A tropical cyclone is heading towards northeastern Australia, marking the first of the season and contributing to a period of extreme weather in the region. This extreme weather includes heat waves, floods, and wildfires that Australia has been experiencing over the past few days.
Tropical Cyclone Jasper is anticipated to reach land as a Category 2 storm near the city of Cairns (population: 170,000) in Queensland on Wednesday afternoon, local time. It is expected to bring destructive winds of up to 87 miles per hour. Currently, over 8,000 homes are without power and 93 people have evacuated.
This marks the first time in the history of recorded data, dating back to the 1970s, that a tropical cyclone has arrived so early in the season during an El Niño year which is characterized by hot and dry conditions, according to Laura Boekel, a senior meteorologist with the Bureau of Meteorology.
In usual tropical cyclone seasons, Australia experiences storms from November to April in the northern region. However, during El Niño years, the season typically doesn’t start until January or February, added Laura Boekel.
Australia is entering its worst fire season since the deadly Black Summer of 2019 to 2020, during which approximately 480 people died from direct fire exposure or smoke inhalation. The past few months have seen unpredictable extreme weather, including a record-breaking dry September, a dry October, and a wetter-than-average November.
Last weekend, the country experienced fires, heat waves, and floods. Sydney and parts of Western Australia were sweltering through extreme temperatures, while South Australia and Victoria received heavy rain and flash flooding. Dr. Andrew King, a climate science lecturer at the University of Melbourne, highlighted the unusually warm oceans to the northeast of Australia as a likely contributor to the formation of Cyclone Jasper.
Australia typically experiences an increase in extreme weather events during the summer, but the current situation seems to reflect an unusually high number of such events. This includes “unusually high temperatures for early December” in New South Wales and severe fire conditions in Western Australia, which Dr. King believes are indicative of the impact of climate change.