The Bureau of Meteorology (click here) hopes a new heatwave forecast service will help people better plan for the impacts of extreme heat events.
The heatwave forecast will map areas across Australia that are expected to have unusually hot conditions over a period of four days.
It will define three grades of heatwave, with severe and extreme heatwave posing the most serious risk to people and infrastructure.
Assistant director of the Bureau's weather services Alasdair Hainsworth says the pilot service will compliment current forecasts and help reduce the human and economic impact of heatwaves.
“The heatwave service provides a measure of the build-up of ‘excess’ heat and will provide a more advanced indicator than temperature alone in anticipating the impact of heat stress,” he says.
“The pilot service uses a heatwave intensity index that assesses the build up of heat over a period of time, taking into account the long-term climate of a location and the maximum and minimum temperatures leading up to a heatwave event."
CANBERRA, Australia January 9, 2014 (AP)
By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press
Bats are dropping from trees, (click here) kangaroos are collapsing in the Outback and gardens are turning brown. While North America freezes under record polar temperatures, the southern hemisphere is experiencing the opposite extreme as heat records are being set in Australia after the hottest year ever.
Weather forecasters in Australia said some parts of the sparsely populated Pilbara region along the rugged northwest coast were approaching 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) on Thursday. The record high of 50.7 degrees Celsius (123.3 F) was set in 1960 in Oodnadatta, South Australia state.
Outback resident Gian Tate, 60, spends much of the day soaking in a small wading pool at her home near Emu Creek in the Pilbara region, a remote area off the electric grid. The thermometer outside her home registered 50 degrees Celsius (122 F) on Wednesday, she said. Tate and her husband rely on two electric fans to cope with the oven-like heat and rarely turn on the small air conditioner in their bedroom because of the high cost of fuel to run their generator.
"We've just got to live with it; there's nothing you can do," she said.
Brazil is also sizzling, with the heat index reaching 49 degrees Celsius (120 F). Zookeepers in Rio de Janeiro were giving animals ice pops to beat the heat....
Simba the lion licks frozen meat at the city zoo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2014. It’s so hot, animals at the Rio de Janeiro zoo won temporary relief Wednesday with popsicles made from tropical fruits, chunks of meat and frozen yogurt. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo) (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
