The year just ended was the warmest and driest in Australia since records began more than a century ago, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
For the first time, the record for both the driest year and the hottest year are the same - 2019. Rainfall records began in 1900 temperatures in 1910.
The double record comes as temperatures are expected to rise again this weekend, with communities in and around Canberra braced for a flare up in bushfires.
The bureau blames the record temperatures and drought for the current bushfires devastating swathes of the country.
Its 2019 Annual Climate Statement says that taking the country as a whole, the temperature in 2019 was 1.52 degrees above the average. The national average rainfall total in 2019 was 277 millimetres - the lowest on record.
"The record warm and dry year was one of the key factors influencing recent and current fire conditions in large parts of the country," according to the bureau.
The head of Climate Monitoring at the bureau, Dr Karl Braganza, said the ACT and the region of New South Wales around it followed the pattern of heat and drought.
"It's a very consistent pattern of extreme dry and extreme warmth," Dr Braganza said.
He said the hot and dry conditions were forecast to continue in eastern Australia over the next three months.
There was the possibility of some rain but no indication of the type of widespread, above-average falls required to douse the risk of bushfire.
Temperatures were "expected to be above average for the remainder of summer".
"These fires are very big and they will continue to burn for some week, possibly months," Dr Braganza said.
The planet's warmest year on record remains 2016 when there were exceptional circumstances associated with cyclical changes in the ocean and atmosphere.
Dr Braganza defended the bureau's methods against climate change deniers, saying that its data and methods were fully out in the open and had been reviewed numerous times both by scientists in Australia and those in other countries. He said there was a lot of "veracity and trust" in the bureau's work.
"We are very confident that we are doing things with a great deal of scientific rigour."
He said that linking individual events (like a particular bushfire) to climate change is possible but making the connection required lengthy computer modelling studies that had not yet been performed for the recent fire weather.
But he added, "We know that there's a trend in the severity of fire weather and the extension of the season". This stemmed from the combination of increased temperatures and reduced rainfall.