Dallas Texas, in recent years. True that the average of the ENTIRE country was 104, but that includes the center of the country, which is... can we agree... desert. And, it's an island. The only part where temperatures are usually rated cooler, is Tasmania and the southeastern part of the country. Not real big news here. Alaska is freezing, Australia is hot. Weather is cyclical.