The La Nina phenomena brought wetter and lower temperatures across the country, making 2021 Australia’s coldest year in over a decade, according to the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).
According to the BoM, the media states that summary and contextual information for the 2021 calendar year about temperatures, rainfall, and major weather shows that no large parts of the country experienced rainfall deficits or drought conditions during the year.
The mean temperature in Australia in 2021 was 0.56 degrees higher than the 1961 to 1990 climate reference period (average).
It was the 19th warmest year on record since 1910, and the coolest since 2012.
“The average temperature from 2011 to 2020 was about 0.4 degrees colder in 2021,” stated BoM senior climatologist Simon Grainger.
“The year 2021 was significantly cooler than the previous decade. It was also the wettest year since 2016, with rainfall that was 9% above average in 2021.
“After three years of drought from 2017 to 2019, above-average rainfall last year provided a welcome recharge of our water storages, but also caused some serious flooding in eastern Australia,” Grainger said.
Many places in Australian states experienced above-average rainfall, resulting in catastrophic floods across eastern Australia, particularly in March, November, and December.
The influences of a negative Indian Ocean Dipole, a period of warmer-than-normal temperatures in the western Indian Ocean, and La Nina, a period of cooling in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, were key factors, according to Grainger. “As a result of the colder and wetter circumstances, we were able to continue our recovery from the severe drought we experienced in 2017-19.”
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