South Australia suffered its driest year on record during 2019, the Bureau of Meteorology says, with rainfall down 65 per cent on average.
Dr Braganza added that global warming had been a"key factor" because Australia had warmed by more than one degree since 1910 — mostly since the mid-20th century.
"You can consider that most of the weather is occurring in a climate system that is about one degree warmer," he said."We've got very well-defined and clear trends underlying the changes we've seen over the past couple of decades."Dr Braganza said a delayed monsoon season, which typically helped to cool the country's interior, had also contributed to hot weather over summer.
"There's nothing really indicating that things will cool down too much over the next few months, although we are starting to see someBOM's climate outlook overview, released last week, found that SA and Western Australia could receive average to wetter-than-average conditions in January, despite eastern Australia remaining drier than average.
That potential for wetter conditions was expected to weaken through February and there was no strong tendency towards wetter or drier-than-average conditions up to April.
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